"100th Beutepanzer in Normandy – do you buy this?" Topic

In the book "German Armor in Normandy" by Yves Buffetaut the author makes the following claim on page 69
"Reports state that it was responsible for the destruction of 30 Sherman tanks, a significant achievement given the paucity and age of its matériel."
Do you buy this? The paratroopers of the 82nd seem to have handled one company rather easily at La Fiere bridge, while armed with only a couple of bazookas and a light anti-tank gun.

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I'd have to look at the primary sources, but sure--given the usual hedge that enemy vehicles are "destroyed" while friendly vehicles are often "knocked out" or "damaged" and recovered. And over how many days?

Think green US tank units, and consider the 100th would be on the defensive mostly after La Fiere. No law against a dug-in camouflaged tank firing first at close range having a good day. That's rather different from advancing into an enemy of unknown strength without a lot of support and getting "handled."

Hey Robert
That book doesn't have footnotes – just "further Reading" – which includes 2 other books by same author.
The preceding sentence reads: The unit survived the first few days of the invasion, and fought until the fall of Cherbourg."
So there is that for a timeline.
A following sentence reads: After the destruction of its tanks, battalion personel were split up into other units and continued to fight until the retreat to the Seine.

The book gives the 100th the following strength:
HQ: 5 x Renault R35
1st Co: 5 x Renault R35
2nd co:
1st pltn: 4 x Renault R35 + Somua
2nd pltn: 4 x Hotchkiss H39 + Char B1
3rd Pltn: PzIII + 4 x Hotchkiss H39
3rd Co. 3 x Renault R35

It looks like it was the 3rd platoon of #2 company that was destroyed by the 82nd at La Fiere

So taking out 30 Shermans with that motley crew is quite the accomplishment

No tracking to primary sources, no definitive answer. But how many many US Shermans were "taken out"--destroyed or disabled--between D+1 and June 12th? (The 100th was officially disbanded on July 1st, but 12 June seems to have been the end of it as an effective unit.)

I don't say it happened. I do say it doesn't sound surprising that an undergunned tank battalion, mostly standing on the defensive in good defensive terrain, should claim to have "destroyed" about a tank each in a week's fighting. Motley's not so bad standing on the defensive.

Actually, finding that many US tanks might have been tricky. They'd about have to have been the 70th and 746th Tank Battalions. Do we have anything on their losses in this period? All I can find off-hand is that the US 90th Infantry Division got off to a rocky start with elements of the 746th attached. (For that matter, could the German tankers have told the difference between Shermans and TDs while under fire?)

Listed as "100.Panzer Ersatz und Ausbildungs Abteilung" in order of battle.

Well I for one find it surprising. But as Robert alludes too, credited with destroying 30 tanks and actually destroying 30 tanks can be to different things.
Even on defense I would have guessed more like 15 or 20. I am not an expert and don't know every scenario they were in so it might be true but I do find that surprising.

I'd like more context. I'd love to have some information on US tanks (or self-propelled TD's) reported damaged or destroyed in the period, which would be the most directly pertinent thing. But it's always interesting to establish the ratio between what either side claims to have destroyed and what their opponents admit was destroyed or damaged.

I wish I could remember the example they gave me in school. I can't even remember which school. Could have been Army intel training. Might have been Air Force history training. But it cited the number of German planes claimed shot down in one of the major daylight raids, then the much lower number for which credit was given after everyone was debriefed and the claims cross-referenced--and then the much lower still number arrived at by checking Luftwaffe records post-war. As I recall it was no more than a quarter of the original claims, and might have been a tenth.

People being shot at are not generally taking good notes and making fine distinctions.

Reminds me of the Vietnam story that by body count, the US has killed every NVA in uniform twice over by the end of 1969.
Different reason but same result.

Joe

'Reports state' – is this the unit's own After Action Report to HQ perhaps? Units freshly-engaged and wanting to big themselves up may well accept the claims of their troops at face value, especially after the kicking they got overnight against the US Airborne units. By 23.59 on the 6th of June good news would be in pretty poor supply so anything that sounded better than lost units and terrain would be passed on swiftly!

Personally I can't see how a 37mm-armed, unreliable panzer woud fare against M4 Shermans and M10 Tank Destroyers (the gun was inferior to that carried by the M8 armoured cars and M3/M5 light tanks facing them, and the infamous small turrets would hardly match US optics and crew layouts). Kudos to the crews for even attempting to fight but thirty kills? They would be lucky to have been involved in thirty engagements…

Tbh, it sounds like rubbish. Rather like every tank Wittmann engaged in his Stug in 1941/42 was apparently a T34.

The 100th Panzer Bn was in action for a few days before it was destroyed, and (mainly) equipped with vehicles incapable of penetrating the armour of a Stuart, let alone a Sherman.

Maybe that one Panzer III had a busy couple of days!

I was, and am, skeptical, which is why I was curious what others thought. I believe the PzIII was destroyed by the 82nd at La Fiere Bridge by bazookas quite early. Although you can't tell, at least I can't, the tank in th elft foreground (you can only just see a fender) is usually identifed as the Pz III – and the unit only had one.

More info here:
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All true. BUT
1) Fighting from an ambush position is not the same as attacking a bridge more or less unsupported.
2) A 37mm can't penetrate Stuart or Sherman frontal armor at normal combat ranges. It's not an absolute thing. Not all armor is frontal, and not all combat is at normal ranges. There are such things as lucky shots, and green troops getting too close.
3) I bet you if you could find the "report" Buffetaut fails to footnote, if would be a tally of enemy "tanks" or "AFVs" destroyed, and the historian made it "Shermans." Historians are a little prone to that sort of thing.

I do not say that at some point a battalion of US tanks attacked the 100th and left 30 smoldering wrecks on the battlefield. But I find it fairly easy to believe that in a week of fighting defensively in hedgerow country, about 30 times they fired at a tank which then stopped moving. Maybe they saw smoke, or a crew bailing out. Maybe the 100th didn't stop to check, but went to their next position.

What we really need is something from the US side--82nd, 4th ID or 90th ID, or ideally 70th or 746th Tank Battalion in some detail. Without that, we're in a Minnesota Hog-weighing. (They tie the hog to one end of a stick, put the fulcrum exactly half-way, and find a rock for the other end which exactly matches the weight of the hog. Then everyone takes a guess at how much the rock weighs.)

The 37mm the French tanks were equipped with was a WW1 model.

There are contemporary reports available online for both the 70th and 746th Tank Bns, via the Ike Skelton Combined Arms research Library.

The sequence of reports for the 70th is a bit disordered but June 1944 is in there –

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The 746th starts in June though the date range is August -

link

I had a quick look while on lunch today and there's no hint of major tank losses over the first few days of their time in Normandy for either unit.

For the view from the German side I'd recommend asking over on Axis History Forum, though there might already be something on there found via the search (which tends to be a bit tetchy).

It might even be possible to ask the author direct these days via those social media platforms one keeps hearing about…

Gary

Thank you, Starfury!

Not sure where "major" starts. The 746th had lost 36 men killed, missing or seriously wounded through the 12th, and the narrative mentions 10 tanks "lost" or damaged enough to be unserviceable over that period. Clearly the 100th would have to share credit with mines and AT guns. I'll do the 70th in the morning.

Hmm. There's also a mention of the 746th taking out two Panzer IV's. Am I wrong in thinking actual German-made German armor was further east at the time?

The 70th's materials is a lot disordered, actually. Duplicative, too. Nice material on North Africa and Sicily, but scanty in Normandy. They come ashore on D-Day, but the narrative starts with COBRA. That said, I counted 43 casualties between the 7th and the 12th of June inclusive. If their proportion of men to tank losses corresponds to that of the 746th, they had 12 tanks somewhere between towed to the rear for repairs and total write-offs. So an informed guess of 22 tanks "lost" somewhere in the 100th's general area vs 30 claimed "destroyed" by the battalion. The ratio fails to surprise.

Fairness requires that I ask. Does anyone know the ratio of German tanks we claimed to have destroyed to admitted German losses for any of the hedgerow fighting?

Oh. And later on in more open country, the 70th's account describes Stuarts taking out 5 Pzkw IV's at 1,000 yards firing into their flank. A better 37mm gun, I'll grant you--but a much longer range than anyone had in Normandy.

Did you check the Appendix to the narrative report, at pages 230 to 233 of the PDF document? That covers 01 to 30 June 1944.

Hmpf. Thank you. I am in the odd position of being rightly reproved and smug at the same time. The material losses are recorded as 10 medium and three light tanks--13 total as opposed to my estimate of 12. So now we have 23 US tanks lost in the same general area and time the 100th claimed 30--a closer correspondence than I would have expected.

That said, surely other German weapons accounted for some of those losses, and could have accounted for all of them. If people are inclined to think they hit anything which stopped or blew up while they were shooting, surely people climbing out of a tank under fire don't spend a lot of time working out which enemy deserved the credit.

War is an uncertain business, better resolved with dice than with high explosives.

I ran a game last year where the Germans had 2 x R35, 1 x S35 and an Ft17 in defence against advance US recce units – they claimed 2 x M8 A/Cs and 2 x M5s before finally being obliterated by off table artillery and P47s :)