The 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion’s experience was typical. The outfit was with the 79th Infantry Division on the left wing of VI Corps. The battalion lost nineteen of its M10s during the fighting and reluctantly re-equipped partially with M18s because no replacement M10s were available. Despite the fact that the once-proud 21st Panzer Division was active in the sector beginning 6 January, tanks appeared only sporadically and in small numbers, and targets were mainly infantry and halftracks. All but a few M10s were lost to German infantry assaults or because they became immobilized on the roads.
The 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion headquarters briefly filled the role once imagined for the tank destroyer brigades and coordinated antitank defenses in its sector. On 7 January, the M18s of the 827th Tank Destroyer Battalion (another nearly all-Black unit) arrived and was subordinated to the 813th’s CO, Maj George McCutchen.98
Once Seventh Army had withdrawn to its Moder River line, the tank killers of the 636th had one of the few sizeable run-ins with panzers experienced by any TD outfit had during the fighting. Company C held positions near Hanhoffen on 21 January, as recounted by the 36th Infantry Division’s newspaper:
The warning net alerted Company C three hours before the German tanks ground into range. The 3d Platoon, commanded by 2dLt Lee Kiscadden, was emplaced along a heavy thicket with a clear field of fire in three directions. Two guns were there, about twenty yards behind the infantry. Six enemy tanks slid out of a tree line about two thousand yards to the east. The T-Patch [36th Infantry Division] TD men moved forward to the edge of the woods and sat there waiting.
A driver, Cpl Lem J. Luke, marked the enemy’s progress. “Yonder they go, yonder they go,” he repeated. The enemy tanks kept coming. They crossed a small bridge and stopped.
[Battalion CO LtCol Charles] Wilber was standing next to Lieutenant Kiscadden. “When are you going to shoot?” he asked impatiently. Lieutenant Kiscadden was standing next to the destroyer commanded by Sgt Rufus Brantley. He called to gunner Cpl Wiley Johnston, “When you’re ready!”
The enemy tanks were sitting ducks, halted just across the small bridge about twelve hundred yards away. It was Sergeant Brantley’s first combat as a tank commander—the day before he had been a medico and private first class. He spotted what he later described as the “biggest damn tank on earth.” Two rounds smashed into the tank, two columns of orange fire and black smoke roared into the gray snowy sky. His monster was two Mark IVs sitting hull to hull. They both were destroyed.
Sergeant William Rutledge spotted two other tanks at the same time. Short a loader, he had to observe fire and handle the gun by himself. Two Tiger tanks had forced their way past the infantry defense line and were two thousand yards across the plain, going towards the rear. Rutledge poured three rounds into one, shifted his fire, and hit the second. The second tank withdrew; the first one was crippled. Another round disabled it.
The 3d Platoon had accounted for three tanks in less than two minutes. The left flank of the open field was secure.99
Second Platoon, meanwhile, spotted a dozen mixed medium and heavy tanks and accounted for another four panzers. The tanks were barely visible across the snow and against a grey sky. One Panther met its doom when it became silhouetted by an exploding smoke round. The carnage persuaded the crewmen in the surviving eight panzers to withdraw.
Digging the destroyers in along the Moder River line was a major undertaking. Explosives had to be used to break through the deep frozen layer on top. Bulldozers were then used to scoop out pits, but the subsoil was so mucky that they often became stuck and had to be dragged free by tank-recovery vehicles. Finally, log floors were installed to prevent the TDs from sinking. Frequent air strikes by German jet fighter-bombers added to the strain.100
The fighting was bitter and casualties were high on both sides, but Operation Nordwind blew itself out by the end of January.
Back in the Ardennes, First Army on 3 January 1945 began a full-scale attack on the northern flank of the Bulge through deep snow, cold, wind, and fog. In less than two weeks, First and Third armies fought through fierce resistance to link up at Houffalize, about halfway up the length of the salient. The next day—17 January— Bradley regained command of First Army. By the end of the month, Hitler had sent the Sixth Panzer Army to deal with a crisis on the Eastern Front, and American troops had completely eliminated the Bulge.101
Lessons Learned
The tank destroyers in First and Third armies were credited with knocking out more than five hundred panzers during the Battle of the Bulge.102 That number stands as a summation of the efforts of thousands of TD men who fought with skill and courage under some of the most trying conditions of the war. They did what they were asked to do—kill tanks—and much else besides. Far beyond the statistics, the irreplaceable role played by those men in crucial battles at Krinkelt, St. Vith, and Bastogne—as well many secondary engagements that sealed what Churchill called America’s greatest victory—bears witness to the Tank Destroyer Force’s contribution to American arms.
The Ardennes fighting dealt the deathblow to the towed TD battalion concept because of the high losses suffered by towed units. The Army decided to convert all remaining towed battalions to SP formations, but supplies of the vehicles were not adequate for immediate implementation, and some outfits dragged their 3-inchers all the way to VE Day.103
Self-propelled outfits that had been directly in the path of the German offensive had suffered as well. The 811th Tank Destroyer Battalion, for example, lost nine men killed, thirty-five wounded, and eighty-two missing in action, as well as seventeen M18s and most of its armored cars.104
Despite the contributions made by the TD battalions during the Battle of the Bulge, Patton on 14 January 1945 recommended to the chief of Ordnance that production of tank destroyers be ended. He urged further that all TD battalions attached to infantry divisions be replaced by tank battalions.105 The tank destroyer vision had clearly not answered all questions in some very influential minds.
The tank destroyer battalions learned from their experiences and continued to refine their methods. Army Ground Forces noted that the Battle of the Bulge had provided a laboratory to compare the effects of attaching tank destroyer units to armored and infantry formations versus issuing TD units no smaller than company-size general support orders with the freedom to implement them as seemed fit. In divisions using attachments, TDs were parceled out so widely that they were unable to concentrate against armored threats—one armored division, ordered to consolidate a single TD company as a reserve, reported that it could not comply. “Mission-type” orders where used maintained tactical integrity of the TD units, precluded misemployment of the destroyers, allowed for better rotation of the men and equipment in the line, and improved morale. Ultimately, however, it was up to the battalion CO or TD group staff to persuade division commanders to adopt “direct support” practices in lieu of attachment.106
Other refinements emerged as well. By January 1945, the 803d Tank Destroyer Battalion kept a TD air liaison officer at the closest airstrip at all times. At the first sign of a tank attack, he took to the air, from where he could communicate directly with individual vehicles and was able to position single guns to best respond to the enemy.107 He could also call in artillery strikes. Major General A. D. Bruce had tested such employment of light planes to help TDs in late 1942, but the practice had not been adopted in combat.108
Chapter 10
