ISBN 1-932033-26-2
xii + 339 pages

Preface; maps; photos; Glossary; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Appendices: Tank Destroyer Battalions by Campaign; Battalion Profiles

   Harry Yeide has recently done for American tank destroyer battalions what he did for American tank battalions in his previous book. "While researching Steel Victory..." he writes, "I frequently encountered this other presence: A doctrinal division between the tank and tank destroyer forces...." That "other presence," the TDs, forms the topic of The Tank Killers.
   The author tackles the subject from several directions. At the end of the book, a useful appendix gives thumbnail profiles of every TD battalion with key dates, combat narrative, equipment and re-equipment, divisional attachments, etc in a manner which will be much appreciated by fans of unit histories. A relatively small proportion of the book, scattered throughout the pages, covers the armored fighting vehicles themselves: the M3, the M6, the M10, the M36, and so on. A larger share of the book discusses the evolution of tank destroyer doctrine: the impetus behind creation of the arm and the changing theories of how it would participate in action on the battlefield. An even larger chunk of the book chronicles the actual employment of TD battalions in combat: what they encountered in action, how they responded in the heat of battle, and how individual crews and soldiers fought their war. Because those three topics—AFVs, doctrine, and battle scenes—are framed by the entire course of American action in North Africa, Italy, and western Europe, Yeide also sketches the outlines of Allied planning and strategy and keeps the reader aware of the larger picture while focusing on the part played by the tank destroyers. While it's probably impossible to produce a book of this nature without at least some of that kind of framing information about strategy, those pages represent the weakest portion of the book and will probably induce most readers to skip over paragraphs repeating the umpteenth iteration of how "Operation Torch was a hurriedly organized affair."
   That sort of perfunctory background aside, Yeide has covered his bases well enough and provided at least a little worthwhile something for everyone.
   The account begins in strong fashion with what some readers might consider the best chapter in the book. Yeide writes succinct, informative, thoughtful pages about how and why the Tank Destroyer Force was created, the obstacles encountered, and how it was planned to employ the battalions in combat. Essentially, tank destroyers were supposed to carry anti-tank weapons potent enough to defeat the panzers while retaining sufficient mobility to move rapidly—faster than tanks—and quickly concentrate to launch massed counterattacks against the flanks of panzer breakthroughs. TD crews were also trained in "commando" tactics, so that if their vehicles were knocked out they would in theory transform into foot-mobile tank hunters armed with sticky bombs and Molotov cocktails. Despite all the theory and training, changing circumstances meant that the battalions sent into action near the end of 1942 would prove to be imperfect instruments for waging the war they would face in Northwest Africa.

   Captain G. V. Nicholls, a British tank officer and combat veteran who visited the 2d Armored Division before Torch, noted a supreme overconfidence among American troops of all ranks—an observation that he probably could have offered regarding the men of the 601st and 701st Tank Destroyer battalions, as well. The Americans, he recorded, believed that continuous maneuvers had made them ready for active service and that their individual training was up to British and German standards. "In this opinion they were entirely wrong," he concluded.
   Indeed, American confidence was high. The old warhorse Lesley McNair was one of the few to sound a cautious note. Responding after the Carolina maneuvers to the oft-asked question from reporters as to the battle readiness of the troops, McNair said, "It is my judgment that, given complete equipment, they certainly could fight effectively. But it is to be added with emphasis that the losses would be unduly heavy, and the results of action against an adversary such as the Germans might not be all that could be desired."
   Fortunately, the first foe was not German.

   In Chapter Two, Yeide leads readers through the campaign in Northwest Africa from the Allied landings through the first battles in Tunisia, all through the eyes of the tank destroyers. In this campaign relatively few American TD battalions participated (notably the 601st and 701st), so the author manages in the span of about thirty pages to provide a very detailed look at how the destroyers fared. Despite doctrine, in practice the battalions were immediately broken apart to operate as separate company-sized (sometimes platoon-sized) units, they rushed from one critical sector to another, and they were constantly attached and reattached to bolster local defenses. Thus, the bulk of the chapter describes those tactical operations at company and platoon level. Indeed, Yeide often writes about individual vehicles, crews, and soldiers. In this chapter in particular, the emphasis on such low-level material is invigorating, and the pages will certainly hold the attention of readers who want to know how the TDs fought their battles. At the same time, however, we begin to see the first signs of a growing dichotomy in Yeide's work. While much of the operational material seems designed to complement important points about the ongoing development of doctrine and AFV design, some seems to be included just for generally illustrative purposes or else strictly as humorous vignettes of American fighting men in action. That's not quite as noticeable in this chapter, but it becomes much more so in later ones. Some readers are going to greatly enjoy that material—it will probably be the highlight of the book for some people—while others might interpret so much anecdotal matter as a diversion from the business at hand.
   Here's a typical portion of the descriptive material from the first North Africa chapter:

   As they had been taught, Capt Frank Redding's crews displayed a boldly aggressive spirit and engaged the far more numerous German tanks. Redding sent his six available M3s toward the German armor and arrayed his M6s to cover his rear. The TDs remained on the road surface to avoid sinking in the muck, so to avoid bunching up, Redding sent three TDs down a side route toward Ksar Tyr.
   The three crews still on the main highway soon had their hands full. A concealed 47mm gun opened fire from a patch of trees to the south of the road but missed. Staff Sergeant Matthew Dixon maneuvered his M3 into position, and his 75mm barked back. Immediately, the enemy gun and its ammunition caught fire.
   Through the smoke, five or six Mark III and Mark IV tanks emerged at point-blank range. The thin armor on an M3 had no chance whatsoever of stopping a shell from the main gun on either panzer model. Staff Sergeant Louis Romani turned his halftrack toward the threat. His gunner, Pfc Herman Lenzini, fired, but the round went high. Lenzini hurriedly adjusted as German shells whistled by, and he began firing as fast as his cannoneer could load. Lenzini's next four shots killed four Mark III tanks. The third M3 advanced to engage the remaining German tank or tanks, which had withdrawn under the murderous fire. A hidden armored car stitched the M3 with machine-gun fire, which killed the commander and two crewmen.
   A new threat emerged as a column of Mark IV tanks appeared at a bend in the road about a thousand yards distant. One of the remaining two guns drove the Germans back with hits on two of the lead tanks, while the crew of the second TD rounded up thirteen German prisoners. One gun of the second platoon on the nearby path was able to get into position to fire on the German column from the flank. It disabled three Mark III or IV tanks. Meanwhile, the light gun platoon drove off a probe to the company's rear by two armored cars and one light tank.
   During the entire action, Redding had to run from TD to TD to issue orders, the radios having been rendered useless by days of rain and little maintenance and Redding's jeep having been sent to the rear on a supply mission.
   German tanks had by now spotted the mired American light tanks and methodically shot them to pieces. The fire from the tank destroyers allowed many of the crews to dash to safety.

   On the other hand, Yeide closes his chapter with a page evaluating how tank destroyer doctrine had already begun to evolve. That entire page is worth quoting here, partly for its content and partly to compare with the kinds of tactical descriptions that make up most of the chapter:

   By January 1943, a few tentative conclusions regarding the tank destroyers suggested themselves.
   On the plus side, the idea of light, fast, hard-hitting tank destroyers worked, at least under certain circumstances. The Tunisian Task Force would have had no mobile antitank capability when it first encountered Axis armor had it not been for the ability of the TDs to cover long distances at high speeds beyond the capabilities of tanks. Moreover, as of January, the cheap and easily produced tank destroyers were well ahead of the enemy tanks in terms of their kill/loss ratio in combat. Later critics would seemingly forget this stage of the campaign. The tank destroyer had also demonstrated its potential utility as highly mobile field artillery.
   On the negative side, the tank destroyer battalions had never been able to operate according to key prescriptions in the force's doctrine. The companies were dispersed and generally at the front line, not held back ready to deal with armored penetrations. The TDs' obvious tactical utility despite this fact suggested that the doctrine was, at least, incomplete. Fortunately, TD, infantry, and armor officers in the field were working out practical solutions as they went. Of course, some were better than others.
   The Germans, moreover, did not usually behave as the doctrine assumed they would. U.S. Army observers noted that typically, small groups of German tanks preceded attacking infantry. Well-concealed high-velocity 88mm guns were placed to provide a defensive base of fire if necessary in practically every tank movement. Indeed, German tanks often towed the 88s into position. The German gunners often waited to fire until American tanks passed them in pursuit of the German tanks, catching the Americans from the rear. German air-ground cooperation was excellent, and artillery fire was adjusted accurately. When the Germans had not acted thusly—as during the armored probe at Medjez el Bab on 10 December 1942—the tank destroyers had proved lethal in a scenario that at least approximated some aspects of doctrine.
   Finally, combat experience had demonstrated that the M6 was not effective as a tank destroyer. Troops complained that its rounds bounced off German tanks. In addition, the silhouette was too high, and there was insufficient space in the vehicle for the crew to properly serve the weapon. The ineffectiveness of the 37mm gun, which was the infantry's standard-issue antitank weapon, presaged continual pressure from line units to parcel out TD battalions in order to provide the GI at the front with adequate protection against tank attack.

   Chapter Three concludes the campaign in Northwest Africa with more descriptions of TD units in action and more vignettes of GIs in combat, then finishes with approximately four pages in which Yeide explains how the lessons were digested, new ideas conceived, and the latest theories implemented. Again, some readers will greatly enjoy the excerpts of TDs in action, while others will prefer the shorter but more analytical section which explains, for example, "the field commanders' lack of training in and experience with the use of [TD battalions] in combat," the "confusion among the tank killers themselves over how to implement the offense-minded doctrine they had been taught," and the "frequent mismatch between the flat, cover-less terrain and the tall vehicles issued to the battalions." Yeide goes on to discuss the orders to reduce the number of TD battalions and the decision to re-equip many of the remaining units with three-inch towed guns rather than continuing with the original vision of tank destroyers as highly mobile, self-propelled anti-tank platforms capable of moving rapidly and concentrating at the point where enemy tanks were massed in the attack. In a sense, this was in microcosm the old story of armed forces preparing to fight the previous war. In this case, the Tank Destroyer Force was planning to re-fight the campaign just concluded, when in fact conditions in the coming campaigns—Italy and France—would prove vastly different.
   The author follows the same pattern throughout ensuing chapters. In the two chapters on Italy, for example, the description and Yeide's analysis both make it clear that TD doctrine needed to evolve yet again. Where the battlefields in Northwest Africa were for the most part bare and open terrain—making it almost impossible to hide the half-track mounted anti-tank guns—the situation in Italy, especially given the amount of cover and concealment available, meant that self-propelled weapons were usually perfectly suitable. On the other hand, the nature of the fighting in the boot meant that all the TD battalions were often reduced to providing indirect fire support for operations as though they were simply artillery outfits.
   Chapter Six takes the story into Normandy, where once again the tank killers discovered themselves in situations far removed from what doctrine had envisioned. Most American tank destroyers found relatively few panzers to fire at, but spent a large amount of time serving as assault guns while parceled out to rifle units in the bocage. The nature of operations in the bocage also meant those battalions which had been re-equipped with towed guns—thanks to experience in African conditions—were simply not as useful in most situations. As usual, the bulk of the chapter is devoted to describing operations and providing short vignettes, while the concluding pages offer a more analytical approach to the proceedings. The next four chapters continue in the same vein through the Allied breakout from Normandy, the race to the West Wall, the Bulge, and the final battles in Germany. Although war stories dominate, along the way Yeide revisits the problem with towed AT guns ("the towed battalions did almost no tank killing and expended most of their ammunition in indirect fire"), inability of TDs to knock out Tigers and Panthers beyond pointblank range, re-equipping with new models of tank destroyers and improved armor-piercing rounds, the need for coaxial machineguns and consequent field expedients, integration of TDs and tanks in combined-arms teams, and more.
   The book ends rather abruptly without offering much in the way of final analysis or thoughtful conclusions about the saga of the TDs. Yeide writes a few paragraphs of statistics concerning which battalion destroyed the most enemy vehicles, some brief comments about kill/loss ratios, and numbers of casualties in the tank destroyer units; in all cases, unfortunately, those numbers are presented in a vacuum, without comparable data for other American arms or for enemy forces. In terms of final conclusions, the books wraps up like this:

   But tanks had done well, too. Patton noted in a 19 March 1945 letter that tanks had destroyed the majority of the 2,287 panzers his men had knocked out after becoming operational on 1 August 1944. Moreover, the line between the tank and the destroyer in combat had become so blurry as to be nearly impossible to see. Patton had been right when he predicted the TD would become just another tank.
   The ETO's General Board studying tank destroyers concluded that the trend toward tanks with the same fire power and mobility as the TDs, and the incorporation of adequate antitank defenses in the infantry divisions, rendered the tank destroyer superfluous. The board recommended that the Tank Destroyer Force be dissolved.
   And so it was done.

   That lack of analysis, conclusions, and summary might prove disappointing to anyone hoping Yeide's book will transcend the recitation of battlefield action and soldierly snippets. Despite a strong opening and some thoughtful material along the way—usually tacked to the end of chapters—the book relies more and more on descriptions of combat as the Allies advance across France and into Germany. A TD man on patrol hears German voices coming from a culvert. One vehicle reports it is so close to the front line that the barrel of its gun projects into enemy territory. When asked by an officer why he doesn't "get" a nearby enemy tank, a GI replies "I don't want it." Upon witnessing one M10 sliding backwards down a steep, ice-covered hillside at a high rate of speed, a captain asks in surprise, "What's their hurry?" A patrol goes out on foot to bring back some German prisoners and runs into a firefight. Three holes where machinegun fire ricocheted off his helmet make it impossible, so the joke goes, for a company commander to take a bath while he's in the front line. While some of these anecdotes flow naturally from the examples of TD combat, considerable chunks of text seem to be included strictly for entertainment value, or perhaps nostalgia. Of course, tank destroyer veterans and their families will—rightly—enjoy reading about men they knew and men who shared the same kind of war. Likewise, anyone approaching the book for shoot-em-up action and a glimpse of TD crews at war will be fully satisfied. On the other hand, readers hoping for more analysis might question some of the stories and numbers of enemy AFVs KO'd in particular situations as anecdotal evidence uncorroborated by other sources. In that regard, Yeide doesn't provide much information about the enemy side of the battlefield, and most German forces tend to be faceless and nameless, with their intentions, composition, strength, and losses painted exactly as the TDs reported in the heat of battle.
   In sum, different readers will see this book with different eyes. We would have preferred more hard data, more corroboration of after action reports, more comparison between the TD perspective of individual engagements and the enemy point of view, and more overall evaluation of tank destroyers as vehicles and military units as opposed to stories of soldiers at war. (See, for example, Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II by Christopher Wilbeck.) However, it's likely that most readers will be thoroughly pleased with the balance of material Yeide has chosen to include, and The Tank Killers is certain to be a popular item. Overall, for our taste we can rate this as a successful, interesting book—and definitely the best coverage of tank destroyers currently on the market—but not quite attaining the level of an enthusiastic, two thumbs up, top notch recommendation as we had hoped.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Casemate.
   Thanks to Casemate for providing this review copy.