Never having seen one in the flesh before didn’t mean that the vehicle wasn’t instantly recognisable, and every man that saw it knew that death was a moment away.
Hardy had turned back to his own vehicle when the sound of a heavy gun reached his ears, accompanied by the thundering whoosh as it slid closely by its intended target.
“What the fuck?”, although somewhere in the recesses of his memory he recognised the sound and his stomach flipped.
The two M4’s were reversing, smoke pouring from their labouring engines and from smoke grenades lobbed by the crew to cover the withdrawal.
Hardy knew the answer before he looked, just in time to hear the big gun roar again and the first Sherman explode into a fireball from which no-one escaped.
It was the sound of a Tiger I’s 88mm gun that he had recognised, and sat on the road eight hundred yards away, was a fully operational example of the deadly German tank.
By the time Hardy had composed himself, the tank had eaten fifty yards off that distance, firing on the move without success.
The American battalion commander contemplated relieving the idiotic Lieutenant who was screaming about Tiger tanks. Before he made the decision, the man’s radio transmission ended abruptly.
The second Tiger’s arrival gave Hardy the impetus he needed, and he was in his tank in seconds, issuing orders, anxious to get his tin can out of the way of the leviathans.
Swiftly conversing with the unit Commander, he pushed out to the right, heading towards the river, looking for a way round on the right flank, as other’s were looking on the left.
Hamuda calmed his men, listening intently to the reports of combat coming from the tanks of 2nd Company, marrying them with the evidence of his eyes.
The American Sherman and Stuart tanks were expanding their line and firing rapidly, presenting excellent flank targets to his company’s Panther tanks. A fact he reported, keen to get into action before 2nd Company claimed too many. Through his episcopes he could already see six American tanks burning, but there were plenty more.
An American M5 Stuart tank emerged from the buildings five hundred yards to his front. Fearing discovery, Hamuda asked for permission to open fire, and his headset crackled with a new voice, that of Major Yamashio, giving 1st Company permission to engage from their flank position.
Selecting the enemy Stuart tank as his first target, he warned his company to prepare.
The Panther’s gunner took careful aim and waited for the order.
Two seconds later it came and the firing button was pressed, sending a 75mm armour-piercing shell on its way.
The Panther’s 75mm gun could penetrate the M5 Stuart many times over and its high-velocity shell passed through the vehicle and buried itself in a small mound behind the American tank. Its journey through the US light tank had been catastrophic. On its arrival at the glacis plate of the Stuart, the AP shell had easily penetrated the metal plate before messily destroying the co-driver, proceeding on to amputate Teo Li’s left leg at the knee and finally smashing the rear-mounted engine virtually in half, before exiting the back of the tank.
The crew bailed out at speed, all save Li, whose screams of pain and fear harried the fleeing tankers until a second shell from the Panther smashed the tank into silence.
The Stuart driver was struck down by a burst from Hamuda’s hull machine-gun, the gunner walking the tracers across the ground and into the running figure. Using the distraction, a breathless Hardy found refuge in an animal pen, diving over the wall into the deposits of the previous occupiers.
He lay there, trying to make himself as small as possible, not knowing what it was that had killed his tank and men.
Other Panthers were also engaging and five more Shermans had been destroyed. The Japanese gunners were doing their best and, whilst they were not up to the standard of German panzer crews, being sat in an invulnerable tank, killing enemy armour with side shots, wasn’t too difficult.
Caught between the 2nd Company’s Tigers and Shinhotos to his front, and the Panthers of 1st Company to his right, the American commander rightly called a withdrawal of all three companies committed to the advance.
The accompanying Chinese infantry had already made their own decision, withdrawing to safety immediately the Shinhoto’s had opened fire.
To the rear of the column, a battery of 105mm Howitzers was brought online and targeted on the enemy tanks to the Battalion Commanders front. The 81mm mortars of the Provisional battalion’s mortar platoon commenced dropping smoke to the right flank of the unit, trying to mask the Panthers from their quarry.
Hamuda ordered his company to switch positions to counter any enemy artillery fire, and to try and seek better firing positions. The euphoric commander of 2nd Company committed an error, and did not shift his company until the first heavy calibre shells started to arrive. The battery’s third salvo caught another Japanese tank, a basic Type 97 Chi-Ha, throwing the wreck on its side and killing the crew with the concussion.
By now, 2nd Company was scattering, permitting the savaged allied tankers to withdraw in good order, leaving nearly half of their number on the field, twenty-three wrecks testament to the capabilities of the gunners and their German weapons.
1st Company found themselves without targets as the American tankers used the terrain to mask their retreat. Some commanders contented themselves with the occasional shot at moving trees and bushes without further success, something which Hamuda called a halt to as it wasted ammunition.
One of 2nd Company’s Tigers halted and its deadly 88m spat a shell out. Hamuda noted the sudden pall of smoke from beyond a group of huts, which quickly turned into the traditional fireball that tended to mark the demise of a Sherman tank.
His professional eye swept the field, counting out the pyres and concluding that the two companies engaged had destroyed twenty-five enemy vehicles in total. Only two of the four tigers of 2nd Company had engaged, whereas all of 1st Company’s Panthers had taken the American unit under fire. Hamuda’s own tally amounted to two tanks destroyed and another hit. He had already decided to employ the German system for recording tank kills, and was looking forward to displaying two kill rings on his gun barrel. Some of his unit’s tanks had possessed rings earned by their previous owners, but his own late production Ausf G had apparently been a virgin until this day.
Across the river, the Allied artillery made a spectacular kill.
During 1944, the top armour of the Tiger I was increased to 40mm. The tank struck by the shell was a pre-44 model, whose armour was still the 25mm production standard thickness, which yielded easily to the force of the strike.
The whole crew were killed instantly and Hamuda knew he had just watched the 2nd Company commander die.
In almost slow motion, he watched as the Tiger’s turret was propelled up and left by the internal explosion, gently rotating, barrel over turret. Through his binoculars he watched as it crashed to the earth, coming to rest upside down on an animal pen. He swore he saw a face appear at the moment of impact.
American artillery continued to mask the withdrawal for some time, but failed to secure any more kills and the battle was over within twenty-four hectic and bloody minutes.
Hamuda called for his supply vehicles and withdrew to a safer place to replenish, using the opportunity to discover the facts of the battle.
To his chagrin, he learned that many of his gunners had failed to score hits, let alone kills, and that most of the damage had been done by five of his tanks.
Kagamutsu had enjoyed success four times whereas Hirohata had five kills to his name, four of which were American Shermans. Two others of Hamuda’s Panther unit had a brace each, leaving the other successes to their comrades in 2nd Company.