That night, while British artillery pounded the town, the Germans slipped out and withdrew to Djedeida, only ten miles from Tunis.47
When the Allies advanced again Thanksgiving Day to seize Medjez el Bab, the TDs were attached to the 2/13th Armored Regiment. The tanks passed Company C’s bivouac in the first gray light of dawn, and the TDs swung into their place in the column. Redding noted the flash of light reflecting off aircraft wings to the right front as one German and one Italian plane began a strafing run against the exposed Americans. His spirits lifted when he spotted eleven twin-boom P-38 Lightning aircraft racing toward the column—the first friendly air cover he had seen since near Beja. The Axis aircraft fled but left behind three wounded men from a Company C gun crew.
As the column pressed forward, Redding nervously eyed a large flight of Ju-88s that had appeared to the east. Suddenly, the vicious roar of aircraft cannon and machine gun fire came from the rear. Aircraft were diving at the column, pulling up, and circling to strike again. Redding and his men saw twin booms and American stars on the fuselages as the planes tore fifty feet overhead, engines snarling.
The P-38 squadron from the 14th Pursuit Group of the U.S. Twelfth Air Force raked the column five times, spitting explosive shells and bullets at men running for cover. The Lightning, its nose packed with a 20mm cannon and four .50-caliber machine guns, was if anything more terrifying than the Stuka to men on the ground in its sights. The P-38s finally pulled away, their mission apparently accomplished. Seven of the “enemy” soldiers lay dead and twelve wounded. Every vehicle in the company except for one M3 and one M6 had been knocked out, and nine of the vehicles were in flames.
The Twelfth Air Force would later admit to an official observer mission that its pilots were not well trained in ground-troop identification. The air arm noted that to a pilot in a speeding aircraft, American and German halftracks, trucks, tanks, and helmets—especially dirty ones—looked pretty much alike. The risk was high in that policy was for pilots over the front to attack any ground targets “not clearly identified” as friendly.48
The men of Company C were shocked and demoralized, and it would take Redding four days to restore his command to even minimal mission readiness. As there were no replacement vehicles, Redding set his men to exhausting work to build as many functioning tank destroyers as possible out of the wrecks. When they were finished, all but one of the M6s and one of the M3s would move under their own power (although one more M3 eventually gave up the ghost).49
While the tank destroyers were refitting, the Anglo-American advance ground to a halt following several sharp engagements. On 28 November, Captain Redding was ordered to rejoin British forces. As the company drove down the Beja–Medjez el Bab highway, enemy planes appeared in the sky. The now airwise soldiers quickly dispersed, a tactic, they had learned, that usually convinced a pilot that a strafing run was not worth the risk of being shot down.50
On 1 December, Company C was ordered to join CCB’s 6th Armored Infantry Regiment at Tebourba. The Allies were preparing another attempt to break through to Tunis, with local operations scheduled to begin at noon the next day. The TDs played virtually no direct role in the ensuing action, during which the tanks and armored doughs were badly mauled by the Germans. Inexperienced American tankers charged German antitank gun defenses and paid a steep price.
During two days of fighting, Redding’s 75mm TDs performed several indirect fire missions as artillery, the first such use of tank destroyers in combat. (The 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion had used most of its guns as artillery during an exercise in August 1942, so the idea had been in circulation for some time even though it was not part of TD doctrine.51) Redding noted, “Although little good was accomplished because of unsuitable sighting equipment, we added in a highly satisfactory fashion to the general din of battle.”52
The Allies gave ground, and by 10 December they had established a defensive line back at Medjez el Bab.
Company C was alerted the morning of 10 December while it was protecting the tank harbor of the 1/13th Armored Regiment in an olive grove near the Medjez–Tunis road. The company had been conducting daily reconnaissance missions in cooperation with the armored unit. Teams normally consisted of a two-gun TD section, a tank platoon of five M3 light tanks, a self-propelled mortar section with one halftrack-mounted 81mm mortar, and a detachment from the armored battalion reconnaissance section, probably equipped with jeeps and halftracks. The Germans patrolled the same area with similar equipment, and sharp clashes were frequent.
By now, the men had learned to meticulously camouflage their vehicles and to erase any tracks left by their passage. All movement into or out of positions took place after dark. These were the only ways available to defend effectively against the Luftwaffe.53
Reports indicated that a German armored column of fifty-five mixed vehicles was approaching. Indeed, the Germans had about thirty medium tanks and two of the massive new Mark VI Tigers in the column. A French battery brought the Germans to a halt only two miles short of Medjez el Bab. Rain had been pouring down for three days, and the panzers became temporarily bogged when they tried to maneuver around the guns. The 701st tank destroyers and Company A of the 13th Armored Regiment deployed to strike at the German flank. The light tanks of Company A also became mired, however, leaving the TDs on their own.54
Tanks to Destroy, and Guns to Do It
The German Wehrmacht fielded two medium tanks in large numbers in North Africa, the Panzerkampfwagen III and IV. American troops invariably referred to them as the Mark III and Mark IV. The Mark III carried a 37mm or 50mm main gun and was protected by 30mm (a bit more than one inch) of steel armor. The Mark IV was fitted with a range of guns from the 50mm to the long-barreled 75mm. The latter type was initially known in Allied ranks as the “Mark IV special.” Early models of the panzer carried 50mm (two inches) of armor on the front and 30mm to 40mm on the sides and rear. Beginning in June 1942, the Wehrmacht began to add armor to vehicles in the field that increased the frontal armor to 80mm (three inches). In March 1943, the model H entered production with the frontal armor thickened to 85mm.55 The blocky Marks III and IV resembled one another closely, which accounts for the uncertain enemy vehicle identification in many American after-action reports from this period.
The Mark VI heavy tank had 100mm (four inches) of frontal armor and 80mm on the sides and rear.56 In practice, no American antitank gun fielded in North Africa could achieve a penetration of the Tiger’s armor from the front. The main gun was the fearsome 88mm high-velocity cannon.
The main medium tank used by Italian forces encountered in Tunisia was the M13/40. The vehicle mounted a 47mm high-velocity gun and was protected by armor ranging between 30mm and 9mm in thickness.57
In theory, the American 37mm gun on the M6 could penetrate up to 2.4 inches of armor (depending on the type of round fired) out to five hundred yards, and the 75mm gun on the M3 tank destroyer could penetrate three inches of face-hardened plate at one thousand yards.58 The U.S. Army claimed that the 3-inch gun on the M10 tank destroyer could penetrate four inches of face-hardened armor plate at one thousand yards. But it was not until the introduction of tungsten-core rounds late in the war that the weapon could achieve kills against that much armor from even three hundred yards.