1/2/2024 0 Comments Modern british tank platoonAfter graduating from high school, the quiet, industrious boy worked on his father’s farm and served in the Reichsarbeitdienst (National Labor Corps) for the first six months of 1934. The son of farmer Johann Wittmann, Michael was born on Wednesday, April 22, 1914, at Vogelfal in the scenic Oberpfalz district in southeastern Germany. Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler: Hitler’s Elite Bodyguard A slim, boyishly handsome man, the 30-year-old Wittmann was already a legendary figure in the Wehrmacht. He was Obersturmführer (lieutenant) Michael Witt-mann, commander of the 2nd Company of the 101st Heavy Tank Battalion, one of the spearhead squadrons of Col. Erskine’s tanks managed to penetrate as far as the town of Villers-Bocage, 10 kilometers southwest of Caen, but were halted there in one of the most astonishing actions of World War II.Īlmost singlehandedly, one German soldier blocked the advance of the armored force and upset the British timetable by a month. “Bobby” Erskine’s 7th Armored Division, the famed Desert Rats, part of Brigadier Robert “Loony” Hinde’s 22nd Armored Brigade. Montgomery, the Allied forces’ ground commander and leader of the powerful British 21st Army Group, ordered a bold “right hook” to try and envelop Caen. Caen, a key communications and transportation center viewed as the “hinge” of the Normandy campaign, was fiercely defended and would remain in German hands for a critical month. The assault forces secured their bridgeheads and started pushing inland.īut they soon ran into concentrated resistance as the Germans swiftly drew the bulk of their panzer groups to the Bayeux-Caen-Falaise area, where the bocage country-a patchwork of small fields hemmed in by sunken roads, ditches, and thick embankments-strongly favored defense and hindered the Allied advance.Ī costly slugging match developed, and a series of frontal assaults by British and Canadian armored and infantry units produced heavy losses and little headway. 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions at Omaha Beach. The Allied landings on five Normandy beaches had gone well that fateful Tuesday morning, despite fierce initial German opposition on the British beaches and a bloody setback for the U.S. Sir Miles Dempsey’s British Second Army on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Straddling the River Orne nine miles from the English Channel coast, the French medieval city of Caen was the focal objective of Lt.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |