When J. Ted Hartman became a driver in an M4 Sherman tank in the 11th Armored Division, he joined a relatively new branch of the U.S. Army. While the army was forward-looking in certain areas before World War II, this was not the case with tanks or armor tactics. In 1919, in the drawdown of U.S. forces following World War I, the Tank Corps was abolished. The National Defense Act the next year assigned the tanks to the infantry, consistent with army belief that tanks should support attacking infantry.
In 1927 the army set up the small experimental Mechanized Force of light tanks, but in 1931 Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur decreed that tanks would have an exploitation role apart from infantry support, and the cavalry took over the Mechanized Force. In order to get around the 1920 Defense Act, however, the tanks were known as “combat cars.”
The German employment of armor divisions in the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, and especially in the May–June 1940 defeat of France, dramatically changed the U.S. Army’s attitude toward tanks and their role. In April 1940 an improvised U.S. armored division, formed of the mechanized 7th Cavalry Brigade from Fort Knox, Kentucky, and the Provisional Tank Brigade from Fort Benning, Georgia, dominated the army’s Louisiana maneuvers. In July the army created the U.S. Armored Force, led by Brigadier General Adna Romanaza Chaffee Jr., to test the feasibility of tank divisions. In July 1943 the Armored Force was redesignated the Armored Command, and in February 1944 it became the Armored Center.
The armor division was the basic element of the Armored Force. In 1941 the U.S. Army postulated that to win a war against Germany and Japan, it would be necessary to raise 215 maneuver divisions, of which 61 were to be armored. The army ended the war fielding only 89 divisions, of which only 16 were armored. As it turned out, this smaller number of divisions was sufficient to bring victory. These divisions were the most heavily armed, mechanized, and maneuverable to that point in history.
The U.S. armored division was designed to be a self-sufficient combined arms organization, capable of rapid movement and penetration deep into an enemy’s rear areas. The old heavy foot-bound four-brigade divisions of World War I gave way to a triangular system based on three highly mobile brigades. The triangular concept continued down through the unit of one maneuver element to hold an enemy in place, another maneuver element to turn its flank, and a third maneuver element in reserve. This same concept applied to the new armored divisions.
In 1943 the sixteen armored divisions were reorganized, and all except the 2d and 3d “heavy” divisions were converted into “light” divisions. Each had three tank battalions, and each of these, in turn, had one light and three medium tank companies. In the case of Hartman’s 11th Armored Division, the three battalions were the 22d, the 41st (the author’s unit was Company B of this battalion), and the 42d. The 11th Armored also had a field artillery regiment (consisting of the 490th, 491st, and 492d Battalions) and a reconnaissance element (the 41st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron). Division support consisted of an armored infantry regiment (the 21st, 55th, and 63d Armored Infantry Battalions), a tank destroyer battalion (three different ones in the course of the division’s existence), and the 575th Antiaircraft Battalion. The division also had the service elements of the 56th Armored Engineer Battalion, the 81st Medical Battalion, the 133d Ordnance Maintenance Battalion, the 151st Signal Company, and a military police platoon. Authorized personnel strength was quite lean: 10,937 men. New tables of January 1945 added nine additional medium tanks to each division but reduced the personnel further, to 10,670.
Division equipment under the 1945 table of organization included 268 medium tanks, 77 light tanks, 54 armored cars, 451 halftracks, 18 105mm howitzer tanks, 449 ¼-ton trucks (“jeeps”), 77 ¾-ton trucks, 444 2½-ton (“deuce-and-a-half”) trucks, 40 other trucks, 30 tank recovery vehicles, and 8 liaison aircraft.
The basic armored division light tank was the M5 “General Stuart” with twin Cadillac automobile engines. Originally to be the Light Tank M4, it was designated the M5 to avoid confusion with the M4 medium “Sherman” tank, then entering production. Recognizable by its stepped-up rear deck, the General Stuart had a crew of four, a weight of 16.5 tons, maximum 67mm armor, and armament of 1 × 37mm gun and 2 × .30 caliber machine guns.
With only a 37mm gun, the M5 was hopelessly outgunned by its opponents. The M24 “Chaffee” answered the need for a light tank with heavier armament. Entering production in March 1944 and reaching units in the field in late 1944, this highly successful design was manufactured in a variety of models. The 20-ton M24 had a crew of five and maximum 38mm armor, and mounted a 75mm gun and three machine guns: 2 × .30 caliber (1 coaxial) and 1 × .50 caliber.
The medium tank utilized by the U.S. armored divisions was the M4 Sherman. Produced in a considerable variety of models, it was certainly the most widely used Allied tank of the war. In all, some 49,000 were manufactured. The M4 continued in service after the war and was later used extensively by the Israeli Army.
The M4 utilized the lower hull of the M3 with a redesigned upper hull, mounting a central turret with a 75mm gun. It weighed 33 tons, had a crew of five and maximum 51mm armor, and mounted a 75mm main gun and 1 × .50 caliber and 2 × .30 caliber machine guns. The Sherman first saw service in North Africa in 1942. It had two great advantages over the German tanks: its powered turret enabled crews to react and fire more quickly; and it had greater mechanical reliability and repairability. Rugged, maneuverable, and easy to maintain, the M4 was consistently upgraded in main gun and armor during the course of the war.
The Sherman’s great disadvantages were its engine and main gun. Its gasoline (vice diesel) engine earned it the GI nickname of “Ronson Lighter—lights first time every time.” The Sherman was also consistently outgunned by the larger German tanks against which it had to fight. As Hartman notes, its 75mm gun was relatively ineffective against German armor, but a replacement 76mm gun with much higher muzzle velocity helped rectify that. The British were the first to use the 76mm gun on their Shermans, which they called the Sherman Firefly; the Americans soon followed suit with the heavier gun.
One of the major problems for the U.S. Army in the war was the lack of a heavy tank. German tanks had thicker frontal armor and a much higher velocity gun. Their “Tiger” mounted an 88mm. The 88mm German Panzerschreck anti-tank weapon could easily knock out the Shermans, whereas the U.S. 2.36" Bazooka, from which it was copied, was effective only against German side armor. Also, the Sherman tread mark was only 14", while German tanks had a track twice as wide and thus were not as easily bogged down. Indeed, Hartman describes adding extensions to his tank track just before the Battle of the Bulge in order to rectify this situation.
Loss rates of Sherman tanks were simply staggering. In the course of 1944–1945 the 3d Armored Division alone lost 648 M4s completely destroyed in combat and another 700 knocked out, repaired, and put back into operation—a loss rate of 580 percent. In fact, the U.S. lost 6,000 tanks in Europe in World War II. The Germans never had more than half that total.
The answer to the German tanks, the M26 “Pershing” heavy tank, was not available until after the December 1944–January 1945 Battle of the Bulge. It was not available in large numbers earlier in part because influential Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr. insisted on concentrating on high production of M4 Shermans since the Army needed a fast, medium tank, and because he believed that “tanks do not fight other tanks.” Patton counted on tank destroyers to protect the U.S. tanks, but the M10 Wolverine tank destroyer of 1942 had only a 76mm gun. The M36 Jackson, introduced in 1944, had a 90mm gun, which could indeed take on the German Panthers and Tigers on an equal footing. Both the M10 and M36 used the Sherman chassis.
The Battle of the Bulge revealed the weakness of the M4 against heavy German tanks and led to the prompt shipment to Europe of the first M26 Pershings, the prototypes of which had been produced only in November 1944. Weighing 46 tons, the M26 had a crew of five, maximum 102mm (4") armor, and a 90mm gun, along with 1 × .50 caliber and 2 × .30 caliber machine guns. The muzzle velocity of its main gun did not match the 88mm German tank gun, but it was almost a match for the fearsome Tiger in firepower and surpassed it in terms of reliability and mobility. The M26 was not available to the 11th Armored Division. It was utilized only by the 3d and 9th Armored Divisions, from February 1945.
The 11th Armored Division was activated at Camp Polk, Louisiana, on 15 August 1942. Its first commander was Major General Edward H. Brooks. Transferred to Camp Barkeley, Texas, in September 1943, the division participated in maneuvers at the Desert Training Center in California that October and was stationed at Camp Cooke, California, in February 1944. The next month Brigadier General Charles S. Kilburn replaced Brooks as the division commander. At Camp Cooke Hartman joined the division, received his tank training, and was assigned as an M4 driver.
The 11th Division staged for overseas deployment at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, in September 1944. At the end of that month it embarked from the port of New York for Liverpool, England, where it arrived two weeks later. In England the division was assigned to Camp Tilshead, on the Salisbury Plain. After getting its equipment in order, the division trained for six weeks. The 11th Armored Division departed from England, arriving at Cherbourg beginning on 17 December. Hartman’s company of eighteen tanks left Weymouth on LSTs on 19 December and arrived at Cherbourg two days later. A week later the division was engaged in the largest land battle ever for U.S. troops.
The hope nourished by the Western Allies of winning the war in 1944 had vanished in their failure to close the Falaise-Argentan Gap, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s refusal to secure the Scheldt River, and the lack of success of the September Market-Garden Operation, whereby Montgomery sought to outflank the German Siegfried Line (called the West Wall by the Germans) by securing a crossing point over the lower Rhine at Arnhem. In December, when Hartman arrived in France, Allied armies were regrouping, expecting to soon resume the offensive. Indeed, Hartman’s division was slotted to be sent to southern France.
Allied forces in the Ardennes area were weak, as Supreme Allied commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower had deployed most of his strength northward and southward. Hitler now gambled on a last throw of the dice. His goal was to smash through the Allied lines, cut off a sizable portion of their forces, and seize the port of Antwerp. In an exceptional achievement, the Germans assembled 250,000 men, 1,420 tanks and assault guns, and 1,920 rocket and artillery pieces, along with 2,000 planes.
The German Ardennes Offensive, launched early on 16 December, took the Allies completely by surprise. The Allies had grown complacent; their intelligence had failed to detect the German buildup, and they assumed that only they could launch an offensive. Bad weather favored the attackers by restricting the use of Allied air power.
Eisenhower now called up all available reserves, including the 11th Armored Division. The German force of twenty-four divisions pushing against three divisions of Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges’ First Army soon drove a “bulge” in the American defenses, which gave the battle its name. The German penetration eventually extended fifty miles deep and seventy miles wide.
On 23 December the 11th Armored Division was ordered up to the Givet-Sedan sector in reserve in direct response to the German offensive. Hartman’s unit arrived at Soissons on Christmas Eve. Here he learned that the 11th Armored had been assigned to General Patton’s Third Army.
Hartman’s unit then moved to near Sedan, where the German panzers had broken through in the Battle for France in May 1940. On 29 December the author’s company moved to the vicinity of Neufchâteau, Belgium, and early the next morning it joined the Battle of the Bulge, attacking against strong German opposition toward Houffalize. The 11th Division was without its artillery, which had been delayed in traffic jams and bad weather, and the tankers suffered heavy losses in the attack. Two of the eighteen tanks in Hartman’s company were knocked out, and thirteen crewmen were killed, including his company commander, and others wounded. It was a rude awakening for young Hartman, who was seeing his first combat. The division did take its objective of Lavaselle, and that night it repulsed a German counterattack.
The next day Hartman’s tank participated in two attacks by the 11th Armored on Chenogne, both of which were driven back. On 1 January 1945, supported by artillery and air power, the division took Chenogne and pushed past it ten miles toward Mande St. Étienne. The next day, in fierce fighting, the tankers took that place, although Hartman’s acting company commander was wounded and had to be evacuated.
On 3 January the division was relieved by the 17th Airborne Division and sent back to Bercheux, Belgium, to rest and refit. After nine days it returned to the line. On 14 January, Hartman’s company struck north and helped retake Foy, which had been captured by the Germans the night before. It then moved on Noville. In the fighting for Noville, Hartman’s company lost seven of its twelve tanks, including Hartman’s own M4, which was disabled. His replacement tank was one of the up-gunned 76mm Shermans. Part of the 11th Armored Division reached Villeroux on 15 January but was pushed back by a German counterattack. The next day it took Villeroux. On 18 January the division took over the Hardigny-Bourcy line, and two days later began advancing after German withdrawals. It crossed the Luxembourg border on 22 January and then patrolled in the vicinity of Bois de Rouvroy.
By the end of January, the U.S. First and Third Armies had reached the German frontier and reestablished the front of just six weeks before. The Battle of the Bulge was over. Of 600,000 U.S. troops involved, 19,000 were killed, about 47,000 were wounded, and 15,000 were prisoners. Among 55,000 British engaged, casualties totaled 1,400, of whom 200 were killed. The Germans, employing nearly 500,000 men in the battle, suffered nearly 100,000 casualties killed, wounded, and captured. Both sides suffered heavy equipment losses, about 800 tanks on each side, and the Germans lost virtually all their aircraft committed. But the Western Allies could easily make good their losses in a short period of time, while the Germans could not do so.
Although German defenses were crumbling, much hard fighting lay ahead, as Hartman was to discover when British and American forces came up against the German defensive line of the Siegfried Line. The 11th Armored now took part in the campaign to secure the Rhineland, the German territory west of the Rhine River. Although Hartman was in reserve in Binsfeld for almost a month, elements of his division relieved the 90th Infantry Division east of the Our River, and on 6 February assaulted the Siegfried Line and were repulsed. On the 18th a surprise assault without artillery preparation enabled the division to take numerous German pillboxes, and by the next day its units had taken Herzfeld and the Leidenborn area. Sengrich fell to the division on the 20th, and Roscheid on the 21st. The next day Eschfeld and Reiff were captured. The division then consolidated its positions.
On 18 February U.S. infantry attacked the Siegfried Line without preliminary artillery fire, surprising the German defenders and allowing a path to be cleared for the tanks, although this task took several weeks. At the end of February, the 11th Armored Division renewed its forward movement. On 1 March it crossed the Our River and entered Germany, then halted west of Prüm, while engineers bridged that river. The division then crossed the river and took Prüm with little resistance. On 3 March it attacked through 4th Infantry Division lines toward the Kyll River, reaching it the next day near Lissigen.
On 6 March elements of the division crossed the Kyll. The next day the division took Kelberg after fierce fighting, and on 9 March, after a forty-eight-hour marathon drive, it reached the Rhine at Andernach and Burgbrohl. The division then mopped up and went into reserve.
General Holmes E. Dager took command of the division in March. On the 17th the division attacked through the Bullay Bridgehead of the 89th Infantry Division in its second drive to the Rhine, at Worms, entering that city with the 89th on the 22nd. Two days later the 11th relieved the 4th Armored Division in the Oppenheim-Worms sector of the Rhine and went into defensive positions.
After crossing the Rhine River at Oppenheim, the 11th moved up to the Main River at Hanau on 28 March. The next day the division advanced northeast toward Fulda. It took Gelnhausen on 30 March, and here Hartman’s tank was hit by a Panzerfaust projectile. The division then bypassed Fulda, which was taken by the 71st Infantry Division, and pushed to the Werra River, establishing a bridgehead there on 1 April. For much of this time the 11th Armored Division moved at thirty miles a day or more into Germany.
The division took Coburg on 11 April, and the next day it resumed the offensive, establishing bridgeheads across the Hasslach River at Kronach and Marktzeuln. On 14 April it took Bayreuth, and on the 19th, Grafenwohr, the Wehrmacht armored center. Renewing the offensive on 22 April, it drove to the Naab River, then along the Alpine Highway to take Regen in fierce fighting on the 24th. Division elements struck south on 29 April, taking Wegscheid on the Austrian border in heavy fighting on 30 April. The next day Hartman’s 41st Battalion was in the lead as the division crossed into Austria, probably the first U.S. troops to do so. The division then secured the Urfahr-Linz complex on 5 May. Three days later, on 8 May, the day of the German formal surrender, it linked up with the Soviet Army at Amstetten. Hartman noted that an odometer on one of his Company B’s halftracks indicated that the division had logged 1,000 combat miles from the time it had entered combat.
The 11th Armored Division had captured 76,229 German prisoners and liberated 5,012 Allied prisoners of war. In the process it had sustained 432 men killed in action, 90 who died of wounds, and 2,394 wounded in action. The 11th Armored Division was inactivated at Urfahr, Austria, on 31 August 1945.
When Hartman enlisted in the Army Reserves on 18 May 1943, little did he know that eighteen months later he would be driving a tank into combat in one of the most momentous battles of the war. Here, then, is his account of his journey to the Battle of the Bulge and beyond.
Spencer C. Tucker
Virginia Military Institute