The first trickle of Hyper-Velocity Armor Piercing (HVAP) ammunition for the 3-inch and 76mm guns began to arrive in September, as well. The tungsten-core round offered TDs and tankers the possibility of destroying the Panther and Tiger from the front, but combat reports indicate the American vehicle still had to close, in most cases, to within several hundred yards. The ammunition remained extremely scarce until the end of the war. Anecdotal reports on ammunition supplies in TD and separate tank battalions suggest there is some truth to the assertion that tank destroyer outfits received top priority in allocation of the “soupedup” ammo.
Chapter 8
“It was the doughboy, the tanker, and the TD who cracked ‘The Line, and broke through the vaunted defense system.”
The German High Command judged that the West Wall would hold if the Americans failed to break through immediately. The generals anticipated a concentrated American thrust through the line at Aachen in mid- September. By 25 September, the High Command concluded the immediate crisis had passed.1 On 27 September, Ultra codebreakers deciphered a message sent several days earlier directing that all SS divisions —beginning with four panzer and one panzergrenadier divisions and three Tiger battalions—be withdrawn for rest and refitting.2
A war of attrition took hold in October 1944 that engulfed the front along or near the German border from British and Canadian positions in the Dutch tidal lowlands to American and French foxholes near Switzerland. The tank destroyer crews were intimately involved, although for months the fighting bore no resemblance to the conditions postulated by doctrine.
Montgomery had tried to flank the German border defenses with Operation Market-Garden beginning 17 September. His uncharacteristically bold plan to leap the lower Rhine by using American and British airborne divisions to capture a series of strategic bridges for use by follow-on armor had fallen just short. Monty’s offensive effectively ended on 23 September. In the aftermath, Eisenhower opted to continue his strategy of applying pressure along the entire front. The Wehrmacht, however, was no longer hopelessly fragmented and reeling. The Siegfried Line provided the bracing a defending army needed to plant its feet and fight back.
The West Wall, construction of which began in 1936, ran nearly 400 miles from north of Aachen along the German frontier to the Swiss border. The Germans had neglected the defenses after 1940, so Hitler worked furiously during the collapse in France to put together a scratch force of 135,000 men to partially rebuild and man the line. The rehabilitated defenses were, on average, three miles deep. The strongest portion faced Patton along the Saar River between the Moselle and the Rhine. The second most formidable section was a double band of defenses protecting the Aachen gap, with the city of Aachen lying between the two. Immediately behind the West Wall in this sector was the Roer River, which gave the Germans a backstop that they could flood by releasing water from dams farther south near Schmidt.3
Pillboxes in the West Wall typically had reinforced concrete walls and roofs three to eight feet thick and were generally twenty to thirty feet wide, forty to fifty feet deep, and twenty to twenty-five feet high, with at least half of the structure under the ground. In some areas, rows of “dragon’s teeth”—reinforced concrete pyramids— acted as antitank obstacles. In other areas, the defenses relied on natural features—rivers, lakes, forests, defiles, and so on—to provide passive antitank protection.4
The 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion recorded one view of the Siegfried Line in the area near Ubach, Germany, in October: “The average pillbox had only one, or at most, two apertures, from which the enemy was able to deliver small-arms, machine-gun, and AT fire. Much more dangerous than the pillboxes, which could usually be reduced without much difficulty, were numerous AT guns—dug in and skillfully camouflaged between the pillboxes, and protected by infantry in firing trenches and bomb-proof dugouts.”5
The defenders also had artillery. Lt Leon Neel of the 823d Tank Destroyer Battalion said of the incoming shells, “There wasn’t enough room in the sky for any more.”6
The official U.S. Army history noted, “The fighting during September, October, November, and early December belonged to the small units and individual soldiers…. A company, battalion, or regiment fighting alone and often unaided was more the rule than the exception.”7 The period also marked the point at which the American combined-arms team began to gel in the ETO. Riflemen, tanks, and TDs supported by artillery worked together better than they had in the bocage. Shared experience had much to do with the improvement.
Panzers appeared rarely and then in small numbers, while pillboxes, fortifications, towns, cities, and trench lines posed the main challenges to infantry and armored divisions along the border. The result was that, as in the bocage, the self-propelled tank destroyers frequently filled in as assault guns, little different from the role played by the tanks.
A memo from the 803d Tank Destroyer Battalion described a typical action in which the TDs of Company B, one company of tanks, and doughs from the 30th Infantry Division’s 119th Infantry attacked the Siegfried Line near Rimburg on 2 October: “Each platoon was equipped with a 300-series radio borrowed from the infantry battalion whom they were supporting…. All pillboxes were encountered in pairs, mutually supporting. The TD platoon was employed with two guns firing, one into each of the pillbox embrasures, and the other two guns overwatching. This pinned down the enemy personnel and allowed our infantry to infiltrate to the blind side. When in position to make the final assault, infantry would call by radio for fire to be lifted. In a few cases, fire from the M10 would drive the enemy out of his position…. Unless the M10 could get into position to fire into the embrasure, [it] was useless. No amount of fire from the 3-inch gun could penetrate the thickness of these defenses.”8
Company C of the 803d, meanwhile, coordinated fire plans with the infantry and acted as the forward observer for artillery via a telephone link at one of the infantry battalion CPs. Company A provided fire control for a platoon of Sherman tanks from the 747th Tank Battalion.9
The widespread installation in infantry-support tanks starting in October of SCR-300 radios compatible with the walkie-talkie used by the doughs contributed tremendously to battlefield cooperation, and the case of Company B at Rimburg showed that the TDs were more effective when so equipped, too. Oddly, however, TD units were not issued the SCR-300, despite pleas from at least some battalion commanders for the radios.10
The Battle of Aachen
Of the four American armies along the front, only First Army was able to claim a major milestone in October. Ninth Army, having finished clearing Brest, entered the line between the First Army and the British beginning in early October and—short of men and supplies—dug in. Third Army began its first frustrating and bloody attacks aimed at capturing Metz—which became an obsession to Patton—while Seventh Army probed the German defenses along the Vosges Mountains.
First Army CG MajGen Courtney Hodges took aim at Aachen, which had been the seat of Germany’s First Reich under Charlemagne. Hodges judged that he lacked the resources to both contain the city and drive through the German defenses before the Rhine River. Prominent military historian Stephen Ambrose concluded, however, “The Battle of Aachen benefited no one. The Americans never should have attacked. The Germans never should have defended. Neither side had a choice. This was war at its worst, wanton destruction for no purpose.”11
