# Who killed the Black Baron



## 57Chevy (23 May 2010)

Brits, Canucks feud over mystery (What do you think?)
Read the story here:


http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Brits+Canucks+feud+over+mystery+killed+Black+Baron/3039511/story.html


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## Kat Stevens (23 May 2010)

It wasn't me, it was the one armed man!


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## Old Sweat (23 May 2010)

In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote No Holding Back and stand by my findings. Norm Christie's research strengthens my claims. On the other hand, the British have done nothing but repeat their original 1985 version of events without adding any new evidence. Even the statement by Mister Duff in the story supports the Canadian claim; he states that Wittmann was 800 metres from the British position. However examination of a vertical air photo taken on the next day, which clearly shows all five Tigers knocked out in the engagement, indicates that Wittmann's Tiger lies over 1100 metres away from the orchard where the British were deployed. There are, however, three destroyed Tigers all at about 800 metres from that place, and the British claimed three Tigers on that day.

It seems pretty clear to me.


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## 57Chevy (23 May 2010)

Although Joe Ekin may have been in a better position for the kill, it doesn't automatically
 mean that it was from his shot. That would be an assumption.







edit to correct name


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## mariomike (23 May 2010)

More on the life and death of the Black Baron here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wittmann#Death


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## Dennis Ruhl (23 May 2010)

On checking some sources, I read that MAJ.(later BGEN) Radley-Walters was the leading allied tank ace with 18 kills.  All he mentioned when I quaffed a bew or two with him 25-30 years ago was how many times he was hit - something like 8.  It is a bit ironic that the top tankers should meet on the same battlefield where one dies.


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## Old Sweat (23 May 2010)

Joe Ekins was not in the best position. He was the gunner in the only British Sherman Firefly covering that approach. On the other hand there were 8-12 Canadian Shermans hidded behind a stonewall covering the same approach from the opposite side of it. Wittmann's Tiger drove in front of them from right to left at less than 200 metres range. What is also important to me is that the damage to his tank was on the left rear of the engine cover, an area which was masked to the British. 

A brief summary of the engagement.

  Seven Tigers break from cover around the village of Cintheaux and proceed NNE roughly parallel to the Caen-Falaise Highway, which on the western edge of their axis. They are in two groups with four to the east roughly halfway across the gap between the woods and orchards on the east and the hamlet of Gaumesnil, just west of the highway. Three others, including Wittmann's are closer to the highway. Both are in line ahead formation. As the tanks proceed north, they are followed by a combination of assault guns, MK IV tanks and half-tracks. Wittmann is clearly leery of the woods and orchards and he may have been focussed on them.

  When Ekins fires and destroys his first Tiger, which is in the eastern group, Wittmann radios "Achtung, Achtung, PAK von richts" and may have engaged the muzzle flash from Ekins' tank. He may then have seen another Tiger in that group hit and explode, because he starts to order the tanks to withdraw, but his transmission is cut off. A crew commander in a Tiger following Wittmann looks over and notes that his tank is halted with the turret displaced. His tank is hit almost instantly and he and his crew bail out. In the meantime another Tiger on the east has been destroyed by Ekins after having been hit and partly disabled by the other British Shermans. A crew from the eastern crew makes its way towards the highway, carrying a mortally wounded member of his crew, when they saw flames fly from the turret hatch of Wittmann's tank and the turret fly off. (This description has been made solely from British and German accounts, but a later statement by then Major SV Radley-Walters, the squadron commander of A Squadron SFR, whose tanks were behind the wall, supports the sequence.)

  This is why I reached my conclusions.


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## Dennis Ruhl (23 May 2010)

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Joe Ekins was not in the best position. He was the gunner in the only British Sherman Firefly covering that approach.



Note that the 17 pounder equipped Fireflies were the only Shermans that could reliably penetrate Tiger armour.


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## Michael OLeary (23 May 2010)

Dennis Ruhl said:
			
		

> Note that the 17 pounder equipped Fireflies were the only Shermans that could reliably penetrate Tiger armour.



When talking about penetration of tank armour, you need to be specific about which armour and from what angle of attack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_I



> Armour
> 
> The Tiger I's armour reached up to 120 mm on the mantlet. This tank is assigned to the Schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 101 operating in northern France in 1944.
> 
> ...



Armour penetration for the later variants of the 75 mm gun on regular Shermans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/75_mm_Gun_M2/M3/M6

M3 & M6 - Armour penetration (M72 AP shell, 457 m, at 90 degrees): 76 mm


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## Dog Walker (23 May 2010)

Norm Christie’s show is on YouTube in five parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqdUafuKEpA 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILtL4qeDjFM 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deXKmVed-SQ 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL0H5fnwevM 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp2GKAEup5I


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## Dennis Ruhl (23 May 2010)

Michael O'Leary said:
			
		

> When talking about penetration of tank armour, you need to be specific about which armour and from what angle of attack.



Absolutely, but the net effect of engaging any Tiger with a stubby gunned Sherman was often less than positive.  Get your geometry off a degree or two and there's one ticked off enemy with ringing ears looking for you.


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## Michael OLeary (23 May 2010)

Dennis Ruhl said:
			
		

> Absolutely, but the net effect of engaging any Tiger with a stubby gunned Sherman was often less than positive.  Get your geometry off a degree or two and there's one ticked off enemy with ringing ears looking for you.



Which it appears the Canadian gunners well understood:



			
				Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Joe Ekins was not in the best position. He was the gunner in the only British Sherman Firefly covering that approach. On the other hand there were 8-12 Canadian Shermans hidded behind a stonewall covering the same approach from the opposite side of it. Wittmann's Tiger drove in front of them from right to left at less than *200 metres range*. What is also important to me is that the *damage to his tank was on the left rear of the engine cover*, an area which was masked to the British.



Which rather makes the assertion that "the 17 pounder equipped Fireflies were the only Shermans that could reliably penetrate Tiger armour" a throwaway comment, since both range and angle of attack on the tank were within the capabilities of the Canadian guns.


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## 57Chevy (23 May 2010)

Excellent videos
Noted was the target size in the sights for the 3 other tanks from the British standpoint.
Wittmans tank was even farther away at 967 meters, which makes it an even smaller target
size. 
No-one seemed to know of the whereabouts of the Cdn unit at only 143 meters.
It seems to make more sense, or lean greatly to, as a Cdn kill.
My opinion


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## vonGarvin (23 May 2010)

I was going to mention that in spite of US insistence that the Sherman could not take a bigger gun, the Brits put a 17 pounder in it with success, though the crew went from 5 to 4.  And there were only enough Fireflies (the Sherman with 17 pdr) for perhaps 1/troop.  The 75mm gun was pitiful compared to the guns that the Mk IV and others (eg Mk V and Mk VIE) that the Germans had.  But that 17 pdr was quite the nasty surprise for the Germans.


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## Dog Walker (23 May 2010)

Technoviking said:
			
		

> And there were only enough Fireflies (the Sherman with 17 pdr) for perhaps 1/troop.



Starting in Sept. 1944 the number of Fireflies was increased to two per troop in the Armoured regiments, and one per troop in the recce Regiment (South Alberta). At the end of December 1944 1st Canadian Army had 162 Fireflies in six Armoured Regiments and one recce Regt.  

Source Appendix C in CMHQ report 141
http://web.archive.org/web/20060215053000/www.forces.gc.ca/dhh/downloads/cmhq/cmhq141.pdf


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## 57Chevy (25 May 2010)

I'm curious.
When speaking of the 17pdr ammo used in the firefly, and according to penetration tables noted in the thread, Would that be for the APDS round?
And if so, At what possible distance from the barrel would the sabot petals fall away?


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## Old Sweat (25 May 2010)

I am not sure, but I did not post it. However, the 17-pdr APDS did not begin to arrive in theatre until August 1944. It is unclear that either 1 NY or the SFR had APDS ammunition at this time.


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## Michael OLeary (25 May 2010)

It may not have helped the British argument in any case, there were reported accuracy problems with the early APDS rounds.

From http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/weapons-technology-equipment/15810-17-pounder-apds-17-pdr-general.html



> This taken from Mark Hayward's 'The Sherman Firefly'
> 
> Quote:
> 
> ...



And more from the same forum thread:



> There is some more about accuracy in Mark Hayward's 'The Sherman Firefly' who is in turn quoting from two wartime documents, WO 291/1263 and WO 165/135 recorded on 22nd September 1944. Further to this he quotes from a conversation with Sgt. Jack Moat DCM (1st RTR, 7th Armd. Div. 1940-45) on 2nd November 2000 as published in 'Tank, the journal of the Royal Tank Regiment'.
> 
> Quote:
> 
> "These trials were conducted with two tanks - a IC (T263317) and a VC (T148506). The report does state that these figures might be sympathetic "... a maximum range of engagement at which every second round will hit appears under these conditions to be a generous one". It was noted (referring to targets such as hull down tanks) that using APDS "... there is no use in attempting to pin-point vital zones in targets at ranges over about 200-300 yards". This is not a range anyone would want to be in a Sherman against any late-war German tank. "APC shot does not possess sufficient accuracy for pin-point shooting at vital zones in targets at ranges over about 300 yards". The report did not consider the tests with APC as typical and that "... the accuracy of fire with APC can be better than that obtained in this and the preceding trial". "The first batch of 17-pdr appear not only to be innaccurate, but also have a dissapointing performance". Contrary to this and other reports, Sergeant Moat regarded the 17-pdr as very accurate and did not agree with the accuracy problems. He conceded that the HE round was not as good as the 75mm M3. The 17-pdr never let him down and always did what he asked of it. He thought the Firefly was the best tank he saw service in and the 17-pdr a reliable high performance weapon, especially compared to the inadequate tanks he put up with in earlier campaigns."


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## Old Sweat (25 May 2010)

Good info, Michael.

In the Who Killed Michael Wittmann? appendix to my book, I wrote, "However, there were serious accuracy problems with the 17-pounder gun and even a hit on a target as large as a tank was by no means a sure thing at ranges greater than 1,000 yards." The source I cited was NAC, RG 24 vol 10457, Report No. 14, 1 Canadian Field Research Section, First Canadian Army, 14 Jun 45. It should be noted that the inaccuracy had been noted much earlier.


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## 57Chevy (25 May 2010)

The reason I asked about the APDS round was that if it was used, perhaps the sabot petals
could have been located at the Wittman tank, or in direct fire line. Taking into consideration
the velocity of 3950fps and the distance from the Firefly to the Wittman tank of 143m.
Finding such an artifact would have been conclusive evidence.
A shot in the dark 
In the video showing the artifacts that were found from the site, I could not help trying
to locate a sabot. ;D


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## Michael OLeary (25 May 2010)

57Chevy said:
			
		

> The reason I asked about the APDS round was that if it was used, perhaps the sabot petals
> could have been located at the Wittman tank, or in direct fire line. Taking into consideration
> the velocity of 3950fps and the distance from the Firefly to the Wittman tank of 143m.
> Finding such an artifact would have been conclusive evidence.
> ...



Old Sweat has already provided the ranges to Wittman's tank from the British and Canadian positions. The Firefly was 1100+ metres from where Wittman's tank was killed. 



			
				Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Joe Ekins was not in the best position. He was the gunner in the only British Sherman Firefly covering that approach.





			
				Old Sweat said:
			
		

> However examination of a vertical air photo taken on the next day, which clearly shows all five Tigers knocked out in the engagement, indicates that *Wittmann's Tiger lies over 1100 metres away from the orchard where the British were deployed. *





			
				Old Sweat said:
			
		

> *On the other hand there were 8-12 Canadian Shermans hidded behind a stonewall covering the same approach from the opposite side of it. Wittmann's Tiger drove in front of them from right to left at less than 200 metres range.* What is also important to me is that the damage to his tank was on the left rear of the engine cover, an area which was masked to the British.


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## 57Chevy (25 May 2010)

I meant from the Canadian Sherman to the Whittman Tiger. Of which measurements were
taken, seen in the last feature video clip in the thread on page 1.


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## Dog Walker (25 May 2010)

Michael O'Leary said:
			
		

> It may not have helped the British argument in any case, there were reported accuracy problems with the early APDS rounds.



This subject came up a few years ago on the old AFV News forum. If I remember correctly those tests were carried out on early lots of ammunition which had being improperly stored. They had become wet and suffered from corrosion which affected the way that the petals of the sabot separated from the projectile.


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## 57Chevy (26 May 2010)

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> I am not sure, but I did not post it. However, the 17-pdr APDS did not begin to arrive in theatre until August 1944. It is unclear that either 1 NY or the SFR had APDS ammunition at this time.



I found that the 17pdr APDS was first introduced for UK Service in late Sept 1944:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour-piercing_discarding_sabot#History_and_development

According to production tables Canada produced 51000 in 1945:

http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117:wartime-production-by-the-commonwealth-during-wwii&catid=48roduction-statistics&Itemid=61


Which rules out any APDS use in subjet tank battle.

PS to OLD Sweat:
When I find your book, Is it possibe for you to sign it for me?


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## Old Sweat (26 May 2010)

Yes, I would be honoured to do so.

The hard cover edition is sold out; the best source for the soft cover is amazon.ca. 

I have just been offered and accepted five hard covers that have been located by my publisher. I can sell them for $35.00 a copy, including shipping. They should be in good shape, so if you are interested, pm me.


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## Danjanou (26 May 2010)

Some more debate amongst the amateur historians and grognards

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71537&highlight=michael+wittmann

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55411&highlight=michael+wittmann

http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=126&aff=12&aft=341189&afv=topic


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## Colin Parkinson (30 May 2010)

The 6pdr gun actually was slightly better at pentrating armour than the US 75mm. Mind you it all comes down to which ammo you have. High quality AP ammo was always in short supply for both sides. The Germans were lucky that their main guns were good enough for most Western armour with even adequate AP ammo.

I always felt the Brits should have mounted their 32pdr onto Priests and Sextons to provide a mobile AT screen that could have taken on the Tigers. Trials at the end of the war proved this gun was more than a match for German frontal armour. Plus the Brits could have had this in the field in N. Africa. The gun was mounted on a Ram chassis as a moblie AA gun test platform.


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## 57Chevy (8 Nov 2010)

An unforgettable contribution:

Sydney Valpy Radley-Walters won't be at the Cenotaph for Remembrance Day.

He's in a wheelchair on the fifth floor of Providence Manor and the 90-year-old former tank commander says he doesn't want to go if he can no longer parade.

The man revered by a generation of tankers as "Rad" is not only surrounded by mementos and awards that testify to his place as one of the most important Canadian armour officers in history, but his room overlooks Artillery Park and the Montreal Street armoury where his career began 70 years ago as a young second lieutenant in the Sherbrooke Fusiliers.


It is actually difficult to overstate Radley-Walters' achievements. He was the first to figure out the fatal weakness in German Panzers -- the ring at the base of their turrets was not armoured and soon Allied gunners were aiming at that spot to destroy them. He recorded 18 confirmed tank kills, becoming not just the top Canadian tank ace, but the Commonwealth Ace of Aces.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross and his leadership style is still held up and studied as a model for the modern battlefield commander. He shared battle plans with subordinates and altered plans based on their input in a way few commanders did, and was not afraid to question his own superiors. He was one of the first to up-armour his tanks' weak spots and sandbag the floors to protect his crewmen, tactics that continue to be used by crews in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He and his tanks fought from Normandy, through Holland and into northern Germany, where they were when the war ended.

His biggest kill was one of the biggest of the war. Although dis-p uted after the fact, his tank squadron was the one who killed Michael Wittman of the Panzercorps, a German tank ace known as "The Black Baron."

Wittman is credited with more than 150 tank kills and in his most legendary engagement in June 1944 -- you could characterize it as a rampage -- single-handedly killed 14 British tanks, 15 personnel carriers and two anti-tank guns within the space of 15 minutes.

Radley-Walters is indifferent to the historical record, remembering the feared leader of the 101 Schwere SSPanzerabteilung as a worthy and determined foe.

"He was a superb tanker," recalled Walter-Radley as the late afternoon sun washed over his room and its artifacts, including pieces of the very first tank the retired brigadier general was blown up in.

"I had tangled with him two or three times and let me tell you, when you fought against his group, you were challenged by a wonderful group of commanders.

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"I never had any use for the German administration that started the war but they had some of the best generals, and I hope the next time we go to war, they're going to be fighting on our side."

Radley-Walters, who was born and raised on the rugged Gaspe coast before attending Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Que., learned his tank trade in Petawawa and Borden after first drilling at the Barriefield Army Camp.

He still remembers the camp's legendary mud -- one of the reasons so many Kingstonians looked across the Cataraqui River and decided to join the air force or the navy instead of the army when the war began.

Radley-Walters was never formally schooled in command but said he picked it up along with the craft of maneuver warfare about which he can still speak effortlessly decades on.

At Borden, the members of his Sherbrooke Fusiliers practised beach landings for D-Day but it did little to prepare him for the real thing in 1944.

"That beach was 17 miles long," he recalled.

"You looked to your right and your left and it was so long you couldn't see a god-damn thing."

Radley-Walters lost his first tank shortly after landing. His lightly-armoured Caribou was hit by a shell and exploded, but his family recovered fragments of that very tank after the war and presented them to him mounted on a plaque.

"I have four sons and we were visiting Normandy 16 years later," he said.

"We went to this spot and I told them this was where my tank was hit, and the boys started digging in the sand and started pulling up pieces of my old tank.

"It was a good little tank. I was sorry to see it go at the time."

Radley-Walters moved up to Shermans and his squadron became one of the most proficient as the Allies fought their way across France and the Netherlands.

He was noted for getting the most out of his soldiers and keeping up their morale despite the heavy casualties they were suffering. While all ow i n g his men to mourn their dead, he did not allow them to handle casualties, reasoning that they were soldiers and had a job to do.

"It's not the easiest of jobs," he reflected.

He learned from the German Blitzkrieg about how to use airplanes and artillery to support lightning-fast tank maneuvers and while, like any commander, he issued commands that men died following, the first tank in was always his.

His contempt for officers barking commands over the radio while safely ensconced in the rear is still palpable.

"By being at the front you have to get cute so you don't get hit, but you were forced to do a lot of the killing yourself," he said, "but you don't show off. You're always covered and when you move, someone moved with you while two others were taking aim.

"You took care, but I guess that I was sort of cute."

While he respected the Germans, he saved his most effusive praise for his own men.

"There's nothing wrong with the Canadian as a soldier," he said.

"He can get booted around and he will never, ever quit. I respected them and they respected me.

"Around this time of year I still get calls from my men. The phone will ring and it will be someone calling from Vancouver or Montreal or anywhere else in the world just wanting to see how I'm doing."

He takes a keen interest in the war in Afghanistan and a large photo of a Leopard tank on patrol outside Kandahar City is prominently displayed in his tidy room. He gestures at it as he explains why war changes armies in ways that peacetime never does.

"There's a difference between a garrison soldier and a soldier at war," he says.

"A soldier in garrison does everything he's supposed to do exactly the way he's supposed to do it the same way every time.

"A soldier at war, every-thing is new to him and he he has to learn everything all over again, at least if he's a smart soldier. He's always looking for things and noticing things, he never takes the same route twice, he isn't rigid in his approach to things. You can't be if you want to stay alive when people are shooting at you. Canadians are very, very good at that."

After the war, he rose through the ranks, becoming Commandant of the Royal Canadian Armoured School in Borden and ending his career as the director-general of training and recruiting at Canadian Forces Headquarters in Ottawa in 1974.

He was interviewed for the controversial series The Valour And The Horror and in that documentary, gave voice to what many veterans feel come Remembrance Day -- and what he had tried to give back to the Canadian a rmoured corps.

"It really comes back on our own shoulders, that before they put us six feet into the ground, somebody should sit down and each one of us pass on to the gene rat i o n ... some of the lessons which we learnt," he told the filmmakers.

He has returned to Germany at least 20 times and is so revered by his former enemies that he has gone hunting for game with the tank officers he once hunted.

"They don't bear any grudges," he said. "Their attitude is, 'You beat us, now we can be friends.'"

Radley-Walters' thoughts are still on Remembrance Day and of his trips to Europe, where he has revisited cou1ntless graves of men he both commanded and befriended and who did not come home as he did.

"It was always difficult," he said in a soft voice.

"I visited some graves and all I could do when I got there was weep over these men.

"I wept for them, because they were just so friggin' good."

article link

                      (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)

  iper:  iper:


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## Old Sweat (8 Nov 2010)

Thanks for the post, 57 Chev.

I had the privlege of being a student of Combat Team Commander's Course 7201 when Rad commanded CTC. He was in the field with us for most of the course and preached tactics which went out of service in the army, until Afghanistan ca,e along.

When researching my book on Operation Totalize, I wrote him and got 90 minutes of tape on a casette. My wife and I then visited him and Pat and spent a wonderful time picking his brain. After the event I have pondered about how long the Germans would have lasted if we had had Panthers and Tigers, and they had fought in Shermans and Cromwells.


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## 57Chevy (8 Nov 2010)

:cheers:
Your book is an outstanding achievement.
Easy to read with plenty of pictures and diagrams.
I recommend it for those wanting to know the whole story. :nod:


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## Haletown (8 Nov 2010)

57Chevy said:
			
		

> :cheers:
> Your book is an outstanding achievement.
> Easy to read with plenty of pictures and diagrams.
> I recommend it for those wanting to know the whole story. :nod:



What is the name of the book ?


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## 57Chevy (8 Nov 2010)

Haletown said:
			
		

> What is the name of the book ?


No Holding Back (see reply #2) :camo:


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