At 9:40 in the morning on July 25, 1944, General Lotant Fritz Boline stood in a field headquarters 2 mi south of the Saint Low to Perry’s road in Normandy, watching the sky fill with American bombers. The summer air was warm. The morning had dawned clear after days of rain and overcast that had delayed the attack everyone knew was coming.
French farmland stretched around him, divided by the ancient hedge that had made this campaign a grinding nightmare for both sides. Somewhere to the north, American infantry waited in their foxholes for the signal to advance. Baleine was 45 years old. He had commanded the Panza division for 6 months.
Before that, he had served as Irwin Raml’s chief of staff in North Africa, standing beside the desert fox through the victories at Gazala and Tobuk and the defeat at Lalamagne. He had commanded the third Panza division on the Eastern front, breaking out of Soviet encirclement at Kirovagrad against Hitler’s explicit orders.
He had faced British tanks at Elammagne, American infantry in Tunisia, Soviet T34s at Kursk. In 27 years of military service, Fritz Boline had witnessed every form of combat the 20th century could produce. He had survived desert warfare, Arctic cold, artillery barges, and air attacks. He carried wounds from multiple campaigns. He wore the knight’s cross with oak leaves and swords, one of Germany’s highest decorations for valor.
But Fritz Boline had never seen anything like what was coming toward him now. 1500 heavy bombers, B17 flying fortresses, and B24 Liberators stretching from horizon to horizon. Behind them, another thousand medium bombers and fighter bombers. Nearly 3,000 aircraft in total carrying over 4,000 tons of high explosives and napal.
All of it aimed at a rectangle of Norman countryside, 6 km long and 2 km wide. Boline’s division was sitting directly in the center of that rectangle. What happened over the next 96 hours would transform the most elite armored formation in the German Vermacht from a feared fighting force into scattered wreckage. It would kill or wound over 70% of the men under Baaline’s command.
It would mark the moment when Germany lost control of France forever and it would begin with bombs falling like rain from a clear summer sky. The Pansa division should never have existed as a combat unit. The word leer means teaching in German. The division had been formed in late December 1943 from instructors and demonstration troops at Germany’s premier tank training schools.
These were not ordinary soldiers. They were the men who taught other men how to fight in armored vehicles. They knew every system on a Panther tank. They could diagnose engine problems by sound alone. They understood tactical doctrine at a level that came only from explaining it to hundreds of students over years of instruction.
The idea to create this division came from a desperate need. By late 1943, Germany had lost catastrophically at Stalingrad, failed at Kursk, and was being pushed back across the eastern front. Allied bombing was devastating German industry. The anticipated invasion of Western Europe would require every available armored formation.
Adolf Hitler issued Fura directive number 51 just before Christmas 1943, ordering the creation of new Panza divisions to meet the expected Allied assault. General Obus Hines Gudderion, the architect of German armored warfare and inspector general of armored troops, had personally overseen the division’s creation.
At a meeting on January 26, 1944 at his headquarters, Gudderion told Baine that this new formation would be different from anything the Veyt had fielded before. It would serve as a model for future Panza divisions, a demonstration of what German armored forces could achieve with the best equipment and the best trained men.
It would be lavishly equipped to levels that standard divisions could only dream about, and it would be commanded by Baaline because of his unique experience fighting the British and Americans in the desert, where he had learned firsthand how the Western Allies made war. The division that assembled in the Nancy Verdun area of northeastern France that winter was extraordinary by any measure.
Unlike standard Panza divisions where most infantry rode in unarmored trucks vulnerable to every shell splinter and machine gun burst, every single Panza Grenadier in Panza traveled in armored halftracks. The division possessed 674 of these vehicles, more than twice the number in any other formation. This meant the infantry could keep pace with the tanks, could fight from their vehicles, could advance under fire that would have stopped truckborne troops dead. The armor was equally impressive.
The division possessed over 200 tanks and assault guns on June 6th, 1944. This included 97 Panzer 4 tanks, workh horses that had served Germany since the invasion of Poland. It included 86 of the new Panther medium tanks, 45tonon monsters with their deadly 75 mm high velocity guns capable of destroying anyAllied tank at ranges exceeding 1,000 m.
The gun on a Panther could penetrate the armor on a Sherman tank from over 2 km away. At normal combat ranges, American tankers had almost no chance. The division also received elements of the 316th remote control Panza company along with Jaged Panza 4 tank destroyers in its anti-tank battalion. The reconnaissance battalion had a company of the brand new SDKFZ 234 Pummer armored cars, eight wheeled vehicles with 50 mm guns that could outrun anything the Allies had and outfight most of their light vehicles. Even the
artillery was fully motorized and armored, capable of keeping pace with the tanks and providing immediate fire support. But the equipment was only part of what made Panza exceptional. The men themselves were veterans with experience that could not be replicated. 60% had fought on the Eastern Front against the Soviets or in North Africa against the British and Americans.
Many had earned their decorations in the desperate fighting at Stalingrad, Kursk or Tunisia. They had survived the destruction of entire divisions and been selected specifically for their ability to teach what they had learned. Most had served as tank instructors at the Panza Tupinul, the Panza Troop School, at Woundsdorf or other training facilities across Germany.
This meant they understood armored warfare at a level few combat soldiers ever achieved. They could explain the theory behind flanking maneuvers. They knew why certain terrain favored the attacker or defender. They had spent years breaking down complex tactical situations into lessons that green recruits could understand and apply.
These men wore a distinctive uniform. Instead of the standard German army field blouse, Panzer’s Panza grenaders wore a short double- breasted jacket similar to those worn by assault gun crews. It was a small thing, but it set them apart. They were not ordinary soldiers. They were the teachers, the demonstration troops, the model for what German armored infantry should become.
The average age in the division was just 21 and a half years. Young enough to be aggressive, to take risks, to charge forward when veterans might hesitate, but experienced enough to know when aggression became foolishness. It was a rare combination produced by careful selection from training units across the veh.
By June 1944, when the division completed its formation and training, it numbered 14,634 officers and men. It was the strongest armored division in the German order of battle. Field marshal Irwin Raml called it the finest Panza division in the West. The great weakness, as some German officers noted quietly, was that it concentrated the cream of Germany’s tank commanders and instructors in a single unit.
If Panzer was destroyed, Germany would lose not just a division but an entire generation of armored warfare expertise. When Allied forces stormed ashore at Normandy on June 6th, 1944, Panzair was positioned near Chartra about 150 km from the beaches. As part of the strategic armored reserve under Panza Group West, the division could only be released with Adolf Hitler’s personal authorization.
This requirement existed because Hitler feared the Normandy landing was a faint, a diversion to draw German forces away from the real invasion site at Pardacle. That authorization did not come on D-Day. Hitler slept late that morning, and his staff was reluctant to wake him with news they were not certain about. When he finally awoke and learned of the landings, he still believed it was a trick.
The 15th Army with its Panza reserves must remain at Pard to meet the main assault that was surely coming. Hour after hour passed while German armor sat in its assembly areas waiting for orders that did not come. By the time the release order finally arrived on June 7th, precious hours had been lost. The Allies had established beach heads. They were pushing inland.
Every minute of delay allowed them to bring more men and equipment ashore. Baline received instructions to move his division to the invasion front immediately and attack the allied positions. The march to Normandy became a nightmare that veterans of Panza would never forget. Allied aircraft ruled the skies.
The Luftvafa stretched thin across multiple fronts could provide almost no cover. Typhoon fighter bombers from the Royal Air Force and P47 Thunderbolts from the United States Army Air Force prowled the roads of France, attacking anything that moved during daylight hours. Bine tried moving at night, but even this was not safe. The roads were clogged with other units also trying to reach the front.
Villages created bottlenecks where vehicles bunched up and Allied night fighters guided by radar and flares could still find targets in the darkness. Baine later reported losing 84 halftracks, 90 trucks, and five tanks before his division even reached the front lines. Some vehicles burned where they stopped, hit by rockets or machine gun fire fromdiving aircraft.
Others were abandoned in ditches, their fuel tanks punctured, their crews killed or scattered into the fields. The division that was supposed to throw the Allies back into the sea lost a significant portion of its transport simply trying to reach the battle. The division reached the front lines on June 8th and was immediately committed to battle against British forces near Kong.
There was no time for rest, no time for reconnaissance, no time to develop a coordinated attack plan. Allied pressure was too great. Panzaair was thrown into the line to plug a gap that threatened to rupture the entire German position. For the next seven weeks, the division fought without meaningful rest or reinforcement. The terrain was the Norman Boage, a landscape unlike anything most of the veterans had experienced.
Small fields, some no larger than a tennis court, were surrounded by ancient hedge that had grown for centuries. These were not ordinary hedges. They were dense masses of vegetation growing at top earthen banks several feet high, their roots intertwined, their branches forming impenetrable walls. The thick vegetation made it almost impossible for tanks to maneuver off road.
A panther that tried to crash through a hedger row would rear up, exposing its thin belly armor to enemy fire. Most tanks had to use the gaps where gates had been cut through the hedge. But these gaps were obvious choke points where the enemy would be waiting. Every hedge could hide an anti-tank gun. Every sunken lane could conceal infantry with bazookas, or the British equivalent, the PAT anti-tank weapon.
A tank commander scanning the terrain ahead might see nothing but peaceful farmland. The hidden gun that killed him would fire from less than 50 m away. The fighting was intimate and brutal. Engagements happened at ranges measured in yards, not kilome. The long range gunnery skills that made German tankers so deadly on the open steps of Russia were almost useless here.
What mattered was reaction time, the ability to spot the enemy a fraction of a second before he spotted you. What mattered was luck. On June 13th, the British 7th armored division, the famous Desert Rats, attempted to outflank Panzer’s positions around Tilly. The British seized the village of Villa’s Bokage and threatened to cut off the entire division.
What followed was one of the most famous tank engagements of the war. SS Obustom Furer Michael Wittman commanding a Tiger tank from the 101st SS Heavy Panza Battalion attached to support Panza layer ambushed the British column. In 15 minutes, Wittman’s Tiger destroyed 13 to 14 tanks and numerous other vehicles.
The British withdrew, but even victories cost Panza. The fighting around Tillis grounded on for weeks. By the end of June, the division had suffered nearly 3,000 casualties. It had lost 51 tanks and assault guns, 82 halftracks, and almost 300 other vehicles. The elite formation that had entered combat 3 weeks earlier was already badly diminished.
On July 7th, Boline received orders to pull out of the British sector and move west to face the Americans near Saint Low. The bokeage around St. low was even worse than what they had left behind. The Americans were pushing hard and Panzaair was needed to plug holes in the line. On July 10th, Bayine launched a counterattack against American positions near the village of Le Desert.
It was a disaster. American M10 tank destroyers and fighter bombers caught the attacking force in the open. 30 tanks were destroyed in a single day. The survivors withdrew across the Via Canal with the Americans in pursuit. For the next two weeks, Panzer fought a desperate defensive battle. Every day brought more casualties, more destroyed vehicles, more ground lost. On July 19th, St.
Low finally fell to the Americans after savage fighting that cost them 5,000 men. Baline knew what was coming next. The Americans would try to break out. What he did not know was the scale of what Lieutenant General Omar Bradley was planning. Bradley had spent weeks developing a plan to break the stalemate in Normandy.
By mid July, the Allied position was becoming dangerous. Over 1 million men had come ashore since D-Day, but they remained wedged in a bridge head roughly 50 mi wide and 20 m deep. Casualties on both sides exceeded 100,000. The dense bokeage favored the defenders. Every advance cost blood out of proportion to the ground gained.
Some American officers were privately comparing the situation to the trenches of World War I. The British and Canadians had tried repeatedly to break through around Khn. Operation Epsom at the end of June had gained some ground but failed to achieve a breakthrough. Operation Goodwood on July 18th had thrown three armored divisions against the German lines south of K.
They lost over 400 tanks in 3 days. The Germans bent but did not break. The strategy Bradley developed was simple but audacious. Concentrate overwhelming force at a single point instead ofattacking on a broad front. Use massive aerial bombardment to destroy the defenders before the ground assault began.
Then push armored columns through the gap before the Germans could react. Speed and violence would substitute for the grinding attritional combat that had characterized the campaign so far. The plan was cenamed Operation Cobra. It would be the most concentrated application of air power in support of ground forces that the war had yet seen. Major General J.
Lorton Collins, commander of the Seventh Corps, would lead the main assault. Collins was known as Lightning Joe for his aggressive tactics in the Pacific where he had commanded the 25th Infantry Division on Guadal Canal and New Georgia. He was 48 years old, young for a core commander, but his performance in capturing Sherborg had demonstrated exactly the kind of relentless drive that Cobra would require.
Bradley chose him specifically because Cobra required a commander who would push forward regardless of obstacles, exploiting any opportunity before the Germans could recover. The target zone was a rectangle of Bokeage straddling the Saint Low to Perier road. This was the sector held by Panza. Bradley did not choose this location by accident.
He knew destroying Panzaair would remove one of only two Panza divisions facing the American front. Without armored reserves, the German line would have nothing to stop a breakthrough. The aerial bombardment would be unlike anything attempted before in support of ground operations. Bradley flew to England personally to request the support of heavy bombers.
He wanted bomb craters every 16 ft across the target zone. He wanted the German defenders obliterated. Poor weather delayed the operation repeatedly. Rain and low clouds over Normandy made precision bombing impossible. Bradley needed clear skies so the bombers could see their targets and avoid hitting American troops positioned just north of the target zone.
Day after day, meteorologists reported unfavorable conditions. Day after day, the attack was postponed. Finally, on July 24th, conditions seemed favorable enough to launch. 1,600 aircraft took off from bases across England. Heavy bombers climbed to altitude over the English Channel. Fighter bombers armed with rockets and napal headed for the Normandy coast.
The largest coordinated airground operation of the war was underway. But as the bombers approached Normandy, clouds rolled in over the target. Visibility dropped. The precise bombing that Bradley needed became impossible. The mission was aborted. Stop orders went out by radio to every aircraft, except not all the aircraft received the recall order.
Some bombers had already released their payloads when the cancellation came through. Their bombarders had identified what they believed were valid targets and toggled their bombs away before the abort signal reached them. Others could not hear the radio calls through atmospheric interference. Still, others had equipment failures that prevented them from receiving communications.
Bombs fell on American positions. The 30th Infantry Division, waiting in foxholes just north of the target zone, was hit. 25 soldiers were killed. 131 more were wounded. Men were buried alive in their fighting positions. Others were torn apart by blast and fragments. The attack had not even begun, and Americans were already dying from their own weapons.
Bradley was furious. He had specifically requested that the bombers approach from the east parallel to the Sunlow to Perz road precisely to minimize the risk of bombs falling on American lines. Instead, the aircraft had come from the north perpendicular to the road. Every bomb that fell short landed on American troops.
What Bradley did not fully understand was that the Air Force considered a parallel approach impractical. The time required to bring thousands of aircraft around to an eastern approach would have stretched the bombardment over too many hours. The perpendicular approach allowed a more concentrated attack. In the minds of the air commanders, efficiency justified the additional risk, but Bradley had no choice.
The Germans now knew a major attack was coming. The element of surprise was compromised. Either Cobra proceeded the following day or it would have to be postponed again, giving the Germans time to reinforce. Bradley ordered the attack to continue on July 25th. Fritz Baline spent the night of July 24th at his headquarters near the village of Canacey.
He knew an American attack was imminent. German intelligence had intercepted radio traffic, indicating a major offensive was being prepared, but the exact timing and location remained unclear. at his disposal. Boline had roughly 3,200 combat troops in the path of the expected attack. The division had been ground down to a fraction of its original strength.
He had approximately 45 operational tanks and assault guns, a mix of Panthers, Panzer 4s, and various assault vehicles. Many were in poormechanical condition after weeks of constant combat. The morning of July 25th dawned warm and sunny. American troops along the front had pulled back the previous night, withdrawing about 1,000 meters from the Saint Low to Perier’s road.
This should have been a warning sign. Infantry does not voluntarily give up ground unless something significant is planned. At 9:38, the first wave appeared. 600 Allied fighter bombers swept in low over the German positions, attacking strong points and artillery positions along a 300 m wide strip. For 20 minutes, rockets and bombs tore into the earth.
Then came the heavies. 1,800 B17 and B-24 bombers of the 8th Air Force appeared in formations that stretched across the sky. Each bomber carried several tons of high explosive. The target zone was 6,000 yd wide and 2200 yd deep, roughly 12 square kilm of Norman countryside. Boline watched from his headquarters as the first bombs began to fall.
The bombardment lasted nearly an hour. 1,500 heavy bombers dropped over 3,300 tons of bombs. 1,000 additional medium bombers and fighter bombers added hundreds more tons of explosives and napal American artillery. Over,00 joined in with coordinated fire. Baine later described what he witnessed. The bombers came as if on a conveyor belt, he said.
Back and forth the carpets were laid. Artillery positions were wiped out. Tanks were overturned and buried. Infantry positions were flattened. All roads and tracks were destroyed. By midday, the entire area resembled a moonscape with bomb craters touching rimto- rim. The physical destruction was almost incomprehensible. 60,000 fragmentation bombs and incendurary devices fell on an area of 12 square km.
That worked out to 5,000 bombs per square km. The village of Lash Chappelle Onuger was simply erased from existence. Other villages became impassible heaps of rubble. The effect on the men of Panzer was catastrophic. All signal communications were cut and no command was possible. Baline reported, “The shock effect on the troops was indescribable.
Several of my men went mad and rushed around in the open until they were cut down by splinters. Simultaneously, with the storm from the air, innumerable guns of American artillery pounded drum fire into our positions.” “Byline’s assessment of casualties was devastating. Over 70% of my soldiers were either dead, wounded, crazed, or dazed,” he wrote.
The bombing killed approximately 1,000 men outright. Hundreds more were wounded. Hundreds more were so shocked they could not function as soldiers. The division’s tanks fared little better. Panthers and Panzer Fours were flipped onto their sides by near misses. Others were buried under tons of earth, thrown up by explosions.
Assault guns disappeared into craters. By the end of the bombardment, Panza Lair had perhaps seven tanks still operational in the target zone. But the bombing had not killed everyone. Scattered groups of German soldiers survived in foxholes and cellars. Some had been at the edges of the target zone where bomb density was lower.
Others had been in particularly deep positions that absorbed the blast. Some were simply lucky, standing in spots where no bomb happened to fall. These survivors emerged from the smoking rubble with weapons in hand. Many were dazed, their ears ringing, their uniforms torn, blood streaming from cuts and concussions, but they were alive, and they were Germans who had been trained to fight under any circumstances.
The instructors of Panzer had taught countless soldiers what to do when everything went wrong. Now they applied those lessons to their own desperate situation. Some anti-tank guns remained intact under rubble. Crews dug them out, cleared the mechanisms, and prepared to engage the American tanks they knew would be coming.
A handful of tanks had been positioned outside the main impact zone, held in reserve or undergoing repair. Their commanders started engines and moved toward the sounds of fighting. The institutional knowledge that made Panzelair exceptional, now worked against the Americans. These were not ordinary soldiers who might have surrendered or fled after such a bombardment.
These were the men who had spent years teaching others to fight through adversity. They formed ad hoc battle groups around surviving officers. They set up ambush positions in the craters and rubble. They prepared to make the Americans pay for every yard of ground. The bombs had also created an unexpected problem for the attackers.
The craters were so numerous and so deep that American vehicles could barely move through the devastated area. Roads had ceased to exist. farmland had been transformed into a moonscape. The landscape itself had become an obstacle course of churned earth, shattered vehicles, and debris. American tankers trying to advance found their Shermans bogging down in the soft soil of fresh craters.
Infantry had to climb over mountains of rubble that just hours before had been villages. The precisiondestruction that was supposed to open a highway for exploitation had instead created a maze that slowed the attackers and gave the defenders precious time to organize. The bombardment claimed American lives as well. Despite orders for bombers to approach from the east parallel to the St.
Laria’s road, most aircraft came in from the north perpendicular to the front line. Smoke and dust from the initial explosions obscured the target area. Bombarders in following waves could not see the markers that were supposed to guide them. Some aimed at the smoke, not realizing it had drifted north over American positions.
Others made genuine errors in navigation, their calculations thrown off by winds or equipment malfunctions. Bombs fell short. 111 American soldiers were killed in the friendly fire incident. 490 more were wounded. Men who had survived weeks of combat in the Bokehage died under bombs dropped by their own countrymen. Among the dead was Lieutenant General Leslie J.
McNair, commander of army ground forces and one of the most important figures in the American military establishment. McNair had spent the war years building the army that was now fighting in France. He had developed training programs, organized divisions, and prepared millions of men for combat. At 61 years old, he had more influence over the shape of the American army than any officer except George Marshall himself.
McNair had come to Normandy as an observer and as part of a deception operation. George Patton, who had been commanding the fictional First United States Army Group to fool the Germans into expecting an invasion at Past Calala, was about to take command of the real third army. Someone with equivalent prestige had to take over the fictional command to maintain the deception.
McNair was that man. But McNair had another reason for being at the front. He wanted to see if the training methods he had developed were actually working. He wanted to observe American soldiers in combat, to see if the lessons he had insisted upon were being applied. It was typical of McNair, who had a reputation for wanting to see things for himself rather than relying on reports.
He was crouching in a foxhole with soldiers of the second battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment of the 30th Infantry Division, when the bombs began falling around them. There was no warning. The sound of aircraft engines was drowned out by explosions already in progress. Men dove for cover as the earth erupted around them.
A bomb landed directly in McNair’s position. The blast threw his body 60 ft and mangled it beyond recognition. Identification was possible only because of the three stars on his collar. At 61 years old, after more than 40 years of military service, Leslie McNair died in a foxhole in Normandy, killed by American bombs. McNair was the highest ranking American officer killed in combat during World War II.
His death was kept secret for weeks to preserve the deception operation he had been supporting. He was buried quietly with only a handful of senior officers present. No band played. No salute was fired. Bradley, Hodges, and Patton attended, but the ceremony was brief and private. The army could not afford to let the Germans know that the commander of first army group was dead.
War correspondent Ernie Pile was with the fourth infantry division when the bombs began falling short. Pile was 43 years old, a small, thin man with a quiet manner who had become famous for writing about ordinary soldiers. He had covered the war in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy.
His columns appeared in 400 daily newspapers across America. Soldiers loved him because he told their stories without glamour or propaganda. He wrote about fear, exhaustion, and death with an honesty that the official communicates never approached. Pile described what he experienced in a column published weeks later. It is possible to become so enthralled by some of the spectacles of war that you are momentarily captivated away from your own danger, he wrote.
That is exactly what happened to him and a small group of soldiers watching the bombardment that day. They stood in the open, mesmerized by the greatest concentration of air power any of them had ever witnessed. Bombers filled the sky from horizon to horizon. Explosions rolled across the German positions like waves breaking on a shore.
It was spectacular and terrible, a demonstration of American industrial might that seemed to make the outcome of the war inevitable. As we watched, Pile wrote, “There crept into our consciousness, a realization that windows of exploding bombs were easing back toward us, flight by flight, instead of forward. The pattern of destruction was moving in the wrong direction.
Each successive wave of bombers was releasing slightly earlier than the one before. The carpet of explosions was creeping north toward the American lines toward the spot where Pile and the soldiers stood watching. An indescribable kind of panic comes overyou at such times. Pile wrote, “We stood tensed in muscle and frozen in intellect, watching each flight approach and pass over us, feeling trapped and completely helpless.
Then the bombs were falling on them. Pile dove under a wagon, squirming into whatever cover he could find. The feeling of the blast was sensational, he wrote. The air struck you in hundreds of continuous flutters. Your ears drumed and rang. You could feel quick little waves of concussions on your chest and in your eyes. There was no way to describe the sound and fury of those bombs except to say it was chaos and awaiting for darkness.
Men around pile were hit. Some were killed instantly. Others screamed with wounds. The correspondent who had survived two years of frontline reporting nearly died that morning under American bombs. Pile called it the most sustained horrible thing he had ever gone through. He survived, but the experience shook him badly.
Within weeks, he would write that he had lost track of the point of the war. By September, he would publicly apologize to his readers, saying that if he heard one more shot or saw one more dead man, he would go off his nut. The bombing of July 25th broke something inside Ernie Pile that never fully healed. At 1100 hours, the infantry began to move.
The 9th and 30th Infantry Divisions pushed forward into the devastated zone. Collins expected rapid progress. The bombardment should have eliminated organized resistance. Instead, the advancing Americans found themselves fighting for every hedge. scattered German survivors, many still dazed from the bombing. Manned improvised strong points.
Anti-tank guns that had somehow survived the barrage opened fire. A handful of tanks appeared from positions outside the impact zone. Bayines men were fighting from instinct, not from coordinated command. Communication lines had been severed. Headquarters had been destroyed. Unit commanders were dead or missing. But the individual soldiers and small groups that remained put up fierce resistance.
By the end of July 25th, Collins core had advanced only about 2,000 yards, far short of the day’s objectives. American commanders at all levels reported disappointment. The aerial bombardment seemed to have failed. But Bradley and Collins saw something the frontline commanders missed. The German resistance, though fierce in spots, was disorganized and patchy.
There was no coordinated counterattack, no armored reserve moving to seal the breach. The defensive crust had been broken. What remained was the dying convulsions of a shattered force. The reports from prisoners told the real story. German soldiers captured on July 25th described scenes of utter devastation. They spoke of comrades who had gone mad from the bombing, running through the explosions until they were cut down.
They described bunkers collapsed with men still inside. Tanks buried under tons of earth, entire company positions that had simply ceased to exist. The bombing had done far more damage than the initial ground report suggested. Collins made a crucial decision that evening, one of those moments that separate great commanders from merely good ones.
Despite the slow progress, despite the reports of continuing resistance, he ordered his armored exploitation force to push forward. The next morning, the third armored division and the second armored division would advance through the infantry and exploit any openings. This was a gamble. Standard doctrine called for waiting until the infantry had secured the breakthrough before committing armor.
Tanks operating without infantry support were vulnerable to close-range anti-tank weapons. If the German line held, Collins armor could suffer heavy losses for no gain. But Collins understood that speed was essential. The Germans could not be given time to reorganize. Every hour of delay allowed them to bring up reserves, establish new defensive positions, restore communications.
The advantage created by the bombing was wasting away with every passing minute. It had to be exploited now while the defenders were still reeling. The order went out. The tanks would move at dawn. On the German side, confusion reigned. SS Oberg and Fura Paul Houseer, commander of the seventh army, struggled to understand what was happening.
Communications with Panza had been severed. Reports were fragmentaryary and contradictory. Hower knew a major attack was underway, but the scale of the disaster remained unclear. Bioline spent July 25th trying to regain control of his division. It was nearly impossible. Most of his staff officers were casualties. The headquarters had been destroyed.
Runners sent to locate surviving units often did not return. The division that had numbered over 3,200 combat troops that morning had effectively ceased to exist as a coordinated fighting force. Field marshal Gafon Kluga, commander of German forces in the west, understood better than houseer how serious the situation had become.
Late on July 25th, Klujireported to Berlin that the front had burst, but he was distracted by events elsewhere. The British and Canadians had launched Operation Spring south of Kong that same day, and Klug believed this might be the main Allied effort. He was wrong. Operation Spring was a supporting attack designed to pin German forces in place while Cobra achieved the breakout, but Klug’s attention remained divided during the critical hours when decisive action might have stabilized the line.
July 26th brought the acceleration Collins had hoped for. American infantry continued grinding forward, reducing pockets of resistance. Behind them, armored columns began to move. The third armored division pushed south from Maragny. The second armored division drove towards Sanjil. Bayoline was still at his headquarters, trying to piece together what remained of his command.
At some point during the day, vehicles from the 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion of the Second Armored Division roared past his position. by a line watched American armored cars and halftracks speeding down roads that should have been held by his troops. How did American soldiers get this far behind our lines so quickly? He asked his staff. No one had an answer.
The Panza division had been responsible for defending the road from St. Jill to Canacey. After the bombing, that defense had collapsed. American armor was now exploiting the gap, driving deep into territory that should have been secure. Combat Command A of the Second Armored Division under Brigadier General Maurice Rose pushed through the night.
By 2 in the morning on July 27th, Rose’s tanks had advanced over 12 mi. They had lost fewer than 200 men and only three tanks. The German front had been penetrated beyond any possibility of quick repair. July 27th saw the breakthrough become a route. American armored columns fanned out across the Norman countryside.
The 30th Infantry Division captured Hebrean. Elements of the First Infantry Division drove toward Maragni. The third armored division pushed towards Sarasi Lassal. German attempts to reinforce the shattered line failed repeatedly. Houseer and Cultitz, commander of the 84th Corps, committed reserves to stop the American advance, but units sent forward were caught by American fighter bombers on the roads.
One regiment dispatched to reinforce Panza lair was destroyed before it reached the front. Kluger finally grasped the magnitude of the disaster. He ordered the 116th Panza Division recently transferred from the 15th Army sector to launch a counterattack against the American flank. But the division was not in position.
It would take days to organize any significant counter thrust. By July 27th evening, the German 7th Army reported seven ruptures in the line from east to west. Organized resistance was collapsing across the entire American front. July 28th marked the point of no return. Putansis fell to the fourth armored division and sixth armored division of the eighth corps.
German forces west of the American advance were now in danger of encirclement. Elements of the second SS Panza Division, the 17th SS Panza Grenadier Division, and the remnants of several infantry divisions attempted to break out eastward. The results were catastrophic for the Germans. A column of retreating forces near Lash Chappelle was caught by artillery from the second armored division.
In 2 hours, American guns fired over 700 rounds at pointblank range into the packed vehicles and troops. 50 Germans were killed immediately. 60 more were wounded, 197 surrendered. Over 260 combat vehicles were destroyed. Beyond Lash Chappelle, the destruction continued. Another 1150 German soldiers were killed.
96 armored vehicles and trucks were lost. The second armored division alone destroyed 64 German tanks and 5 to 38 other vehicles during Operation Cobra. American losses were 49 tanks. Boline managed to extract some survivors from the encirclement. By the end of July 28th, he reported that Panza division was finally annihilated. Its armor was wiped out.
Its personnel were either casualties or missing. All headquarters records were lost. The division that had entered Normandy 7 weeks earlier with over 14,000 men, and more than 200 tanks had been destroyed in 96 hours. July 29th and 30th saw the exploitation accelerate. Avranche fell on July 30th, opening the gateway to Britany and the French interior. General George S.
Patton’s third army was activated on August 1st and began pouring through the brereech. The German position in Normandy had become untenable. Over the following weeks, Hitler ordered a counterattack at Morta that failed disastrously. The German 7th Army was trapped in the Filet’s pocket and virtually annihilated. By August 25th, Paris was liberated.
The war in France was effectively over. The destruction of Panza in those 96 hours of Operation Cobra was more than a tactical defeat. It represented the loss of irreplaceable human capital. The instructors and demonstration troops whohad formed the division’s core were dead, wounded, or scattered. Their accumulated expertise in armored warfare developed over years of training and combat was gone.
Germany would rebuild Panza. After spending a month refitting in the SAR region, the division received 72 new tanks, 21 assault guns, and replacement personnel drawn from training depots across Germany. By November 1944, it was back in action for the Arden offensive, the Battle of the Bulge. Baline led his rebuilt division in the attack toward Baston where American forces were surrounded but refused to surrender.
But the rebuilt division was a shadow of the original. The veteran instructors who had made Panza exceptional could not be replaced. The new men were younger, less experienced, drawn from the bottom of Germany’s dwindling manpower pool. They had not spent years teaching armored warfare. They had received only the abbreviated training that late war Germany could provide.
They fought bravely, but they lacked the deep institutional knowledge that had set the original division apart. The division that attacked toward Baston was Panza in name only. The essence of what had made it elite had been scattered across the cratered fields of Normandy. Fritz Bayine survived the war. He commanded Panza through the Arden’s offensive, then took command of the 53rd Corps in the final desperate months of the conflict.
In April 1945, he surrendered to American forces in the rurer pocket, one of hundreds of thousands of German soldiers who laid down their arms as the Reich collapsed. As a prisoner of war, Baine proved valuable to his capttors. He worked with the United States Army Historical Division, writing detailed accounts of German operations from the perspective of someone who had been there.
His manuscripts on the destruction of Panzela during Cobra, on the fighting in North Africa, on the experience of German commanders in Normandy became important sources for understanding the war from the other side. Bioline was released from captivity in 1947. He returned to civilian life in Germany, living quietly through the years of reconstruction and the Cold War.
He served as a technical adviser on the 1961 film The Guns of Navaron, lending his expertise to Hollywood’s version of the war. Fritz Boline died in 1970 in Germany. He was 71 years old. His obituaries mentioned his service under Raml in Africa and his command of Panza. They did not mention that he had witnessed the destruction of Germany’s most elite armored formation in a single summer morning, standing helpless as American bombs fell from a clear July sky.
The American commanders who planned and executed Cobra went on to greater things. Omar Bradley commanded the 12th Army Group, the largest American field command in history. Lightning Joe Collins led the Seventh Corps to the Ela River and later became chief of staff of the United States Army. Both were promoted to four-star general rank.
Lieutenant General Leslie McNair was buried at the Normandy American Cemetery at Collville Sumeur overlooking the beaches where the invasion had begun 7 weeks earlier. His death was kept secret for weeks to preserve the deception operation he had been supporting. The Germans must continue to believe that first army group was real, that a second invasion was still possible, that keeping forces at Pazdakala was essential.
His gravestone initially listed his rank as Lieutenant General, the rank he held at death. Congress postuously promoted him to full general in 1954, a recognition of his contributions to American victory that came a decade too late. But the American Battle Monuments Commission was not informed of the change.
His gravestone was not updated to reflect his final rank until November 11th, 2010, 66 years after his death. He remains the highest ranking American officer, buried at Normandy in a cemetery that holds the remains of over 9,000 of his countrymen who died in the liberation of France. Ernie Pile continued reporting from the front until April 1945.
The war in Europe was almost over, but Pile felt obligated to cover the fighting in the Pacific. He did not want to go. He was exhausted, haunted by the deaths he had witnessed, struggling with what would later be recognized as combat stress disorder. But he felt that the soldiers in the Pacific deserved the same coverage he had given to those in Europe.
On April 18th, 1945, Pile was with the 77th Infantry Division on the island of Eima near Okinawa. A Japanese machine gunner opened fire on his jeep. Pile ducked behind a ditch with other soldiers. When the firing seemed to stop, he raised his head to check on his companions. A burst of machine gun fire killed him instantly. He was 44 years old.
At the time of his death, his syndicated column appeared in 400 daily newspapers and 300 weekly newspapers across America. President Harry Truman said of him that no man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as Americanfighting men wanted it told. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen.
Pile was buried on Ishima with a wooden grave marker. Later, his remains were moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. The ordinary soldiers he had written about, the ones who called him their friend because he told their stories honestly, mourned him as one of their own.
The Norman countryside has healed since 1944. The bomb craters have been filled. The hedge have regrown. Villages destroyed in the fighting have been rebuilt. But markers and monuments remain commemorating what happened there. The village of Lash Chappelle Onuga, which was erased by American bombs, was reconstructed after the war.
Today, it stands as a quiet farming community. Few visitors know that the entire village was reduced to rubble in less than an hour on a July morning eight decades ago. Operation Cobra transformed the war in Western Europe. Before July 25th, 1944, the Allies were trapped in a brutal stalemate, gaining yards at the cost of thousands of casualties.
After Cobra, they advanced hundreds of miles in weeks. The German army in France was destroyed. Liberation followed, but Cobra was also a reminder of the terrible mathematics of industrial warfare. The bombardment that destroyed Panza killed Americans as well as Germans. Bombs do not distinguish between friend and enemy.
The same aircraft that annihilated an elite German division also killed a three-star American general and over 100 of his own soldiers. General Dwight Eisenhower was in Normandy on July 25th, observing the attack. He returned to his headquarters in England that evening, dejected and uncertain about Cobra’s success.
But he had already made a decision. He would never again use heavy bombers in close support of ground troops. The price of that lesson was paid in blood by men on both sides of the line. This is how wars are won. Not through elegant maneuver or brilliant general ship alone, but through the application of overwhelming force at decisive points.
Operation Cobra concentrated the destructive power of nearly 3,000 aircraft against a single elite division. The result was annihilation. Panzer was destroyed because it was in the wrong place when American industrial might fell from the sky. The instructors and veterans who made up its ranks were no match for 4,000 tons of high explosives.
Individual courage and professional skill cannot survive carpet bombing. The 96-hour nightmare that destroyed Germany’s elite Panza division was a demonstration of what happens when one side possesses total air superiority and the willingness to use it without restraint. It was brutal. It was effective. It broke the stalemate in Normandy and opened the road to victory.
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