Falaise: The Flawed Victory - The Destruction of Panzergruppe West, August 1944 - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Anthony Tucker-Jones (Chapter 3 Throw them back into the Sea

Chapter 3 Throw them back into the Sea – 21st Panzer Division

The preliminary stages of Operation Overlord commenced late on 5 June 1944 with the steady drone of hundreds of Allied aircraft making their way across the English Channel towards the French coast. The first formations consisted of over 1,000 aircraft of Bomber Command, directed at the ten strongest German coastal batteries along the Normandy coastline. Their task had to be completed by 2300 hours D-1, in order to clear the area ready for the incoming airborne troops. In their way stood the 21st Panzer Division. Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, Panzer Regiment 22, 21st Panzer recalled:

Our panzers were very well prepared; that was one thing we did not have to worry about. We had spent months and months previously getting them ready. We knew our panzers, we had full command of them…. we assumed we would be able to push back a sea landing. Indeed, we took it for granted. You know, people are amazed by this but we were young panzer men burning at the thought we were perhaps going to be involved in some action. Of course, we had no idea what that would mean. No idea at all.

Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger, commander of 21st Panzer, designated one of the reserve units, did not start moving northwards until 1600 hours on the 6th. His counterattack towards Bieville failed and his troops were driven eastwards. By the end of the day Feuchtinger had lost twenty panzers and the British were only just halted at Lebisey, a mere two miles (1.2km) north of Caen. From then on the division’s performance was to be decidedly lacklustre, its greatest contribution to the defence of Normandy was helping to halt Operation Goodwood.

Combat experience

Created from the 5th Light Division, the 21st Panzer Division came into being in August 1941, commanded by General Karl Böttcher. Erwin Rommel’s Panzergruppe Afrika was formed in North Africa in July1941 and included the newly re-designated 21st Panzer, where it fought under a series of commanders.

After the decisive Battle of El Alamein the division was down to just four panzers and, in covering the retreat into Tunisia, was only able to operate as a series of kampfgruppen; its last major action was against the Americans at Kasserine Pass. The remains of the division under Heinrich-Hermann von Hulsen surrendered on 13 May 1943, along with the rest of the German and Italian forces in North Africa.

Rising from the ashes, the division was reformed in Normandy in July 1943 under Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger, largely from scratch, and remained in France on occupation duty. Between January 1944 and May 1944 Generalmajor Oswin Grolig and Generalleutenant Franz Westhoven commanded the division respectively, until Feuchtinger resumed responsibility again on 8 May.

Considering 21st Panzer’s key role in the early stages of the Battle for Normandy, Feuchtinger seems to have been a decidedly uninspiring individual. He began his military career in the artillery, so was not strictly a panzer leader, but by early 1943 was in charge of Schnellen Brigade 931, which formed the cadre for the new 21st Panzer. The former was an occupation unit, bulked out with transferees to bring it up to divisional strength. One unit specially formed for the new division was Flak Abteilung 305, equipped with 8.8cm and 2cm flak guns. However, by far the best tank-killers were the dedicated 8.8cm Pak 43 anti-tank guns of Panzerjäger Battalion 200.

Oberst Hans von Luck, commander of Panzergrenadier Regiment 125, had a fairly dim view of the capabilities of his divisional commander, particularly his lack of recent combat experience or knowledge of armoured warfare. Paris seemed to hold a greater attraction for Feuchtinger than the responsibilities of his division.

Fortunately for Feuchtinger, the Officer in charge of the division’s Panzer Regiment 22 was a very able man. The forty-five year-old Oberst Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikowski was a veteran of the First World War and the invasions of Poland, France and Russia. On the Eastern Front he had served with 4th Panzer Division’s Panzer Regiment 5, assuming command from Oberst Heinrich Eberbach (later commander 5th Panzer Army and 7th Army in Normandy) in January1942. He subsequently commanded Panzer Regiments 204 and 11 and, wounded at Kursk, eventually found himself in France

In the run up to D-Day the 21st Panzer Division was far from idle. With its limited, and in some cases antiquated, resources it made every preparation it could for the anticipated Allied attack. Nineteen year old Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus recalled:

In April 1944 we were still stationed in Brittany but were then moved to the area of Caen at the end of the month. I believe that this was at the order of Rommel himself. In the weeks that followed we actually occupied ourselves less with military training, but more with manual work because we had to dig holes in which to bury our tanks, so that only the gun barrel was above the earth. It was very strenuous physical work for young people, and when we had finished that, there were still the lorries and munition stores to dig in. And added to all this was also the fact that the large lat plain where we were was expected to be a site for enemy air landings, so we stuck lots of trees – chopped down trees – vertically into the earth. We called these ‘Rommel’s asparagus,’ because it was Rommel who had ordered them.

Petrol and ammunition shortages, though, greatly hampered training; while each panzer had its full complement of 100 shells, for live firing the crews were only allowed to expend one or two rounds. Like all soldiers food became a preoccupation with the men constantly grumbling about the rations, or rather the lack of them, and their quality. Understandably, the local French farmers did not go out of their way to supply the division and in the name of good discipline Feuchtinger’s Officers did all they could to prevent theft and looting. It was made clear that anyone caught stealing would be imprisoned.

Despite all the hard work and lack of supplies, 21st Panzer’s morale remained high. In the back of the panzertruppen‘s minds they knew that strategically, following Stalingrad and El Alamein, things were not going well; the task in front of them was another matter and they were confident about that.

The 21st Panzer Division’s organisation was largely unique in Normandy; unlike the other panzer divisions (with the exception of 10th SS) it had no Panther tank battalion. Instead it had an assault gun battalion and an anti-tank battalion with towed 8.8cm guns. In addition, each of its infantry regiments had one battalion equipped with armoured half-track personnel carriers. At the beginning of June 1944 the 21st had a total of 104 Panzer IVs, including six with the short barrel 7.5cm gun. In manpower terms it was almost at full strength, nearing some 17,000 men.

The II Abteilung of Panzer Regiment 22 was also equipped with a variety of captured French tanks, while Panzer Artillery Regiment 155 and Sturmgeschütz Abteilung 200 were armed with self-propelled and assault guns, also converted from French tanks. The latter, under Major Alfred Becker, were not in reality Sturmgeschütz as they had open fighting compartments and could not really function as assault guns. Based on the French Hotchkiss H-39 chassis, armed with a 7.5cm or 10.5cm gun plus additional armour, these vehicles were perilously over loaded. They were unable to engage Allied tanks on anything like equal terms and when the time came could do little more than conduct a fighting withdrawal.

The chain of command for 21st Panzer was a horrible muddle that made little sense. While Feuchtinger was responsible to Schweppenburg’s Panzergruppe West, he was immediately subordinate to the 716th Infantry Division under Generalleutenant Wilhelm Richter. The latter wanted anticipated Allied airborne landings swiftly mopped up and had a free hand with Feuchtinger’s infantry and guns, but he could not commit Oppeln-Bronikowski’s tanks, which were considered part of Rommel’s reserves, and at the crucial moment the latter was on his way back from Germany. To further complicate matters Richter’s division was subordinate to General Erich Marcks’ LXXXIV Corps.

Invasion: they’re coming!

At 0020 hours, D-Day, 6 June, the quietness of the night was shattered as the gliders of the British 6th Airborne Division landed by the Caen canal bridge at Bénouville and the Orne River bridge near Ranville. The paratroopers leapt from their gliders and after a short sharp exchange with the startled German guards, both bridges were successfully secured. Other units also succeeded in destroying the Merville battery and seized the four bridges over the River Dives and its tributaries. This secured the left flank of the British invasion.

At the same time Gefreiter Kortenhaus and four of his comrades were patrolling north of Falaise. Little did they appreciate the significance of the birthplace of William the Conqueror or realise that the British 6th Airborne was in the process of securing the important crossings over the Orne and Caen Canal. Although they were used to aircraft droning by high above, the noise was much lower and Kortenhaus assumed that fifth columnists were being dropped in the darkness. They found no parachutists and the sound of aircraft engines did not abate so they returned to their unit, which they found awake and alert.

Kortenhaus felt a sense of apprehension but also had more mundane things to worry about:

As we got close to the village where our tanks were dug in, the moonlight was coming through the clouds, and we could see that the crews were at their tanks. This was unusual because most of them would normally be asleep. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. It occurred to me that it might be some sort of night exercise. They said, ‘No, it’s an alarm.’ This was about 00.45. As the others prepared the tank, I remembered that my laundry was still with the French woman who did ourwashing. I woke her and said, ‘I need my clothes straight away.’ She said, ‘But they’re still wet.’ I said, ‘I must have them anyway,’ and paid for them, and ran to my tank.

After months of waiting, Kotenhaus finally found himself going to war with wet laundry. His division was ready in remarkably quick time, but now the dithering of the German high command took a hand in ensuring that the British and Canadians did not find an unpleasant surprise waiting for them just behind the beaches.

From General Feuchtinger to the lowest panzertruppen, a sense of frustration ultimately permeated the division. Kortenhaus and his comrades were baffled beyond belief; after all their anti-invasion training they just sat there kicking their heels:

I would say that we were ready to march at 2am at the latest. As well as the earlier alarm, news of an airborne landing at Caen had meanwhile come through on the telephone, and we were ready to go. The engines of the tanks were running, but we didn’t receive any marching orders. We thought, ‘If we have to march, let’s do it now while it’s dark and the enemy planes can’t see us.’ We waited for orders, and we waited. Just stood there, inactive by our tanks. We couldn’t understand why we weren’t getting any orders at all.

In the meantime, all General Richter could do was order Panzergrenadier Regiment 192’s II Abteilung into action against the British in Bénouville at 0200. Oberleutnant Hans Höller, commanding a section of 7.5cm self-propelled guns in the 8th Schwere Kompanie of II Abteilung drove east from Cairon and fought his way into Bénouville, held by the 7th Parachute Battalion. Under the cover of darkness they later withdrew to Lebisey.

Glider Pilot Alexander Morrison, 6th Airborne Division, who landed east of the Orne in the Ranville area recalls:

In our briefing, we had been told that the German 21st Panzer Division was located further east of our position and that the anticipated armour counterattack would first come from them. Accordingly when at 4am we could distinctly hear the sound of tracked vehicles, we realised that we were now ‘for it’ because a 45-ton Tiger tank presents a formidable proposition! But miracles happened and this time we were saved by the Navy. Warned of the danger, an Army spotter plane was airborne at first light and located the squadrons of German tanks assembling for the attack. Fortunately, the pilot was in direct communication with the Navy who promptly alerted HMS Warspite which was standing offshore. After a couple of sighters, she let loose with tremendous shelling and heavily blasted the whole area.

It was a fantastic experience to witness the terrible firepower of this battleship and to hear the huge shells roaring overhead like express trains to land with devastating effect right on the German assembly. The carnage must have been appalling and the severely damaged tanks shortly abandoned their attack and retired on Caen.

Feuchtinger was in Paris and eventually his performance would cost him dearly. Hastening back to his command he recalled:

I waited impatiently all night for some instructions. But not a single order from a higher formation was received by me. Realizing that my armoured division was closest to the scene of operations, I finally decided at 6.30 in the morning that I had to take some action. I ordered my tanks to attack 6th Airborne Division which had entrenched itself in a bridgehead over the Orne. To me this constituted the most immediate threat to the German position.

Hardly had I made this decision when at 7 o’clock I received my first intimation that a higher command did still exist. I was told by Army Group B that I was now under the command of the 7th Army. But received no further orders as to my role. At 9 o’clock I was informed that I would receive any future orders from LXXXIV Infantry Corps [General Marcks], and finally at 10 o’clock I was given my first operational instructions. I was ordered to stop the move of my tanks against the Allied airborne troops, and to turn west and aid forces protecting Caen.

The upshot was that the British 6th Airborne was spared a nasty mauling and the bridges it had secured remained in Allied hands. In the meantime Feuchtinger, Kortenhaus and their comrades miraculously were not strafed or bombed as the 21st trundled toward Caen. The city itself was not so lucky. As Kortenhaus related, they were on borrowed time:

The long road from Falaise to Caen rises to a hill where one can suddenly get a view over Caen, and as we drove over this hill we got a shock because the city of Caen was burning. I had never seen the city before, never been there at all, and all I could see was a huge black cloud over Caen as though oil had been burnt. At that point, I realized for the first time that I was at war. As we got closer to Caen our tanks had difficulty getting through the city because the streets were covered with rubble. So we lost a lot of time while some tanks went west around the city and others went east.

Despite all the chaos, the British landings remained vulnerable as Feuchtinger manoeuvred into position to attack. Between the British beach codenamed Sword and the Canadians’ Juno beachhead to the west, the Germans held a four-mile (6km) wide strip that ran all the way to the coast. British Royal Marine Commandos had been unable to force their way through at St Aubin and Lion-sur-Mer to link the two. Feuchtinger’s artillery was on the ridge above the village of Périers, south of Hermanville and Lion, protecting the salient and providing a potential springboard for a German counterattack against either the British or Canadians.

Major General T. G. Rennie’s British 3rd Infantry Division, having landed on Sword, was driving on Caen from the north and Major General R. F. L. Keller’s Canadian 3rd Infantry Division, which had landed on Juno, approached from the northwest. Luckily for the 21st Panzer, Rennie’s division showed a complete lack of flare; having captured Hermanville, it dug in instead of trying to outflank the Germans at Périers. It did not reach 6th Airborne at the Bénouville Bridge until the end of the day and only got to within three miles (5km) of Caen.

In the northern outskirts the 21st Panzer found itself struggling through a tide of frightened French refugees. Hauptmann Herr’s twenty-five panzers of I Kompanie reached the area between Lebisey and Biéville at about 1500. Hauptmann Wilhelm von Gottberg with the II and III Kompanies reached Périers ridge at about 1600 while the I Abteilung, Panzergrenadier Regiment 192, headed for the coast. Feuchtinger found the odds not to his liking:

Once over the Orne river, I drove north towards the coast. By this time the enemy, consisting of three British and three Canadian Infantry Divisions, had made astonishing progress and had already occupied a strip of high ground about six miles (10km) from the sea. From here, the excellent anti-tank gunfire of the Allies knocked out eleven of my tanks before I had barely started. However, one battle-group did manage to bypass these guns and actually reached the coast at Lion-sur-Mer, at about seven in the evening.

Into action

Feuchtinger had started the day with 124 tanks. However, while manoeuvring from the southwest of Caen northwards to attack the invaders, he lost thirty-four to Allied air attack and mechanical problems. By 1600 the British had reached Biéville, but beyond the village in Lebisey wood, just two and a half miles (4km) from Caen, they bumped into forty panzers under von Oppeln-Bronikowski.

Before the attack, Oppeln-Bronikowski was briefed by General Marcks, commander of LXXXIV Corps, who placed him under no illusions about the seriousness of his mission. ‘Oppeln, the future of Germany may very well rest on your shoulders,’ he said, adding, ‘If you don’t push the British back to the sea, we’ve lost the war’.

Feuchtinger and Marcks watched the tanks go in. The 21st finally counter-attacked in two places; thirty-five panzers under Gottberg struck at the Périers ridge four miles (6km) from the coast, while von Oppeln-Bronikowski with another twenty-five tanks tried the ridge at Biéville.

Tanks of the British Staffordshire Yeomanry south of Biéville reported German panzers rolling northward at 1600. They were well prepared, supported by 17-pounder anti-tank guns of the 20th Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery, and 6-pounder anti-tank guns of the Shropshire Light Infantry. The four lead panzers were ‘brewed up’ and the rest swung away for the cover of some nearby woods. The British gave chase and the panzers swung east towards the Périers ridge.

They bumped into another squadron of the Staffordshire’s tanks hulled down on Point 61 and in the following firefight the 21st Panzer lost another dozen tanks. Bronikowski lost six tanks and Gottberg ten. They had little choice but to dig in. While Feuchtinger claimed he only had seventy tanks left by the end of the day, the British only counted twenty abandoned panzers, with RAF Typhoon fighter-bombers claiming another six on the outskirts of Caen. Only six panzers and a handful of infantry made it as far as Lion-sur-Mer.

In the meantime Kortenhaus and his company had been detached to secure the Orne against the activities of 6th Airborne Division. By 2000 hours Feutchinger’s divided command was ready to push down the open salient, but at that point a massive Allied airborne reinforcement arrived and the panzers wavered. East of the Orne these airborne reinforcements bumped into seventeen tanks of IV Kompanie, which formed part of Kampfgruppe von Luck. Luckily darkness was falling and in the confusion the panzers advanced on their own panzergrenadiers and the attack was called off.

During the fighting on the 6th, Panzer Artillery Regiment 155 lost two batteries, leaving just seven batteries to cover a 15 mile (25km) front. This meant that the assault gun battalion and the infantry had to give up their batteries and self-propelled guns, respectively, to the artillery.

Feuchtinger then tried to coordinate his efforts with the 12th SS Panzer Division, recalling:

About midnight, Kurt Meyer [commander 12th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 25] arrived at my headquarters. He was to take over my left and we were to carry out a combined operation next morning. I explained the situation to Meyer and warned him about the strength of the enemy. Meyer studied the map, turned to me with a confident air and said, ‘Little fish! We’ll throw them back into the sea in the morning’.

By day break, though, the British and Canadians had closed the gap and 21st Panzer had lost it golden opportunity to rupture the bridgehead. In reality, any attack would probably have been hemmed in and decimated by naval gunfire and Allied fighter-bombers.

While Feuchtinger and Oppeln-Bronikowski may have wrung their hands in despair over the lack of firm direction and lost time, they had thwarted the British securing Caen on day one of the invasion. Although the 6th Airborne had valiantly secured the Allies’ left flank, the British 3rd Division had failed to take Caen, a major D-Day objective, thanks to the presence of 21st Panzer. Similarly the Canadians failed to capture Carpiquet airfield three miles (5km) west of Caen.

The city itself was pivotal to the British break-out and all the time it remained in German hands it was an obstruction to General Montgomery’s plans. The fate of France and indeed Panzergruppe West now rested with the outcome of the battle for Caen and 21st Panzer’s ability to hold onto it.

Kortenhaus was shocked at the rapid rate with which the division lost its tanks:

My company was under the control of Kampfgruppe von Luck. We made two attacks, one on 7 June and one on the 9th, and had a lot of losses – of our seventeen tanks, only one survived. The rest were destroyed. That had a big effect on us, and we sat around afterwards very crushed in spirits. It was now clear to us that we weren’t going to do it, we weren’t going to push the Allies back. The Allied attacks were too strong, particularly because of their air superiority. There was hardly any chance of avoiding a bad ending. But when an order came to attack we still did it – it must have been the same on the Allied side – because if a commander says, ‘Attack!’ or ‘Tanks advance!’ no one could say, ‘I am not doing it.’

Trooper Peter Davies, 1st East Riding Yeomanry, found himself up against the 21st Panzer on 7 June:

We had a nasty time at a tiny hamlet of a dozen places called Galmanche [northwest of Caen]. We were mortared all day by German infantry, and shelled by artillery, and we had to hold it without infantry. We fought there for five hours. It was said afterwards that we were lucky we weren’t annihilated, that B Squadron had taken the brunt of the battle. We lost a lot of commanders dead or wounded. I think it was eleven out of nineteen in one day…

The Germans had the greater firepower. We were outgunned on a number of occasions. Their tanks were better than ours, their guns were better than ours – I don’t think their crews were better than ours. I have to say that, but I believe it was true. We were faster, we could manoeuvre better – we could survive better…

It was mostly the 21st Panzer Division in front of us. We had fewer tanks than they had, but to kid them we had a lot more we used to stick the barrel through the hedge, stay there for ten minutes, quarter of an hour on watch, pull back and run down the hedge and stick it through somewhere else and kid the Germans there were tanks all along the hedge. Whereas there might have been only two or three.

Panzer Grenadier Regiment 125’s combat team was involved in tough fighting with the British paratroops on 7 June. Feuchtinger could sense that the odds were stacked against his men:

Already at this early date the enemy’s superior weight in men and materiel became obvious. He was constantly being reinforced by sea and air, while the division did not have any reserves worth the name to call on, and those units that were arriving the High Command had to commit northwest of Caen.

He found the 7th very frustrating, adding:

The whole daylong it was difficult to cover the left wing of the division, as the 3rd Canadian Division was trying to envelop it, the 12th SS Division not having arrived yet.

I SS Panzer Corps, to which the division had been subordinated since 2200 on 6 June, had ordered the 21st Panzer Division and the 12th SS Panzer Division to continue their attacks on 7 June with the objective of throwing the enemy into the sea. This attack was never launched, as only one regiment of the 12th SS succeeded in establishing connections with the 21st Panzer Division on 7 June, and that only at 1600 hours.

Allied air attacks were responsible for this delay, only one panzer battalion and one panzergrenadier regiment from the 12th SS managed to reach 21st Panzer’s left wing north of Épron.

On the 8th the division fended off another British attempt on Caen, destroying eighteen British Churchill Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineer (AVRE) tanks in the process. Allied firepower, though, accounted for twenty-five per cent of the panzers and fifty per cent of the infantry committed during this bitter fighting. British naval gunfire also impeded the movement of supplies, particularly ammunition. Soon the local dumps were drained, forcing vulnerable motor vehicles to forage further afield, exposing them to air attack. The complete lack of support by the Luftwaffe did not go unnoticed either.

Montgomery was planning a two-pronged attack. The first involved Major General D C Bullen-Smith’s 51st (Highland) Division and the 4th Armoured Brigade striking toward Cagny from the airborne bridgehead east of the Orne. Werner Kortenhaus and his fellow Panzertruppen of Kampfgruppe von Luck spoiled the Highlanders’ plans with a pre-emptive attack on 9 June, though with some losses:

We rolled through the gap one after the other, the Panzergrenadiers storming on behind us, weapons at the ready, trying to shelter behind their tanks as they deployed into broad front formation on the other side of the attack which was to steamroller us into Ranville. The firing began when we were only 30 yards from the hedge, and the first of the grenadiers dropped groaning to the ground. Panzer 432 was hit, and lost a track. Thirty seconds later Panzer 400 was hit and our company commander, Oberleutnant Hoffmann was staring in horror at the bloody mess which had been his leg, while Panzer 401 exploded, blowing open the hatches and literally flinging the crew out.

General Fritz Kraemer, Chief of Staff I SS Panzer Corps, recalled on the 9th the rising toll inflicted on the division:

An enemy air attack on the Panzer Regiment of the 21st Panzer Division put it out of action for almost one and a half days and a critical situation developed in this sector. Direct damage from the bombing attack was slight, but at least 50 per cent of the sixty tanks were rendered inoperative, in most cases by mechanical damage arising from the tanks being buried in mud.

Montgomery’s other attack was to push Major General G. W. Erskine’s 7th Armoured Division toward Villers-Bocage. If they and the 51st broke through, the 1st Airborne Division was to be dropped into the gap, trapping the German defenders. Things did not go according to plan when 7th Armoured ran into elements of Schwere Panzer Abteilung 503 and the Panzer Lehr Division.

By 11 June, 21st Panzer had lost about forty per cent of its manpower killed, wounded or missing, it had also lost fifty per cent of its tanks and thirty per cent of its guns. In total it could field about thirty or forty Panzer IVs and Vs. By mid-month the division had suffered 1,864 casualties, by 11 July this had risen to 3,411 and by the end of July stood at 4,703. Crucially, replacements for this entire period amounted to only 2,479 men, some of which are believed to have come from the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division. During the second week of June, the 21st Panzer was transferred to 15th Army’s LXXXVI Corps; Kampfgruppe von Luck had already been under this Corps’ control since the 6th.

The 21st Panzer was thrown into the attack again, making some headway. Kortenhaus remembered a particularly bizarre moment during the fighting:

I can paint you a strange picture which stays with me still. On 28 June we mounted an attack west of Caen and succeeded in getting through the British line. The battle lasted a very long time, from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon, but around midday there was a lull in the battle. Suddenly the battlefield was filled with dance music. Some infantrymen had gone and played with an English radio set, and dance music had come on, filling the air. It was a little unusual.

Stopping Goodwood

The 21st Panzer Division stayed in the line until 5 July when the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division finally relieved it. Within just over a week it was back resisting Goodwood launched on 18 July. The British offensive, employing the 7th, 11th and Guards Armoured Divisions, was intended to seize the high ground south of Caen and stop the panzers switching west before the Americans could launch Operation Cobra.

In the path of the British lay a series of stone-built villages amidst hedge-lined fields and orchards. General Eberbach and Field Marshal Rommel exploited these to the maximum. General von Obstfelder’s LXXXVI Corps consisted of three infantry divisions supported by the 21st and 1st SS Panzer Divisions, while the 12th SS at Lisieux constituted I SS Panzer Corps reserve. In addition, Tigers of the 503 and 101 SS heavy tank battalions were also available.

The British assessed the German defences to be to a depth of three miles (5km). Rommel and Eberbach had in fact built five defensive zones covering 10 miles (16km). The first consisted of the infantry, then sixty tanks from 21st Panzer and thirty-nine Tigers; next a chain of fortified villages and then the artillery on a gun line including the Garcelles-Secqueville woods and the Bourguébus ridge, supported by Panzergrenadiers and Panther tanks from the 1st SS. The final zone comprised two kampfgruppen from the 12th SS.

The German defences were not as formidable as they appeared, in fact the best defensive weapons in the Main Line of Resistance (MLR) were just seventeen Pak 43s, the dedicated tank-killer version of the 8.8cm flak gun, belonging to Becker’s Panzerjäger Abteilung 200. Just eight 8.8cm flak guns from the division’s Flak Abteilung 305 supplemented these. Divisional artillery was a hotchpotch of captured French and Russian guns deployed on the reverse slopes of the Bourguébus ridge.

Werner Kortenhaus recalled Goodwood’s preliminary bombardment: ‘It was a bomb carpet, ploughing up the ground. Among the thunder of the explosions we could hear the wounded scream and the insane howling of men who had been driven mad’.

Panzer IVs of Panzer Regiment 22, along with Tiger tanks from Schwere Panzer Abteilung 503, were caught in the Allied saturation bombing near Château de Manneville, 16 miles (10km) east of Caen. The effects were devastating with tanks simply tossed upside down like they were toys. From a force of about fifty panzers over half were lost, many others suffered mechanical problems. At least three Tigers were caught.

Hans von Luck arrived from leave in Paris just in time to help rally the situation; ironically it had been Feuchtinger and Dietrich who had persuaded him to celebrate his birthday and visit his girlfriend. He returned just after 0900 to his kampfgruppe drawn from the battered 21st Panzer and the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division. Driving from his Frénouville HQ toward le Mesnil-Frémentel he saw that Cagny, off to his right, had been destroyed, but could not reach his men.

The bombardment had severed all communications and von Luck could not raise any of his units, so he rumbled off down the Vimont–Caen road in his Panzer IV:

I approached the village of Cagny which lay exactly in the middle of my sector and was not occupied by us. The eastern part as far as the church was undamaged; the western part had been flattened. When I came to the western edge of the village, I saw to my dismay about twenty-five to thirty British tanks, which had already passed southward over the main road to Caen… where my number I Abteilung ought to be, or had been, in combat positions. The whole area was dotted with British tanks, which were slowly rolling south against no opposition.

Discovering a dazed Luftwaffe captain with four 8.8cm flak guns by Cagny church, von Luck drew his pistol and forced him to redeploy them in a nearby apple orchard, where they claimed sixteen British tanks. General Wolfgang Pickert’s III Flak Corps had been placed under Panzergruppe West’s control upon the latter’s activation on 10 June; however, this did not mean that all of Pickert’s batteries were immediately released for frontline duty with the Panzergruppe. Although the 8.8cm flak gun also made an effective anti-tank weapon, it was normally against standing orders for flak artillery to be used in the ground fighting. In fact, as late as the end of August Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff OKW, repeated this directive.

The 16th Luftwaffe Field Division was incapable of withstanding the bombardment and enemy tanks, and in reality was little more than a sacrificial lamb. The 21st’s Panzergrenadier Regiment 192 was in danger of being overrun and I Abteilung Panzergrenadier Regiment 125 was cut off at le Mesnil-Frémentel; to the east, though, II Abteilung was holding on at Emiéville and Guillerville. Irritatingly the divisional reconnaissance and pioneer battalions were tied up at Bourguébus screening the anti-tank battalion.

The village of le Mesnil-Frémentel lay right in the middle of the British line of attack in this area. Major Becker’s five batteries from his assault gun battalion were deployed at Démouville, Giberville, Grentheville and the farms of le Mesnil-Frémentel and le Prieuré, supported by von Luck’s Panzergrenadiers.

On the eastern half of the battlefield they represented the Germans’ only mobile tactical reserve. These forces attempted to hold up the British advance, but those guns at Cuverville and Démouville were lost in the opening bombardment and the battery at Giberville withdrew northwest of Bras and, along with those at Grentheville, shelled British tanks to the east and west. The two batteries at the farms, lacking infantry protection, were also soon forced back by the relentless tide of tanks.

The assault gun battalion engaged the British 29th Brigade’s lead regiment, the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, destroying more than twenty Shermans before conducting a fighting withdrawal towards the 1st SS ‘stop line’ on Bourguébus ridge. By the end of the day most of Becker’s so-called assault guns were wrecks.

Just after 0930, determined to hold Cagny and the vital Bourguébus ridge, the Germans threw the 21st Panzer and Abteilung 503 at the Guards and 11th Armoured Divisions with orders to regain the Caen-Troarn road. The Panthers of the 1st SS also rolled down from Bourguébus ridge, driving back the British. In the process of trying to drive them back to Caen-Troarn, the two panzer divisions lost 109 tanks, while by the end of the first day the British had suffered 1,500 casualties and 200 tanks destroyed for the gain of just six miles (10km) beyond the Orne. However, the north-south line from Frénouville to Emiéville held and, with the commitment of the 1st SS, Goodwood came to a grinding halt over the next few days. The remnants of the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division were attached to 21st Panzer on 19 July.

The sector east of Troarn held by 21st Panzer was taken over by the 272nd Infantry Division in late July. The division was then transferred to the LXXIV Corps and the II Abteilung Panzer Regiment 22 was sent to Mailly-le-Camp and was still there in mid-August.

Final days

The division’s final days in Normandy were spent fighting alongside the 1st SS and 12th SS trying to prop open the northern shoulder of the Falaise pocket. In particular with the remaining elements of the 89th Infantry Division it struggled to hold back Major General R K Ross’ 53rd (Welsh) Division west of Falaise, before fleeing east. During August the division lost 3,000 men, giving a total loss of 8,000 for the entire campaign.