The schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 101, part of the I.SS-Panzerkorps, was tasked with holding the area of Caen and distinguished themselves during the fighting defeating a British armoured breakthrough near the village of Villers-Bocage and played a major role in the halting of the British Epsom and
Goodwood operations. Notable members: SS-Obersturmführer Karl Möbius (credited with 125 destroyed enemy tanks), SS-Sturmbannführer
Heinrich Kling (credited with 51 destroyed enemy tanks), SS-Unterscharführer Karl-Heinz Warmbrunn (credited with 57 destroyed enemy tanks), SS-Obersturmführer Helmut Max Ernst Wendorff (credited with 84 destroyed enemy tanks), SS-Hauptsturmführer
Michael Wittmann (credited with 138 destroyed enemy tanks) and SS-Oberscharführer Balthasar Woll (credited with 100+ destroyed enemy tanks). Left image: Knight's Cross with Oakleaves holder Michael Wittmann, here as a SS-Obersturmführer, photographed atop his Tiger tank in May 1944 in northern France. Right image: the schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 101 also possessed experienced section leaders. Picture shows Waffen-SS Tiger commanders of the famous Panzer ace SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann's IInd Company in front of a Pz.VI Tiger in the Norman countryside in 1944. From left to right: covered by Wittmann is SS-Rottenführer Josef
Jupp Sälzer, SS-Hauptscharführer Hans Höflinger (Tiger n°213), SS-Oberscharführer Georg Lötzsch (Tiger n°233), the Knight's cross holder SS-Oberscharführer Balthasar
Bobby Woll (Tiger n°212) and SS-Unterscharführer Karl-Heinz Warmbrunn (Tiger n°214). Hans Höflinger's Tiger n°213 was lost during Wittmann's fatal counter-attack north of Cintheaux on August 8 1944. According to Patrick Agte's book "Tiger", Höflinger survived the attack and ended the war fighting the Soviet Bolsheviks in
Operation Spring Awakening in March 1945. Both photos by Kriegsberichter Hans Scheck, France 1944. Credit: Julius Jääskeläinen. Commons: Bundesarchiv.
The highly-decorated Waffen-SS tank ace Michael Wittmann was in a deadly class of his own - having destroyed nearly 300 enemy tanks and guns before he was killed. Modest soldier who was a true war hero.
ReplyDeleteBalthasar Woll was on August 8, 1944 (the day Wittmann and his crew died) in recovery at a military hospital and survived the war. He died in 1996.
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