Hodges ordered XIX Corps to punch through the West Wall north of Aachen and complete the encirclement of the city. After days of artillery preparation and a substantial but generally ineffective air strike, the 30th Infantry Division crossed the Wurm River and began working through the West Wall on 2 October. The doughs suffered heavy casualties and were on their own the first day because tanks and TDs were unable to advance through the deep muck to provide fire support. The 29th Infantry Division aided the assault on the left with limited-objective attacks.
Combat Command B/2d Armored Division entered the fray through the 30th Infantry Division’s sector in the fiercely contested town of Ubach on 4 October. The M10s from the 702d Tank Destroyer Battalion provided overwatch while the Shermans pounded pillboxes from close range in support of the advancing riflemen. The attackers finally began to make noticeable progress the next day and soon cut the main highway to Aachen.12
On 5 October, the men and towed 3-inch guns of the 823d Tank Destroyer Battalion crossed the Wurm River and passed through a gap in the Siegfried line opened by the 30th Infantry Division. The battalion CP set up shop in the basement of a schoolhouse in Ubach. The gun platoons deployed into defensive positions with the line battalions of the 29th Infantry Division, and then with their usual partners in the 30th Infantry Division. The guns fired direct missions against pillboxes and indirect ones against more distant German targets.
Covered on the left by the 2d Armored Division, the 30th Infantry Division now pushed south to link up with the 1st Infantry Division east of Aachen. The doughs from the Big Red One, meanwhile, were clawing their way through heavy resistance southeast of the city. On 10 October, with encirclement seemingly ensured, the Americans delivered a surrender ultimatum to the Aachen garrison. Ordered by Hitler to fight to the last man, the commander refused.13
The Germans gathered reserves and, after a series of unsuccessful piecemeal counterattacks, struck back in growing strength with the 1st SS Panzer Corps beginning on 10 October. A tank-infantry force hit the lines of 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division, at 1300 hours. As Lt Leon Neel directed the action under heavy German fire, a single gun from his 1st Platoon, B/823d, destroyed three Mark IV tanks and two Panthers over six hours, while a second gun KO’d another Mark IV. The battalion’s history claims that Cpl Jose Ulibarri personally accounted for four of the tanks with seven rounds in only sixty seconds. The engagement took place at between thirteen hundred and twenty-three hundred yards, and the 3-inchers required an average of three rounds per panzer destroyed. The platoon was also credited with assisting the 230th Field Artillery in disabling three more German tanks. The platoon suffered no casualties.
The Germans tried again the next day at about 1600 hours but pulled back after losing two more panzers. This time, however, they destroyed one 823d gun with direct fire and killed one man and wounded eight more. The guns of Company A shifted forward to strengthen the antitank defense.
Evidently having learned little about the futility of driving toward emplaced guns with long fields of fire, the panzers tried one last time on 12 October. The determined assault closed to within four hundred yards of the American positions, and 2d Platoon of Company B smashed two Panthers and a Tiger, while Company A’s guns claimed one Mark V and two Mark VIs. Each TD company lost one 3-inch gun in the exchange, while Company B was left to find three new halftracks—including one to replace a vehicle buried beneath a collapsed building.14
Massed artillery fire—capped by a dramatic appearance by American fighter-bombers—smashed German tank-infantry attacks aimed at the 1st Infantry Division on 15 October. The American circle closed around Aachen the next day.15
The Big Red One, meanwhile, had launched its assault on the city itself on 10 October with a bombardment by three hundred fighter-bombers and twelve artillery battalions.
Lieutenant Colonel Derrill Daniel’s 2/26th Infantry Regiment, backed by TDs from A/634th Tank Destroyer Battalion and tanks from the 745th Tank Battalion, was tasked with clearing the south and center of Aachen. While dug in at the outskirts prior to the assault, Daniel had used the tanks as “snipers” against MG nests and the TDs to blow up buildings suspected of harboring OPs.16 But now he had to take the buildings—a lot of them.
Initially, Daniel assigned a mixed force of three or more Shermans and two TDs to support an infantry company. The armor’s job was to blast ahead of the infantry, drive the enemy into cellars, and generally “scare the hell out of them.” Tanks and TDs had prearranged infantry protection in return, but small arms fire forced the doughs to move cautiously, dashing from door to door and hole to hole. One 2d Platoon M10 was knocked out approaching Triererstrasse by a bazooka fried from a pile of logs only twenty-five yards away. It took the doughs from Company F some time to spot the offender and take him out with a BAR.
The 3/26th Infantry Regiment, meanwhile cleared a factory district on the east side of the city. M10s from 3d Platoon, 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion, and Shermans played backup. When the doughs came under fire, a tank or TD would return fire until the riflemen moved in and cleared the building with grenades.
The two battalions launched their attack on the city proper on 13 October. Companies F and G from 2d Battalion each had three Shermans and one M10 attached, while Company G had three tanks and two TDs. The armor had difficulty negotiating embankments along the main rail line; several successfully slid down a ten-foot bank, while others went under the tracks only fifteen yards from the main underpass in which German demolitions were visible.17
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel soon developed a more frugal tactical approach for the urban fighting: A tank or tank destroyer went into action beside each infantry platoon. The armor would keep each successive building under fire until the riflemen moved in to assault it. The crews usually fired HE rounds on fuse-delay through doors, windows, or thin walls to explode inside. Only once a building was cleared and the doughs became safe from muzzle blast would the tank or TD fire on its next target. Machine guns mounted to the front of the TD turrets added invaluable support during the street fighting. The process quickly produced tremendous teamwork. Light artillery, meanwhile, crept two or three blocks ahead of the advancing troops, while heavy artillery dropped beyond that.18
Colonel John Seitz, commanding the 26th Infantry Regiment, described the approach in a lessons-learned report: “We proceeded without undue hurry, realizing that street fighting requires great physical exertion and considerable time if buildings are to be thoroughly searched and cleared. Our policy of searching every room and closet in every building, blowing every sewer, and mopping up each sector paid dividends in later security…. We placed tanks, TDs, and SP guns in position just before daylight or at dusk. We would have the engineers and [TD] pioneer-platoon men blow holes in the near walls of buildings. Then we would run the vehicles into the buildings and provide apertures for the gun barrels by blowing smaller holes in the far walls.”19
The tank destroyers expended tremendous amounts of ammunition—one platoon, for example, fired two hundred fourteen rounds of HE and thirty-six rounds of AP at strongpoints in one thirty-six-hour period. The TDs encountered German armor only once during the push to the center of Aachen, when two panzers thought to be Tigers supported by infantry attacked 3d Battalion’s Company K near the Kurhaus on 15 October. One Tiger penetrated to some woods within two hundred yards of the battalion CP, where two 3d Platoon M10s engaged it by firing at its muzzle flash. Corporal Wenzlo Simmons, who was acting as gunner because his commander was absent with a toothache, was credited with making a kill. During the drive to Aachen’s center, only two men were killed and five men wounded, and two TDs were lost.20
By 21 October, American troops had reached the German CP and were using 155mm guns to bash holes through the thick walls of medieval buildings that were impervious to TD and tank fire. The first time an SP 155mm was used, an M10 fired sixteen rounds at a wall to create a hole through which the gun could fire. The German commander surrendered, commenting, “When the Americans start using 155s as sniper weapons, it is time to give up.”21
No Fire-and-Maneuver Here
The muck along the West Wall played havoc with towed 3-inch guns during the autumn (even SP guns were often road-bound). Some battalions called for replacing the M3 halftrack prime movers with fully tracked
