“Fire…!” Schmidt bellowed, adrenalin racing as it was through all of them now that combat had begun in earnest. There were no higher philosophical issues to think of or consider in the heat of battle for these seasoned veterans, and the ‘equation’ was simple: kill or be killed. The fact that in this case they were invulnerable to the enemy gun’s fire in return wasn’t even considered. There was a roar, and the entire tank bucked and shuddered as the KWK49 main gun let loose at their enemy. Muzzle blast obscured the sights a second or two, but the result was clear enough as shattered bodies, debris and flame erupted into the air above what had once been an anti-tank emplacement.
“Hit…!” Schmidt crowed loudly, immediately spinning his scopes to seek out another target as Panther-322 shot off a round to their right, the blast wave ringing heavily against their hull and filling the air around the tank with more dust and smoke.
Little of the propellant gases from the spent shell entered the turret as the smoking spent shell casing ejected automatically: a short, thick section of outer sleeve added to the midway join of the 88mm’s two-piece barrel contained a fume extractor — a new and novel device that removed smoke from the fired shell and pumped it out through the muzzle before the breech was opened to reload. Of all the things about the P-40A that were new and wonderful, that was one of those most loved by the crews that manned them. While space was a little cramped for some in the flattened dome of the turret, that piece of equipment at least provided a clear and relatively breathable atmosphere to work in, and that alone made the crews much more efficient and far more deadly.
“Forward at current bearing…!” The Obersturmführer directed the driver, Klugmann, as orders from his company commander came over the radio. “New position… fifty metres east of the A259… go…!” He relayed his orders to the rest of 2nd Platoon, and Panthers -322, -323, -324 and -325 following suit, spreading out across the Dymchurch Road to provide covering fire to their eastern flank as the second wave of hovercraft arrived behind them and began to unload more tanks and infantry vehicles.
One of the Wiesel light tanks of 3rd Company’s recon platoon powered ahead and into the field of Schmidt’s vision, firing its 30mm automatic cannon and coaxial MG at an unidentified target. A moment later, there was a small flash against its glacis plate, and the light tank came to an abrupt halt, rocking on its suspension as smoke began to pour from its forward-mounted engine. Spinning on his seat as he turned the episcopes set into the rim of the cupola above him, Schmidt was already looking for what had hit the P-1C as its three-man crew bailed out into a hostile battlefield.
He wasn’t long in searching, and quickly picked out a troop of three enemy A13 Cruiser tanks, their forward hulls and turrets protruding from the cover of a treeline off to the south-west. Part of a squadron from the British 1st Armoured Division, two of the tanks fired again, this time at Schmidt’s Panthers, and once again the solid shot of their 2-pdr guns ricocheted or shattered against the German panzers’ superior frontal armour.
“Cruising panzer… three-fifty metres…!” He cried, the turret already turning as Wisch anticipated his command. “Load hohlgeschoss… middle target has antenna!” A long radio antennae indicated the tank in question was almost certainly a commander’s vehicle, and was therefore a priority target.
“Hohlgeschoss loaded…!”
“Befehlspanzer acquired…!” Wisch confirmed his aim on the enemy command tank as the turret’s traverse halted once more.
“Fire…!”
Wham! An 88mm HEAT round hurtled away as the Panther shook once more. The A13’s armour was just 38mm thick at best, and that was nowhere near enough as the hollow-charge anti-tank round caught the nearest of the British cruisers low on its turret face, just above the mounting ring. There was a bright flash upon impact, and the entire turret was suddenly spiralling high into the air at the head of a fiery tail as the shattered hull ‘brewed up’, sheets of flame roaring from the gaping wound where it had once been. None of the four-man crew got out alive, and its colleagues were similarly destroyed seconds later as two more of Schmidt’s Panthers fired and blew them to pieces. The tree line would continue to burn for some time.
Alerts of enemy infantry came through a moment later, and they turned their turrets in the warned direction to discover a series of previously-undetected trenches nearby, north of the rail line. Infantry attacks could be deadly to a closed-down tank — one of the reasons armoured vehicles went into combat with their own infantry support wherever possible — and as they brought their guns to bear on the new targets, a suicidally-brave British infantryman leaped from the nearest of the trenches and let fly with a No.76 anti-tank grenade, shot down just a second later by the coaxial machine gun of the tank at which he was aiming.
“Infantry close in… load kartätsche! Where the fuck are our bloody frontschwein?” Schmidt called the warning to his crew, at the same time voicing a protest at the lack of support as the grenade, no more than a half-pint glass bottle filled with white phosphorous and benzine, shattered against the rear of Panther-324’s hull. Fire instantly engulfed the rear of the turret and its engine deck, the hissing phosphorous depriving the tank’s diesel powerplant of oxygen and stalling it almost instantly. A stalled tank on fire was a fatal combination, and Schmidt radioed its crew to bail out.
Spurred on by momentary success as they watched the panzer crew abandon their vehicle, a dozen men burst from their trenches armed with grenades and bayonet-tipped rifles, charging forward and intent on doing similar damage to other nearby tanks. Schmidt’s main gun had a clear shot as the crew of Panzer-324 dived for safety, and he gave the order to fire the loaded canister round. The air around the charging Tommis was instantly filled with hundreds of lead balls the size of large bullets, and at a range of just fifty metres or so there was little chance for the grapeshot to spread. None of the exposed British survived the blast, most literally disintegrating under the multitude of impacts.
An SH-6C gunship swooped in out of the sky a few seconds later, hammering the trenches with cannon fire and rockets and silencing whatever enemy might still be hiding within. The moment the firing from above had ceased, a pair of Marder IFVs lurched to a halt at the edge of the smoking trenches and disgorged two squads of shock troops to secure the area.
“Bravo to our glorious grenadiers,” Schmidt growled sarcastically, mostly to himself but gaining a smile from the other men in the tank all the same. “Better late than never, as always…!” The remarks were through tight lips and partially-clenched teeth, but lightened the tension a little nevertheless.
He caught sight of Lötzsch, Panther-324’s commander, standing close in to the burning tank with a fire extinguisher and ignoring the phosphorous, flames and enemy fire as he worked desperately to save his panzer from serious damage. The platoon commander allowed himself a thin smile of his own as he turned his attention back to scanning the area for enemy targets: the man was an excellent NCO, and had shown a good deal of courage… if he and his tank survived, Schmidt would make sure he got the iron cross for that act of bravery.
Another moment or two, and someone on the southern edge of the widening beachhead had picked out another cluster of anti-tank weapons and infantry further to the south-west. Orders came in over the radio, and Schmidt and his Panthers were moving off and firing again.