“Our motto was ‘Seek, Strike, and Destroy,’ and all in all, we did pretty good at it.”
A decision that altered the war for the tank killers emerged from the Fuhrerbunker under the ruins of Berlin during February 1945: 1,675 tanks and assault guns (new or repaired) were sent to the Eastern Front, while only sixty-seven went west. Hitler also stripped the Western Front of half its panzer divisions. The Fuhrer was more worried about the Soviet threat to Berlin than the danger that the Western Allies would leap the Rhine.2 America’s tank destroyers would never again encounter the panzers in large numbers.
Western Europe was littered with the hulks of the panzers that had tangled with the tank killers. As of 28 February, the TD battalions in Third Army alone had reported the destruction of six hundred eighty-two tanks and one hundred twenty-five SP guns—more than a third of the roughly twenty-two hundred panzers Third Army claimed to have destroyed. One battalion commander told Army Ground Forces that his men (equipped with M18s) had the panzer’s number and considered the highly mobile and easily hidden PAK 75mm antitank gun to be the most dangerous weapon they faced. As for the panzer, “the enemy tank can be easily out-maneuvered and is extremely susceptible to two-way attack.”3 In short, the men had regained confidence in their ability to handle heavy German tanks with their 76mm and 3-inch guns.
On 1 February 1945, ETOUSA caught up with the field expedient adopted in many TD battalions and ordered that supplementary machine gun mounts be installed on the front of all M10 and M36 turrets. The theater headquarters acknowledged that crews generally wanted a hull-mounted or coaxial machine gun but observed that this was the best available solution.4
Surge to the Rhine
Hitler may have decided to stop worrying so much about his Western Front, but the Americans—having eliminated the vestiges of the Ardennes offensives and stopped Nordwind in its tracks—were preparing to take a wrecking ball to the West Wall. On 2 February, the Combined Chiefs of Staff approved Eisenhower’s plan to advance to the Rhine along its length and cross in strength in Montgomery’s sector north of the Ruhr at the earliest opportunity. Most of Bradley’s and Devers’s troops were to halt offensive operations in February while Ninth Army (under Monty’s operational control) crossed the Roer plain in support of British and Canadian operations to the north.5
American forces finally seized the Schwammenauel Dam near Schmidt on 10 February, but the Germans jammed open a release gate, and the Roer River quickly became a temporarily uncrossable barrier. By the time Ninth Army could get going, the American advance would resemble a broad-front offensive.
In the meantime, troops all along the line probed and gathered intelligence they would need when they headed for the Rhine.
The 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion was deployed east of the Vosges Mountains near Prinzheim, France, in early February. Lieutenant Joseph Keeby, a Chicago man in command of the 1st Reconnaissance Platoon, had orders to capture some prisoners for intelligence purposes. The infantry had tried several times without success because of extensive mine fields along the German line. Keeby gathered the thirty-one men of his raiding party three days before the operation. They went over sketches, drawings, and maps of the route to a mill the Germans were using, probably as a command post. Keeby divided his team into an assault group and a security group to provide cover.6
The night of 4 February, Keeby led the assault team through the freezing darkness in a cautious approach to the objective. As the men neared the first German outposts, a machine gun opened fire. Keeby and his team dropped to the ground. The security group returned fire immediately, and the machine gun fell silent. One man spotted a second German MG preparing to open fire and killed the crew. The assault group moved forward again.
The men crept closer to the mill. Suddenly, automatic rifle fire snapped through the air. Private First Class Henry Weaver, close behind Keeby, spotted the German and shot back. His aim was true.
Surprise lost, six men stormed through the door of the mill. Private George Bass raked the first room with submachine-gun fire while Keeby tossed hand grenades. When the smoke cleared, eight German soldiers lay dead on the floor. Six others surrendered. The recon men took them back to the battalion’s position. Mission accomplished.
Along most of the front, the halt in offensive operations was strategic, not tactical, and the Americans continued to batter away at the West Wall. The doughs, tanks, and TDs were working together better than ever. AARs indicate that provisional platoons combining the two types of armor were occasionally created for some small missions. Captain Duchossois, commanding Company B, 610th Tank Destroyer Battalion (M36), described combined armed operations at Brandscheid at the stump of the Bulge in early February:
We moved across the line of departure as a tank destroyer, tank, infantry team—infantry, a tank, and a tank destroyer followed by more infantry, another tank, and a tank destroyer. We used this formation because of the poor visibility, the limited routes of approach, and uncertainty of the definite location of all fortifications.
The infantry advanced until they were held up by a fortification. When this happened, the tankers “closed up” the aperture with machine gun fire followed by the tank destroyers firing several rounds of 90mm.
Usually, the Jerries would put some white article out of the embrasure, but they would not come out to surrender until the infantry moved in and brought them out….
We found we had to keep a tank destroyer right behind the lead tank because our routes of approach were such that unless a tank destroyer was up there initially, it would be impossible to pass the tanks in order to fire on the pillbox. As a result, the leading tank destroyer and tank did the majority of the firing.
It is absolutely necessary to have communications with not only the infantry, but the tankers also. One of the simplest ways to accomplish this is to have both tank destroyer and tank platoon leaders equipped with SCR- 300 radio sets on the infantry frequency.7
Ninth Army crossed the Roer River on 23 February. Tank destroyer battalions played a secondary role, firing direct (typically at ranges between two and three thousand yards) in support of the assault infantry, and reinforced division artillery units. Battalion recon companies crossed the river with the assault wave to provide radio links back to the destroyers.8
The AAR of the 821st Tank Destroyer Battalion for February offered the following description of the now- standard operating procedure, in this case during fighting on the east bank of the Roer River near Julich with the 29th Infantry Division and 747th Tank Battalion: “As the infantry and tanks pushed forward, 821st destroyers provided close-in direct support for the infantry and mutual support for the tanks. As the infantry, tank, and tank destroyer teams approached a town that proved to be an enemy strongpoint, destroyer guns would fire direct covering fire at buildings. This fire neutralized enemy machine gun positions and denied snipers the use of the buildings. When enemy armor or emplaced antitank guns held up the advance of the infantry, destroyer guns were called upon to neutralize the enemy positions. Tanks and tank destroyers were called upon in accordance with the type of mission to be performed and worked together to outflank enemy strongpoints in and around towns. When enemy resistance was neutralized, tank destroyers immediately assumed defensive anti-mechanized positions against possible enemy counterattacks, while the infantry consolidated their positions and prepared to move on to
