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The record · Sidi Bou Zid, 1943
Schwere Panzer-Abteilung 501
The German 501st Heavy Panzer Battalion was one of the first two battalions equipped with the Tiger I heavy tank. It appears in this collection because a company of its Tigers took part in the attack at Sidi Bou Zid on 14–15 February 1943, and because the Tiger’s reputation shaped how Americans remembered the whole campaign.
Illustration A neutral marker made for this site, not a unit emblem.
A new tank, in small numbers
The 501st was formed at Erfurt on 10 May 1942 from two heavy tank companies. Its tank was the Tiger I, armed with an 8.8 cm gun and carrying 100 mm of armor on the hull and turret front, and it weighed about 57 metric tons. Its establishment was about 20 Tigers and 25 Panzer IIIs, the lighter tanks serving as escorts. The battalion was sent to Tunisia as the Axis built up its bridgehead after the Allied landings in Algeria and Morocco, and its first three Tigers landed at Tunis on 23 November 1942 (Wikipedia, citing Schneider and Jentz; Chapter 3).
The Tigers went into action almost at once. When Generalleutnant Wolfgang Fischer of the 10th Panzer Division counterattacked toward Tebourba on 1 December, four Tigers had arrived for combat trials, and two of them, still untried, were held in his reserve at Djedeida (Howe, ch. XVII). German unit sources say that three Tigers attacked an olive grove about 5 km west of Djedeida that day and were engaged by American M3 Lee medium tanks at 80 to 100 meters; two Lees were knocked out (Chapter 1; Chapter 3). Americans had met the Tiger in Tunisia before Christmas 1942.
January: against the French
In January the battalion fought mostly against the French XIX Corps on the Eastern Dorsal. Operation EILBOTE, launched on 18 January, drew on the 334th Infantry Division, the 10th Panzer Division and the Italian Superga Division, and its strike force under Col. Friedrich Weber included a company of Tigers. The 756th Mountain Regiment, supported by Tiger and Mark III tanks, broke through the French positions, and an armored group under Lueder pushed up the Kebir valley and reached the road fork southwest of the reservoir by midnight. The French garrisons in the valley had almost no antitank weapons (Howe; Chapter 2).
The second thrust, sometimes called EILBOTE II, came down the Rebaa valley on 31 January with about a dozen tanks of Kampfgruppe Lueder, Tigers among them. It was beaten off by the British 36th Brigade with the 2d Battalion, U.S. 16th Infantry, attached. The Germans lost perhaps four Mark III tanks and one Tiger destroyed, with another damaged; the American battalion lost five officers and about 60 men killed, wounded or missing, and lost Hill 727 (Howe; Mitchell, Warfare History Network).
Sidi Bou Zid, 14–15 February
For Operation Frühlingswind, the Fifth Panzer Army’s attack at Sidi Bou Zid, the 10th Panzer Division formed two groups. Group Gerhardt, built on the 7th Panzer Regiment, was to cross Faïd Pass and swing around Djebel Lessouda. Group Reimann, with the 86th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, a company of Tigers and a platoon of 88 mm guns, was to drive straight at the village. The German unit history used by later writers says that six Tigers and nine Panzer IIIs of the battalion’s 1st Company were attached to the 10th Panzer Division on 8 February (Schneider, as cited in Wikipedia). Howe gives 11 or 12 Tigers in the attack. The two figures cannot be fully reconciled from the sources this collection used.
On the morning of 14 February the observers on Djebel Lessouda counted about 39 Panzer IVs and some Tigers moving around the western side of the ridge. Near the Poste de Lessouda, Lt. Col. Louis V. Hightower’s tank companies met about 20 Panzer IVs supported by guns they took to be 88s and by up to four Tigers, and were outranged. On the 15th a German column reinforced by Tigers headed for Kern’s Crossroads behind the American counterattack. The next evening, by the history of the 443rd Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion, Tiger tanks reached that road junction east of Sbeitla before the Germans attacked the town (Howe; Chapter 3; Chapter 4). Around midnight Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward estimated the force facing him at about nine Tigers and eighty Mark IVs, an estimate made in the dark from fragmentary reports.
German claims that Tigers knocked out 20 Shermans at Sidi Bou Zid cannot be checked, because the American records do not say which German weapons destroyed which tanks. German reports also claim that a Tiger knocked out a Sherman at 2,700 meters on 14 February; that, too, cannot be confirmed from American records (Wikipedia, “501st Heavy Panzer Battalion” and “Tiger I”).
Not at Kasserine
The Tigers did not fight in the Kasserine Pass. When Rommel’s offensive turned toward Thala and Tébessa, Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, commanding the Fifth Panzer Army, kept back part of the 10th Panzer Division, including its heavy tank battalion with the Tigers, in his own sector to the north. The division came to Kasserine at half strength. Kesselring later blamed that decision for the failure of the offensive, and von Arnim defended it; Rommel’s own account names the withheld Tigers among his grievances (Howe; Chapter 5; Chapter 6).
On 26 February 1943 the battalion was redesignated the III. Abteilung of Panzer-Regiment 7, the 10th Panzer Division’s tank regiment. It surrendered in Tunisia in May 1943 with the rest of the Axis forces. A new 501st was formed later in 1943 and served on the Eastern Front (Wikipedia, citing Schneider and Jentz; Chapter 3).
What the record shows
The popular version of Sidi Bou Zid has green American tank crews running into Rommel’s Afrika Korps and its Tigers, which they could not touch. Rommel did not command there, and the Tigers were few. Most of the German tanks were Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs, many of the IVs with the new long 75 mm gun, and the 88s, the 75 mm Pak 40 antitank guns and the dive bombers did at least as much damage as the dozen Tigers. What the Germans had was range, and a way of fighting from halt positions with antitank guns in support that let the Americans come to them across open ground (Howe; Chapter 3).
The gap in range was real. A Sherman’s 75 mm gun was rated to penetrate about 81 mm of armor at 500 yards, enough for the front of a Panzer III or IV but not for the Tiger’s 100 mm; a Sherman could hope to kill a Tiger only from the side or rear at close range. The German weapons office estimated that the Tiger’s gun could penetrate a Sherman’s turret front from 1,800 meters (Bird and Livingston; Jentz and Doyle; as cited in Wikipedia).
The tank’s effect on American soldiers was out of proportion to its numbers. They soon called almost any German tank a Tiger, a habit that lasted to the end of the war in Europe. Army ordnance specialists drew a different conclusion: that Tigers would be rare and that tank destroyers and antitank guns could deal with them. That judgment helped delay the rearming of the Sherman with a more powerful gun until 1944 (Zaloga, as cited in Wikipedia). The Americans’ first close look at the Tiger came in April 1943, when Signal Corps photographers recorded knocked-out Tigers near Béja.
Timeline
- The battalion is formed at Erfurt from two heavy tank companies.
- Its first three Tigers land at Tunis.
- Tigers attack west of Djedeida; two American M3 Lee tanks are knocked out.
- Operation EILBOTE: Tigers support the breakthrough against the French on the Eastern Dorsal.
- Kampfgruppe Lueder is beaten off in the Rebaa valley; one Tiger is destroyed.
- The 1st Company is attached to the 10th Panzer Division, by the German unit history.
- Tigers fight with the 10th Panzer Division at Sidi Bou Zid.
- The heavy tank battalion is held back in the north during the Kasserine offensive.
- The battalion becomes III./Panzer-Regiment 7.
- It surrenders with the Axis forces in Tunisia.
Read the full story
- Chapter 3: Sidi Bou Zid: The Destruction of Combat Command A
- Chapter 2: Faïd, Sened and the Eastern Dorsal: A Thin Line in the Mountains
- Chapter 1: Torch and the Race for Tunis: The Americans Come to North Africa
- Chapter 5: The Pass: The 19th Engineers and Stark Force, 19–20 February
- The Kasserine Pass collection and atlas
By the numbers
Heavy Panzer Battalion 501 by the numbers
Armor and penetration
Millimeters: the Tiger’s frontal armor against the rated penetration of the Sherman’s 75 mm gun at 500 yards
Source: Bird and Livingston, WWII Ballistics; Jentz and Doyle, as cited in Wikipedia; this collection’s Chapter 3
How many Tigers at Sidi Bou Zid?
The counts the sources give for 14–15 February 1943; they cannot be fully reconciled
Source: George F. Howe, Northwest Africa (1957); Wolfgang Schneider, Tigers in Combat (2004), as cited in Wikipedia
In pictures
More photographs
In the art of World War II
Insignia, posters and art
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Sources
- George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1957), chapters XVII, XXI–XXIII.
- Wolfgang Schneider, Tigers in Combat, vol. I (Stackpole, 2004), and Thomas L. Jentz, Panzertruppen, as cited in Wikipedia, “501st Heavy Panzer Battalion” and “Tiger I.”
- Steven J. Zaloga, Osprey studies of American and German armor, including Kasserine Pass 1943 (2005); Bird and Livingston, WWII Ballistics, as cited in Wikipedia, “75 mm gun M2–M6.”
- Robert A. Newton, “Battle for Kasserine Pass,” World War II magazine, September 2002; 443rd Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion history (Texas Military Forces Museum); Mitchell, Warfare History Network, on EILBOTE.
- Further reading: Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (1967); Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn (2002).