The Largest Tank Battle Ever Fought & Lost By Tommy!

The Battle for Normandy in Operation Goodwood, Dempsey’s plan called for the armoured divisions to remain on the west side of the River Orne until the last possible minute, then move quickly across the east to launch the attack. This created a problem, there were insufficient bridges across the Orne as Canal de Caen to allow an easy, rapid build up of Tanks, artillery, troops for Goodwood. Causing, confusion and chaos to ensue in the early hours of July 18th. As the build up began, moving forward was slowed down due to the lack of, and narrowed roads which prevented the Allied tanks from using their mobility effectively. Three armoured divisions, the 11th, spearheaded by Maj-Gen “Pip” Roberts’s the 7th The Guards, AKA as “The Desert Rates,” used a company of motorized infantry and a squadron of tanks. The initial objective was Troteval Farm, located north of the Village of Verrières. Rolling towards Bourguebus Ridge, a sloped dominating Route Nationale 148, the road to Falaise. The armoured division's tanks, after advancing around 12,000 yards the carnage began.


1st SS Panzer Corps under the command of General Sepp Dietrich, engaged British Lt.-Gen. Richard O’Connor’s VIII Corps which now comprised to cover the Canadians flanks how were fighting their way along the eastern suburbs of Caen, while the British 3rd “Tommies” and 51st Highland Divisions would cover the left flank, further to the east. Jerry stopped their advance cold in it’s tracks. On the left, the Guards Armoured Division meet heavy resistance as jerry zeroed in and targeted them at long range with veracity and accuracy. The 7th Armoured Division, whose task was to deploy up behind the 11th and operate in the centre, moved forward slowly and saw little action. At the end of the day the whole hillside was literally littered with blowup burning British tanks.The 11th Armoured, the 7th, and the Guards bogged down on the cluttered roads with debris, 140 tanks were completely destroyed with an additional 174 badly damaged. The operation remains of the largest tank battle ever fought by the British Army, which resulted in the expansion of the Orne bridgehead, the final capture of Caen. This operation was a disaster. Due to the intense Canadian and British operation in Caen, caused the Germans to commit most of their armour and additional reinforcements of The 7th Panzer divisions with 750 tanks were positioned in the Caen area, in the British and Canadian sector. Only two Panzer Divisions with 190 tanks, remained in the sector where the U.S. Army Opration Cobra would be launched, now faced Bradley's First Army, his first and main aim was to achieve a “breakout”.




http://www.flamesofwar.com/Portals/...Montysmeatgrinder/Operation-Goodwood-map1.jpg


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3223/2366061725_07e0b02134.jpg?v=0






22nd Armoured Brigade in Normandy, July 1944, preparing for Operation Goodwood.


Oparation Goodwood

The Panzers and the Battle of Normandy Great Pictures
Google Image Result for http://www.saak.nl/panzer2/panzer91.jpg

 

Nice maps and a I like that photograph!

 

pardon me but your second map is quite incorrect. the 2nd W-SS Pz Div. Das Reich was nowhere near Caen and involved in Goodwood advance; they were in the western sector facing the Americans with the 17th W-SS Pz Grenadier and Fallshirmjäger elements.

the map should indicate the II. W-SS Panzer Korps which was made up of the 9th/10th W-SS Panzer Divisions and it's core Tiger Abteilung W-SS Pz Abt. 102.

 

The opening post appears to be an auto-translation from another language (French to English?) It reads as if the tank advance was a supplemetary operation to cover the flanks of the Canadian adavance(!) The details are jumbled, contradictory and show an incomplete understanding of the 2 days of fighting. Not a very good account all told.

 

That's because it's "cut and post".......not an original thought by the poster

 

Much of the first paragraph is culled/paraphrased/rearranged text from this page by a chap in Birmingham, as apparently is some of the second. Which maybe explains the jumbled/translated feel :

Goodwood

Though oddly any positive or balanced commentary on the battle from that page is avoided...


~A

 

Google Image Result for http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Operation_Spring.svg/105px-Operation_Spring.svg.png

No Pardons needed Operation Goodwood lasted till around the 26th with the German Counter attacks. Goodwood was postponed for few days due to heavy torrential rains and lightning, and started again on the 25th.

Recently declassification of a Top Secret project called “Ultra,” has brought allot of controversy and discussion. Mr. David R. O’Keefe has discovered documentation that Lt-.Gen. Simonds knew that the attack was impossible, that the Germans were heavily reinforced and fortified their positions. That “Jerry” had their 272nd Inf. Div. with four battalions estimated at 600 men each & 1st Panzer Div. backed-up with 2nd, and 9th SS Panzer Div. were known to be in support. East of the Caen-Falaise highway, 1st SS Panzer Div. held Tilly-la-Campagne. 10th SS Panzer Div, & 116th Panzer Divisions headed to the battlefront from the north of the Seine. Which they surrounded and dominated the Caen/Falaise Road with an extra 200 tanks, which had already stopped the British armour in Operation Goodwood dead in it’s tracks short of Verrières, on July 18th.


The Map is correct elements of 2 ss Pz in that location in operation Goodwood, Atlantic and Spring. And on many links they have the 2 SS Pz in that same location. The one I just posted doesn't show 2 Pz. You'd be correct stating that the 2 SS Pz was never part of the Tank Battle.


http://www.flamesofwar.com/Portals/0/all_images/Briefings/Normandy/Guards-Goodwood-map.jpg


Battle Maps of Operation Goodwood, Atlantic .

 

they would have been better off simply committing only enough allied tanks to draw the panzers out in the open, then hitting them from the air. If they could not do that for whatever reason, then they should have waited til they had tank ratio numbers of at least 4 to 1. No way a British or American tank force could go up against the veteran German tank crews and their Tigers, Panthers and mark 4 Panzers on anything near equal terms, and not be mauled. Those British commanders must have been delusional.

 

You could be forgiven for thinking that Goodwood was a British defeat. It most certainly was not. Not all the aims were met (just as the German aim to hold all the ground and not retreat a step was not met) but advances were made and at the end of the 3 days the Germans were in a far worse position than they were at the start.
I suppose the oft claimed (bogus) reports of 400-500 burning British tanks is at the root of this misunderstanding.

 

Aircraft during WWII were not particularly effective at killing tanks for the most part. They also seemed to have a problem identifying them in many cases. I'm not convinced that "draw them out and let the airforce handle them" is all that good of an idea.

 

If I remember correctly Monty was already under the order "not to lose more men" as the home front was getting worried about men losses. Thus the tanks that were spearheading Goodwood were not protected well enough, which was one of the reasons that the offensive did not push through as beautifully as it should have done.

 

Well, the reason why there was a battle was that the Germans refused to engage British armor in the open and instead went hull defilade in fear of British tactical aviation. Many call Goodwood a defeated offensive. That maybe so BUT the Germans took a helluva pounding in battle casualties. In a way it was Monty's Battle of the Wilderness. The Germans staved off imminent defeat, but at what cost? They were bled white. At the very worst, Goodwood was still a success.

 

It achieved it's primary objectives with a large loss of life. Then again Monty called Operation Market Garden a success.

 

Interesting. What was the number of casualties by the way?
How do they differ substantialy from other battles in Normandy?
Oh and it did not achieve its primary objective.

Do you have the quote where Monty said Arnhem was a success?

 

Compared to today, of course not- Compared to anything previous, allied aircraft probably gave the Panzers more headaches (losses) then any other allied weapon including artillery. Until very late in the war it appears the allies gave short thrift to the German tank threat and didn't pay a lot of attention to how the ground forces were goingto stop them. The existance of the Tiger for instance was known since 1942 and the allies even had a captured example from North Africa (where Hitler sent a small number to be used at the last minute by the Afrika Korps). In the meantime almost 2 years went by until D-Day and the allies continued to rely on the little old Sherman and its 75 mm main gun as their MBT, which any allied tanker would tell you was only capable of pissing off a Tiger but not disabling it.
The allies had plenty of anti tank guns capable of destroying a tiger, such as the British 26 pounder, but these weapons were much better suited to the defense not for the fast-moving mobile warfare the allies were fighting in Europe in 1944. Even the allied response to the panzerfaust, the bazooka and the British PIAT, could do little more then scratch the paint on a tiger or a panther in most circumstances so the only viable A/T weapon the allies had besides artillery, was air power.

We have all seen the wartime photographs of blown up tigers and panthers, some even flipped upside down, with the caption saying this was done by a P-47/Hawker typhoon aircraft (often firing rockets sometimes dropping bombs). In 1944-45 most US Army units had P-47 aircraft available for ground attack on call via Air corps troops on the ground, trained as forward observers. There were few luftwaffe aircraft left in the skies by then and the ground attack role was something the P-47 was well equipped to handle when not being used as a fighter.

You might have thought the russians would have had something similar but they generally didnt, there was a paucity of radios in most Russian units (even most tanks in a unit of T-34 tanks did not have radios, only the leader did, he got his orders by radio and the other 4 or 5 just followed him.) and the VVS was not well equipped for forward air support. The Russians had plenty of ground attack aircraft, but usually they just flew around until they saw something worth attacking.

 

Are we losing sight of the entire strategic conception of D-Day AND subsequent operations leading to the breakout and pursuit?

Conceptual strategy envisaged British and Canadian force PINNING main force elements of the German army to the Allied left flank, (Cean and environs), whilst the Americans would slowly grind their way through the bocage country. Whilst in progress, Third Army (Patton) would take up positions to the right rear of these operations; Third Army would be activated the moment that the advance had penetrated the bocage to sufficient depth to be able to punch through it and beyond (Operation Cobra). To this end, and as Monty had envisaged, Montgomerey would stage one set piece encounter after another, holding German armour in a vice like grip, so that it could not be deployed in front of Patton in any great numbers.

Seems to me that this operational and strategic concept worked entirely to plan, for this scenario is exactly what occurred. Calling "Goodwood" a failure sees it in isolation to it's true role...a "holding" operation. This idea also gave the various Commanders tactical roles that they were already comfortable with. Monty got to plan and execute one 'set piece' encounter after another, and Patton got to perform the kind of free-wheelin', thrusting encounter that his character, temper and training were suited for.

As for 'drawing German tanks into the open to be destroyed by airpower' this is not really how airpower operated in mid-1944. Besides, when armour comes into the open during daylight hours, it usually has opposition armoured force close by, so rendering airpower difficult or impossible to employ without too many 'blue on blue' situations arising. This trick was prevalent at Stalingrad, where Chuikov kept his units as close as possible to the advancing German units so that airpower, which is very imprecise, cannot be called upon without significant risk to friendly elements.

Once airpower is committed, it's all hell difficult to call off again before the bombs and rockets start to fall, and it's all over so quickly that the damage is done in an instant. So you have to get your tactical target recognition just right, and be very accurate in describing the target area, because once the aircraft are in the air and on their way, not a lot can put the brakes on it, so your own people must be well back and camoflaged, or CLEARLY visable as your own from the air.

 

I thought Monty's original concept for "Goodwood" had the British force reaching Falaise, and it was only a few days before the start of the operation that he changed his mind. Further along those lines, if Monty had been able to achieve his breakthrough and reached Falaise, would that not have made "Cobra" superfluous?

The Allies had fallen far behind on their time schedule for expanding the Normandy bridgehead. "Goodwood" looked like it had promise to achieve a breakthrough when Monty was planning it. But, I think Monty realized he had bitten of more than he could chew at the last minute and revised his objectives accordingly.

So, yes I would say it was a failure. The claim, that it was a success because it held down forces so that Cobra could succeed, rings rather hollow. Its more salve for wounded pride, than an actual claim for victory.

 

What I'm pointing out is that it conformed to objectives that were put in place BEFORE the landings. Montgomery was ALWAYS going to put significant pressure on the German right, and keep battering until he either broke through, or significant amounts of German resources were sucked into to the mealstrom to weaken their effort elsewhere. There was only so much space to deploy all these resouces, and the Third Army had to kept back until the 'right' moment arrived to activate it.

Whether this happened on d+ 5 or d+ 50 mattered not one little bit....as long as it DID happen.

Have a look at D-Day in the planning stages, specifically look at what Montgomery was telling other commanders in his lecture like addresses to other COSSAC staffers.

Sorry I don't have a reference...shame on me. i'll dig one out if you'll permit....

 

Studying the German losses from Allied tactical airstrikes it appears the best use was against the 'soft' targets. The trucks, towed cannon, infantry... On 6th June and for two days afterwards the Germans attempted to move during daylight towards the Normandy battle, thinking they were in the same conditions as on the Eastern Front. The loss reports of the motorized or mechinized divisions show only a few tanks lost. Three on the first, maybe five the next, perhaps two the third. However the losses in trucks, halftracks, & self propelled artillery were severe. Alongside the three tanks destroyed would be eighty, ninety, or over one hundred trucks & other vehicals. The delays from the repeated air attacks each day were intolerable as well. By the 8th June the veterans of the Eastern Front had learned the English and Ami air attacks were entirely different from the Russians. They were reduced to moving at night and hiding by day.

I spent weeks in the Mojave Desert and on Korean hills learning to sucessfully target aircraft tactically. We usually tried to mark the target with a smoke round just before the pair of bombers would pop up over the nearby ridge or mountain. It took hours of practice to get the timing down. Tanks could do it fairly easily, but their range and line of sight often interfered. Plus they gave away their position to the enemy ATGM batterys. MOrtars had severly limited range and frequently you did not direct communication with them. The artillery had the range and wide communications network, but it took precious time to get the shots accurately dialed in on the target.

In 1944 the air liasion teams were lucky to have some smoke grenades to mark their position and a radio to call the pilots. Using smoke rounds from the artillery, mortars, or tanks was something they had seldom or never practiced. I shudder at the difficulties they must have had getting a accurate airstrike on the enemy. it is little wonder that the tactical air forces prefered to make interdiction sweeps behind the battle zone rather than strikes on the front line.

 

Kursk in Normandy: Operation ... - Google-kirjat