Crescendo Of Doom (26 page)

Oberst Maximilian von Herff was leading the 15th Division now, newly appointed by Rommel during their rebuilding phase at Mersa Brega. Now Herff realized that a strong enemy penetration was above and well behind his
Schwerpunkt
, and he knew his demonstration attack towards Bir el Gobi had run its course.

“Get the men ready for immediate withdrawal,” he said, “and notify Grossdeutschland. Ask them to hold their positions until we can get back.”

Herff did not have to plead his case. For Hörnlein had been forewarned by Rommel that trouble was coming, and his men were dug in deep. Yet now the enemy was behind him as well, and not south where the distant rumble of vehicles on the move was now suspected to be the deception it truly was.

Rommel’s plan had met its first great snag, an attack at a time and place that he had not anticipated, and just as the first elements of the Recon Battalion of the Hermann Goering Brigade had clawed their way towards the outskirts of Tobruk.

The men on that front were weary, having fought at Rommel’s bidding all through the night in an effort to break through the last stubborn British resistance. The land fell in three tiers, each broken by an escarpment, and the main German attack was still on the road that led down to the cemetery on the middle tier, just south of the port. Just as a gap was pushed through, and a few sections of German armored cars raced on towards the port, Rommel got word that a strong attack was being mounted along the fortified line near the original point of the breakthrough into the fortress. The Germans had cleared the pill boxes and block houses as far as R56, but now that strongpoint had fallen to a stealthy night attack by a fierce, yet elusive enemy.

“There’s some damn good infantry down there,” an officer reported. “They are pushing right along that fortified outer line. They move like shadows, but hit hard. They must have a good Schwere company attached, and a lot of machineguns.”

He was describing the assault of Colonel Gandar’s Royal Gurkhas, with each man a machine gunner in the eyes of the enemy, and hard hitting hand held AT rockets that could blast away any concerted German resistance in a targeted objective. The light infantry would move in rushes, deploy withering automatic weapons fire, smash enemy MG or gun positions, and then storm in, the long kukri knives flashing to cut down anything their guns and grenades had failed to kill. Some even took a souvenir or two, slicing off the ear of a fallen enemy. They were pushing towards point R53, and with only ten more strongpoints east of the main road, they were slowly shouldering the gate to the fortress shut.

Chapter 23

“Happer,
track left! Target at 600 yards!”

The big turret of tank five from 1st Sable pivoted quickly, and Happy had the vehicle in his optics. The crack of the 120mm gun jolted the tank as it fired, and Lt. Martin saw the enemy armored car blown to fragments with a direct hit.

They had been at it now for three hours. German doctrine when faced with an enemy breakthrough was to mount an immediate counterattack at the base of the
Schwerpunkt
, and the Recon Battalion of the 15th Panzers had come up to do exactly that. There they found that the speed of the enemy advance had left the area strangely quiet. The fighting was already rolling off to the north and west, and here was only one solitary enemy tank, apparently disabled during the advance—but what a tank it was!

Oberst Hans Karl von Esebeck had come on the scene while withdrawing with the rest of the division. The sight of the massive, solitary tank out in a low depression some 500 meters from the German lines was enough to make him stop and take notice. He soon had his field glasses up and was studying the tank closely, seeing that the division recon battalion was mustering here, and ready to destroy the behemoth. But that was a thing easier said than done.

He watched as the first troop of armored cars rolled up to engage with their short barreled guns. The SdKfz 222s had 2cm autocannons, and they opened up with a blistering volley of fire, but Esebeck saw that it had no effect whatsoever. It was as if the gunners were simply throwing sand at the enemy tank, which was not one of the new cruiser tanks they had encountered the day before, and certainly not a Matilda, as it was easily twice the size of that older British tank, and its hide was even thicker. This had to be one of those big new enemy tanks, and through his field glasses, he could clearly see that it had thrown a track.

Then he saw the huge flat turret rotate, the long barreled gun traversing to fire, and was aghast at the results. The first armored car was literally lifted off the ground, a shattered, smoldering wreck. The other four in that troop beat a hasty retreat, and he heard an officer bawling for AT gun support.

There wasn’t an 88 left standing on this segment of the field, but the infantry had a good 50mm gun, the best that they had available, and they managed to get it into position to fire. It got off three rounds, two glancing harmlessly off the heavy armor on the beast, and then the tank fired that evil main gun again and obliterated the position. Esebeck was very near, and was hit with shrapnel from that explosion, wounded and pulled back by a medic team. He looked at a gritty Sergeant who had come to check on him.

“My God! What a monster,” he said. “It’s no good using our AT guns on the damn thing. Try mortars, or artillery, or get it with infantry. Get in close and use grenades, or anything else you can get your hands on. Find a demolition team!”

And so it began, one of those little duels that history seldom records, yet one that would have a dramatic impact on how those events would play out in the future days, months, and years of the war.

The Germans deployed three squads from the Recon Battalion and the first tried to make an advance, but the ground was simply too open. The behemoth rotated that turret, and this time a machinegun fired, the EX-34 Coaxial 7.62mm chain gun, a deadly and reliable weapon against infantry attack. The advancing squad was quickly pinned down, three men dead and two wounded.

“Smoke!” called a Sergeant, and the Germans got a 50cm mortar into action, lobbing a series of smoke rounds to try and give the infantry some cover for another advance, yet it made no difference. The enemy tank fired again, with uncanny accuracy, sending withering bursts of MG fire at one squad, then rapidly rotating the turret to engage a second squad trying to flank it. Another MG, on top of the tank, was also moving as if guided by unseen hands, its barrel spitting out well aimed rounds, though they could see no gun operator. It was a remotely operated system, that could be fired by Jake Martin from his post inside the Challenger, safe within that heavy armored shell. In just ten minutes, the tank had eaten through the first platoon, sitting there, implacable, and undaunted.

Two more platoons came up, and the Germans thought to try again. This time the attack was bigger, with upwards of 50 men advancing, but they got a nasty surprise. Jake Martin’s number five tank had the remotely controlled 40mm autogrenade launcher mounted on the turret top as well, and it showered the advance with grenades, breaking the attack and leaving little more than a few brave squad sections for the coaxial MG.

Esebeck was shocked to learn that within half an hour, they had wasted a full company of infantry trying to get at the tank, and all to no avail. He ordered the battalion commander to stop his attack, and told him that, unless they could find a heavy caliber gun, there was no chance of storming the behemoth they had found at bay.

Inside tank five the crew had endured several 5cm round hits, the constant spray of MG fire and the crash of mortar fire falling close by, though the Germans had been unable to get a round directly on the tank. It would not matter if they did, as the small 50mm mortars they were using would do no more harm than any other weapon they had employed. Esebeck’s assessment had been correct. It was going to take a heavy round, of considerable caliber, to make any impression on the tank. He had men out looking for a 150mm infantry gun, or a stray artillery piece they might get into firing position, but there was always the threat from that massive main gun on the tank, as big as any heavy artillery Esebeck could find, and deadly accurate, even through the thick smoke the Germans had deployed.

This thing can see in the dark, he thought. It can find our men right through smoke. Nothing we use on it has even put a nick on the damn thing, and it has cut through this first recon company in half an hour. I could throw the whole goddamned battalion at the thing and it would be like water flowing over a rock, assuming we got men anywhere close to that beast alive. It’s a living, breathing fortress, and even with a broken leg, it just sits out there impervious to any weapon we possess.

He looked up at the smoky sky, taking a deep breath. Perhaps not every weapon, he thought. “Hauptmann Werner!”

“Sir!”

“Get on the radio. Where is that
Stuka
support we were promised? Tell them we have a nice fat target for them! It will take at least a 500 pound bomb to have any chance of killing that monster. Pull your men out, the division is withdrawing, and we go too.” He winced with the bite of that shrapnel wound, though it was not life threatening. Half an hour later they were moving northwest when they heard the drone of aircraft overhead.

A section of planes were up answering Esebeck’s call, and looking to find a target that had been marked by a single purple smoke round. Leutnant Hubert Pölz was in one of those planes, and he was feeling lucky that day.

Lieutenant Jake Martin had had enough tea for one morning, and there were entirely too many uninvited guests about. Where were the bloody Engineers? They had put in a call an hour ago, but the company assigned to the Highlanders had apparently moved on with the attack. They had been on the other side of the action, moving fast with the Warriors on that flank. By the time they realized a tank from 1st Sabre was no longer on the network, they were already ten kilometers to the northwest. So they put in a call to Brigade HQ to see if there was anything in the stables there. Kinlan had a small engineering detachment with his HQ park, and it was soon dispatched to look for tank five.

By the time it was drawing near, a squadron of six
Stukas
were overhead, led by Pölz, who had an elaborate hand-painted snake along the fuselage of his plane, stretching from the tail to the engine, where its mouth opened right near the nose mounted cannon, the white forked tongue licking up towards the prop. The
Stukas
saw the purple smoke marking their target, and the first subflight of three came in a steep dive. Three bombs fell, one wide, but two others in a straddle that rocked the tank, spilling what was left of Jake Martin’s last cup of tea.

“Bloody hell! That was damn close! We’re a nice fat sitting duck here. Better tell Brigade we’ll need air defense support, and that quickly.”

He thumbed the radio to call in for more support, but found the system dead. Shrapnel, shell and small arms fire, had worked the tank over hard that morning. They had been hit by 20mm rounds, a Pak 50 AT gun, MG fire, and fragments from near miss mortar fire, one round eventually coming right down on the tank’s turret, which sent a cheer through the ranks of the watching German infantry. It was quashed when the tank simply pivoted that massive turret and blasted a light flak battery to oblivion, completely unscathed.

But all that enemy fire had sheared away sensors, antennae, and the shock of those 500 pound bombs, even though they fell some 20 meters off the target, had damaged some of the internal electronics. Yet Martin and his beleaguered crew could be thankful that the Air Defense Company at Brigade HQ had seen the planes and, knowing they had a few vehicles out there stopped for recovery, they deployed forward with a tracked Alvis Stormer system. It mounted eight ready Starstreak missiles in the launcher, with another twelve stowed. It saw the incoming planes, but by the time they came within firing range, the first three had made an attack. The last three faced a gauntlet of well named high velocity missiles, the fastest short range system in the world. They accelerated quickly to Mach 3.5, scoring the sky with their contrails as they leapt up to get at the enemy planes.

Two of the three
Stukas
were hit in the middle of their attack dive by the three sub-munitions carried in each rocket. It was a lucky day for Pölz, and his aim was also very good that morning. He got his 500 pound bomb off, and then veered away in his screaming dive, with one missile streaking by, narrowly missing his plane. In fact, it was not after him. The system was not a fire and forget weapon that traced targets by radar or infrared. It relied on the aiming vehicle to use lasers for guidance, and could track only two simultaneous targets at one time. The wing mates in that subflight had been its prey. Pölz had not been painted by the aiming lasers that were guiding the missiles in, and he escaped in a low evasive maneuver, screaming over the last remnants of the German recon battalion, and sending the men cheering again when they saw the results of his attack. He had not scored a straddle or a near miss. It was a direct hit!

No matter how well protected the tank was, even a hit within a few meters by a 500 pound bomb was enough to cause serious damage. The modern US GBU-12 Paveway II bomb also had a 500 pound warhead and, during Operation Desert Storm, it was the tank busting weapon of choice, often used by F-111F bombers to savage Iraqi armor. Though the British Challenger II was better protected than the Soviet tanks faced in that battle, the fact remained that the explosive power, kinetic shock, and sheer concussive force of a 500 pound bomb striking a modern tank was going to read “kill” on the record of any pilot who had the skill to put it there.

Leutnant Hubert Pölz had done exactly that, and it was the last cup of tea that Jake Martin would savor that morning, the 10th of May, 1941, the day the first Challenger II died at the hands of enemy fire. The troops of I/33 Light Flak that were still in the area held their breath, halfway expecting the enemy behemoth to rotate that turret and belch fire and wrath at them again. For the last three hours it had held off the entire Recon Battalion, inflicting heavy casualties in the process. If just one of these new enemy tanks could do this, and this one with a slipped track and unable to maneuver, then what was happening to the northwest where the main enemy attack was still underway. They shuddered to think of that, wary as they crept just a little closer to the stricken enemy.