Zaloga - Armored attack 1944 : U.S. Army tank combat in the European theater from D-day to the Battle of the Bulge

Steven Zaloga

............................................ vi

Chapter 2 ................... 53

Chapter 3 ...................... 79

Chapter 4 ........ 117

Chapter 5 ..................... 157

Chapter 6 ............................... 203

Chapter 7 ........... 233

Chapter 8 ........................... 255

Chapter 9 .......................... 297

Chapter 10 .................. 383

Chapter 11 ................. 417

...............................................499

These photos come primarily from the main collection of World War II U.S. Army Signal Corps photos, which totals about a quarter of a million prints. This collection was initially housed at the Pentagon through the early 1970s when I first began to do my photo research. It was later transferred to the Defense Audio-Visual Agency facility at Bolling Air Force Base in Virginia and finally to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA II) at College Park, Maryland, where it currently resides. The vast majority of the photos in this book come from this collection. A subsidiary Signal Corps collection resides at the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, which also recently absorbed the rump

Signal Corps collection held by the US. Army Center for Military History. In most cases, these photos duplicate the National Archives' holdings. Although the Signal Corps collections contain most of the surviving World War II photos, they do not contain all of them.

Many photos shot by Signal Corps combat cameramen were released through other venues during the war, such as the Office of War Information. A large portion of these photos are available at NARA II. In addition, other photos were never accepted into the main Signal Corps collection but were retained by separate organizations. For example, the library at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has the Bradley Collection, which is a separate and distinct collection of Signal Corps photos, some of which are not located in the main Signal Corps holdings at the National Archives or Military History Institute. Finally, there are a variety of other smaller holdings at various archives, including the Patton Museum Library, formerly at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and the Ordnance Museum, formerly at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Besides the U.S. Army collections, there are also some useful photos of U.S. Army operations in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force collections. It has taken me nearly forty years of research to collect the photos in this book.

The Signal Corps photos sometimes, but not always, include basic information on the date, location, and units depicted in the photo. This data is incomplete-and sometimes quite erroneous. Unit information is often lacking, and the spelling of the European locations is notoriously erratic. For example, a series of photos identified as having been taken in Ploy, France, were actually taken in Parroy, France. Over the years, European military historians have done considerable work in more precisely identifying the actual location of these photos, and I have made every effort to try to correct this information when possible. However, a certain measure of uncertainty still remains about some of the details of many photos.

I have attempted to select the photos in this book to satisfy a variety of potential readers. I have included photos of interest to military historians covering significant battles. At the same time, I have attempted to include photos providing technical details that will appeal to military hobbyists such as

military modelers, war-gamers, and historical reenactors. It is very difficult to achieve an ideal balance because of the very uneven coverage in wartime photos. After decades of research in the Signal Corps photos, I quickly discovered that combat photos taken during or shortly after major battles-such as Omaha Beach on D-Day or the first few days of fighting in the Ardennes in December 1944-are actually quite rare. Other events attracted a disproportionate amount of attention, so photo coverage of the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was quite thorough. I have included some photos of poor technical quality as I believe these will be of interest to readers. Likewise, in the captions, I have tried to reach a balance between historical and technical information.

Some basic description of U.S. Army organization is useful to help explain some of the unit designations that follow American tank operations in the European theater of operations (ETO) involved two major types of formations, armored divisions and separate tank battalions. The armored divisions were intended primarily for mobile operations, and their chief role was to exploit deep behind enemy lines once a penetration had been won by the infantry. Of the sixteen armored divisions raised in World War II, all but one served in the ETO in 1944-45. (The 1st Armored Division served in the Mediterranean theater of operations in Italy in 1944-45). Armored divisions were a combined-arms force, and each had a balance of three tank battalions, three armored infantry battalions, and three armored field artillery battalions, plus supporting units. In total, they each contained 168 M4 medium tanks, 83 M5A1 light tanks, and a large number of other armored vehicles. The two exceptions to this organization were the

2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions, which retained the older 1942-pattern "heavy" organization, with six tank battalions instead of three, and so they had proportionately more equipment. Armored divisions in combat typically formed three combined-arms task forces, called combat commands for specific missions. These were designated as CCA, CCB, and CCR, the last being the divisional reserve. The component battalions in each of these combat commands varied from day to day so that units could be rotated out of combat for refit, replenishment, and rest.