On the battlefields of the eastern and western fronts there was a scourge for the Germans who had scored 139 tank kills, and that man’s name was Michael Wittman! This tanker commanded the mighty Tiger Tank with an 88 millimeter gun, the legendary Maybach diesel engine, and the kind of hardened rolled armor made in German factories that few Allied armored vehicles could penetrate! The Tiger tank could strike US Sherman tanks from 3700 yards and punch through their armor like paper, leaving them burning metal wreckages to cook off their ordnance stored within the crew compartment.

In one battle alone, Wittman and his crew had practically destroyed an entire column of Allied tanks and armored vehicles by themselves! He was the top German tanker who received Adolf Hitler’s personally presented  Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on February 2, 1944, and later awarded him the Swords to the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves in June 1944. The celebrated tank commander mastered the terrain of every battlefield he was deployed in. He was feared by the Allies who lacked a main battle tank of such size, weight, and firepower! In one particular engagement 19 Sherman tanks surrounded and fired upon a Tiger tank scoring direct hits but were unable to kill the crew or stop the German juggernaut as it destroyed everything that opposed it.

A Sherman tank could only hope to get within 500 yards of a Tiger before its 76 millimeter canon had any chance of penetrating the behemoth’s armor, and that meant a death sentence for Sherman’s on the move in columns or cross country when forced to meet the Tiger tanks crew on their terms! Only ambushes by Sherman’s, M- 10 Wolverines tank destroyers or M-36 Jacksons could take out a Tiger if forward reconnaissance had not spotted the trap, but a new development by the British would take away that invincibility from the Tiger tank crews when a Sherman tanks was adapted with a 17 pounder anti-aircraft artillery piece and mounted in an expanded turret that added weight and slowed an 40 mile per hour nimble tank down to a 21 mile per hour top speed tank killer! It would have to lay in wait and strike from behind camouflage to be fully effective.

Over confident and accustomed to field advantage Michael Wittman and his crew went into battle with their typical skill and sense of superiority, but this time they met their match! A British armored group equipped with the Sherman variant equipped with 17 pounder gun targeted Wittman’s panzer with a shot that penetrated the turret blowing off the top of the Tiger and killing the crew instantly! The name of the newly adapted model was the “Firefly” nicknamed because of the blinding muzzle flash that would afflict crewmen if they did not close their eyes when the artillery piece was fired!

Wittman’s tank and crew were destroyed as follows:

• Date: August 8, 1944
• Location: Near the village of Gaumesnil, along the Caen-Cintheaux road in Normandy, France.
• Details: His Tiger I tank (number 007) was knocked out during Operation Totalize, widely accepted to have been destroyed by a British Sherman Firefly tank from the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry.

However, there is a controversy over Wittman’s demise. Another Canadian tank crew claimed to have hit Wittman’s Tiger tank with the kill shot. Now, it gets even more controversial as some witnesses claim that it was an armor piercing rocket from a Hawker Typhoon Fighter Bomber, however historians agree that Michael Wittman’s Tiger tank was destroyed in a tank vs. tank firefight! In the fog of war it is not uncommon for such information to become confused under the murderous conditions of combat! 

The Americans would end up fitting a 90 millimeter canon on the venerable Sherman tank that proved even more deadly and accurate than the British “Firefly” version. One set back of the “Fire Fly” 17 pounder was that it could set foliage used as camouflage ablaze from the muzzle when being fired. This would alert the German tanks as to the location of the British “Firefly” giving away its position and making it vulnerable to a counter strike!

Wittman’s prowess as a tank commander was unquestioned with 139 kills which often demoralized Allied tank crews until new developments changed the odds and the German panzer drivers had much to fear when they took the field against American and British tank crews!