Goodwood - Over the Battlefield by Ian Daglish

Author:Ian Daglish
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783034888
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-05-21T16:00:00+00:00

Smashed and burnt-out Shermans littered the landscape.

TIGERS

After their rebuff from Cagny, von Rosen’s 3. Kompanie took little further part in the battle, busying themselves rescuing their damaged tanks from the Manneville haras before the tide of battle rolled over them.8 By 16.00 hours only one of von Rosen’s tanks remained fully operational: some retained mobility without operational guns, others vice-versa. Shortly after, Fromme ordered the remnants of the company to leave the field as best they could.

Meanwhile, Oberleutnant Oemler ’s 1. Kompanie had been expending frantic efforts to recover from its aerial battering. By late morning the company had managed to prepare eight of its great Königstiger for action. With great tactical insight, they advanced out from their assembly area and north around the Manneville haras. Probing westward, roughly along the line of the modern Autoroute, this potent armoured force approached the point at which the British armoured corridor was barely one mile across, taking as its objective the town of Démouville on the corridor’s far side. Between the Manneville haras and the heavily cratered Banneville the heavy tanks entered a very large wheatfield, partially cropped when the harvest was interrupted by the battle raging. Just 500 metres beyond the German spearhead lay the traffic jams of wheeled vehicles queuing to cross the Caen to Troarn rail line.

The risks inherent in speculating about ‘what would have happened if…’ have been discussed. Nevertheless, it seems in hindsight that this advance did have the potential to turn the entire battle into a British disaster. Had a half-dozen of the heaviest battle tanks in existence only progressed as far as Lirose and established a fire base across the narrow neck of the armoured corridor, 29th Armoured Brigade would have become effectively cut off from its lines of communication and supply. The whole thrust of the battle might have changed: from an advance into enemy territory to the desperate relief of an isolated pocket. To the ‘two or three hundred tanks’ which Dempsey was famously prepared to sacrifice might have been added the tank crews and command structure of an entire brigade, a shattering blow to 11th Armoured Division at a time when it was showing signs of maturing into the Army’s finest. The disaster was not to be. Oberleutnant Oemler ’s command tank ‘100’ immobilized itself by slithering into a great bomb crater, unseen amid the crop. Shortly after, in the same field, Königstiger 111 and 101 were penetrated and knocked out in quick succession (the first Königstiger ever to be lost in action to direct enemy fire; ironically, the Guards Firefly commander responsible for at least one of the kills, firing from the vicinity of the present-day British war cemetery, claimed to have destroyed a Panther). The advance was abandoned, 500 metres short of Lirose.

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