Encyclopedia of Elite Forces in WWII by Michael E. Haskew

Author:Michael E. Haskew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
Published: 2013-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

OPERATION COBRA

American forces captured St. Lo in mid-July, and on the 25th, Operation Cobra, the attempt to break out of the hedgerow country commenced with a devastating carpet bombing of German positions. Panzer Lehr, positioned astride the main American line of advance on the St. Lo-Periers Road, was stunned by the savagery of the bombardment. Although some of the ordnance fell on American troops and inflicted a number of casualties unintentionally, Panzer Lehr was virtually incapacitated. Its commander, Major General Fritz Bayerlein, reported that by noon 70 per cent of his troops were unfit for combat, either ‘dead, wounded, crazed, or numbed ...’

By the time Hitler launched his Ardennes offensive on 16 December 1944 Panzer Lehr had been refitted, but it barely resembled the elite unit it had been at its inception. The division was thrown into the drive to capture the vital Belgian crossroads town of Bastogne and the advance toward one of the offensive’s major objectives, the Meuse River.

While elements of the division combined with the 26th Volksgrenadier Division and other units to encircle Bastogne, the remainder of Panzer Lehr was heavily engaged at Dinant, Rochefort and Celles. Bad weather lifted, and Allied air power decimated the German armoured columns. Bastogne did not fall, having been relieved by a spearhead of the American Third Army’s 4th Armoured Division on 26 December, and the thrust toward the Meuse was abandoned by 1 January 1945.

In March 1945 the 9th Armoured Division of the US First Army captured the Ludendorff railroad bridge over the mighty Rhine River at the town of Remagen. Panzer Lehr was among the German forces sent to wipe out the bridgehead, but the depleted division was unable to do much more than slow Allied progress into the Ruhr, the industrial heart of Germany. As the Third Reich crumbled, Panzer Lehr was reduced to relatively few armoured vehicles. Its surviving combat troops were among the 325,000 German soldiers who surrendered to the American First and Ninth armies after being encircled in the Ruhr pocket in April 1945.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.