There was a catch: the Daredevils had no tanks. His staff could find only one available unit, the 740th Tank Battalion, codenamed “Daredevil.” The “Gizmos” of the 740th Tank Battalion However, to stop Peiper’s tanks Hodges needed armor of his own. Hodges pushed his reinforcements, the 30th Infantry and 82nd Airborne Divisions, into blocking positions along the Ambleve Valley. Crashing through Ligneuville, Stavelot, and La Gleize, the enemy column was, by midday on December 18, only 12 road miles from First Army headquarters, located in the resort town of Spa, Belgium. Hodges’s staff sent out tiny, unarmed Piper Cub spotter planes to track the progress of Kampfgruppe Peiper as it headed west along the Ambleve River Valley. Peiper’s spearhead was stopped in its drive for the River Meuse by determined resistance from the 740th Tank Battalion at Stoumont, Belgium.įirst Army needed accurate information to find and then halt the German advance. German soldiers of SS Kampfgruppe Peiper pause beside a road sign pointing toward the village of Malmedy during the opening hours of Hitler’s desperate Ardennes offensive. Even antiaircraft crews got into the fight, firing their 90mm guns over direct sights. Small groups of combat engineers, antitank gunners, and infantry bought vital hours when they blew bridges and set roadblocks across Peiper’s path, hindering his advance. Ike agreed, and within hours the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were on their way from camps in France to the Ardennes.īut getting these reinforcements into position would take time, a precious commodity. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, for release of the Theater Reserve. Hodges then appealed to General Dwight D. He first contacted the Ninth Army, which promised the 30th Division then refitting near Aachen. Codename “Daredevil”Įven as Kampfgruppe Peiper rampaged westward toward Liege, Hodges looked for help to defeat it. There, on December 17, some 80 American soldiers were ruthlessly gunned down after surrendering to Peiper’s troops. Jochen Peiper, this powerful force was headed for the crossroads city of Liege, first stop toward its ultimate objective of Antwerp and the Belgian coast.Īmid reports of mass surrenders on the front lines and English-speaking German commandos terrorizing the First Army rear area, Hodges’s staff began hearing rumors of a massacre involving Kampfgruppe Peiper at Baugnez, near Malmedy. This was Kampfgruppe Peiper, the spearhead of the German 1st SS Panzer Division. One marauding enemy column particularly worried General Hodges. While some frontline units stubbornly held their ground, others simply disappeared-annihilated by the Nazi juggernaut. All across the Ardennes Forest, American forces were reeling from a surprise German counterattack that struck on the morning of December 16, 1944. First Army, looked up from his maps and saw chaos everywhere. No trainer had been considered necessary in the early days of the Ju 87 series, but by 1943 the art of surviving in the type had become so specialized and important on the Eastern Front that even experienced bomber and fighter pilots had to go out with a Ju 87 instructor before taking their places in the decimated ranks of the ‘Stukagruppen’.Lieutenant General Courtney M. #Tank buster ww2 seriesThe removal of dive-bombing equipment made the G-1 most unrepresentative among Stuka variants.Īnother variant produced by converting aircraft of the Ju 87D series was the Ju 87H dual-control trainer. The Ju 87G-1 could carry bombs instead of guns, but had no dive-breakes. It was he who, despite being shot down 30 times, flew 2,530 combat missions and continued to lead Stuka formations in daylight long after other Stuka groups had replaced their vulnerable aircraft with the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 F. Fed by clips of six rounds, the BK 3.7 had a muzzle velocity with armor-piercing ammunition exceeding 850 m (2,790 ft) per second, and the greatest exponent of the Ju 87G-1, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, was ultimately credited with the personal destruction of 519 Russian armored vehicles. #Tank buster ww2 trialIn June 1942 a trial installation was tested in a converted Ju 87D-5 and found more effective than the many other Luftwaffe anti-tank aircraft such as the Henschel Hs 129 and Junkers Ju 88P. This 37-mm-gun was a formidable weapon weighting over 363 kg (800 lb) and in wide service as ground-based Flak (anti-aircraft artillery) equipment. The Ju 87G was a specialized anti-tank version, fitted with two BK 3.7 ( Flak 18) guns hung under the wings just outboard of the landing gears.
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