   Lieutenant Powers of the 740th Tank Battalion was at the head of a column of fourteen tanks fresh from the repair shops. They had been rushed to the front in response to word of the German breakthrough, and they were now closing in on the leading elements of Kampfgruppe Peiper. Powers had no way of knowing if all the tanks would work properly. He'd find out in combat.
   They soon ran into German tanks. On the narrow and winding road, they blundered into a tank column at the point-blank range of only 150 yards. In a situation such as this, aiming, optics, and gunnery skill count for nothing. The first tank to shoot wins. Powers got off the first shot; the round bounced off the mantlet of the Panther's turret and crashed downward through the deck, killing the driver and bow gunner and setting the tank on fire.
   Next came a Tiger. Powers again got off the first round, but it didn't even dent the Tiger's thick frontal armor. This time, though, the range was greater and somehow the Tiger's answering shot missed -- a good thing, because any hit from the Tiger's huge gun would surely destroy Powers' Sherman. Unfortunately, Power's gun jammed, leaving him sitting helplessly in front of a very big and very angry enemy tank. He couldn't even get off the road to hide -- there was no space to maneuver. Once again the Tiger's 88mm gun roared, and once again the round missed. Then the tank destroyer behind Powers' Sherman fired, and the Tiger flamed up.
   His gunner had by now unjammed the gun, so they pushed forward, encountering a Panther. Once more, Powers' gunner got off the shot, smashing the main gun on the enemy tank. It tried to back up but caught fire. The remaining German tanks turned and ran.
/Tank Combat
     Tanks are not the invulnerable iron monsters Hollywood makes them out to be. As one tanker put it, a tank is like an inverted foxhole. You're out in the open for everybody to see, and everybody shoots at you.
     It's cramped inside a tank. A square inch of wasted space inside a tank can add a hundred pounds to its weight, so there is no wasted space. The crew must squeeze inside with the gun, the engine, the ammo, and all the other equipment. When the gun is fired, the recoil throws it back to the rear of the turret; any arm or leg in the way is crushed.
     You're blind inside a tank. For obvious reasons, there are no windows, just tiny peepholes for the driver and the gunner. An enemy soldier could be right next to you and you'd have no way of knowing. The commander must stick his head out the hatch to look around. That, of course, makes him vulnerable to just about anything.
     A tank's armor is supposed to stop bullets, shrapnel, and other malignant things from entering the tank. If the incoming shot is powerful enough, it will penetrate the armor and enter the tank. At this point, the armor becomes a liability, as it prevents the shot from leaving the tank; instead, the white-hot shot and the fragments of destroyed armor ricochet around inside the tank, destroying everything inside. If an occupant is lucky enough not to be killed outright by this storm of metal, he must immediately get out, for the white-hot fragments will surely ignite flammables, and a tank full of gas, lubricants, and ammunition burns fiercely. All too often, the few escape hatches are jammed, making escape impossible, and the crew burns to death. One witness saw a puddle of human fat spreading under a burnt tank, attracting a horde of multicolored flies./