Why U.S. Tankers Let Panzers Get Within 50 Yards — And Destroyed 23 Tigers in One Day

Why U.S. Tankers Let Panzers Get Within 50 Yards — And Destroyed 23 Tigers in One Day

The morning of December nineteenth, nineteen forty-four. Stoumont Station, Belgium. Lieutenant Charles Powers stood in the open hatch of his Sherman tank, scanning the fog-shrouded road ahead through the Ardennes forest. The temperature hovered just above freezing, and his breath formed clouds in the bitter air. Behind him, two more Shermans from the Seven Hundred Fortieth Tank Battalion waited in the narrow valley where the Amblève River curved against steep, wooded slopes.
Powers knew what was coming down that road. Kampfgruppe Peiper. The spearhead of the First SS Panzer Division, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Jochen Peiper, had been smashing through American lines for three days, leaving a trail of burning vehicles and massacred prisoners. Intelligence reports said Peiper had Panthers, Mark IVs, and the most feared tank in the German arsenal: Tigers and King Tigers, with their legendary eighty-eight millimeter guns that could destroy a Sherman from over two thousand yards away.
The Sherman's seventy-five millimeter gun could barely scratch a Tiger's frontal armor at any range. Every American tanker knew the statistics. A Tiger could kill you from distances where you couldn't even effectively shoot back. The mathematics of that inequality had terrorized tank crews since Tunisia. Yet Powers and his crew weren't retreating. They were preparing to do something that defied every tactical manual: let the Panthers get close. Dangerously close. Fifty yards. Maybe less.
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