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The 486th AAA Battalion
SAMPLES OF ACTION



Below: the first Allied gun crew to shoot down
a German plane from German soil.


  The M-16 half-track crew from Battery C (above) gave the Spearhead Division another "'first" in its assault on the Third Reich. On September 18th, 1944, a small flight of enemy planes attacked the 67th Armored Field Artillery positions southeast of Brand, Germany. Cpl. Stanley Zyza's crew, with Tec 5 Russ Eick as the main gunner, opened up as one plane broke through the clouds. Eick's aim with the quad-.50 's proved dead on, as the FW-190 fighter-bomber, with smoke pouring from the motor, took a sharp dive, crashed and burned, killing the pilot. War had come home to the Luftwaffe. The First United States Army awarded Battery C credit for (of all Allied units in Europe) shooting down the first German plane with guns emplaced on German soil. From left to right in above photo: Cpl. Stanley J. Zyza, Pfc. Stephen J. Spirounias, Tec 5 Russell A. Eick, Pfc. Marcus C. Palombi, and Tec 5 Donald M. Dean.


A crew that stopped a moving German Army train in its tracks,
destroyed the cargo and forced surrender of its troops.


 

On August 29th , 1944, near Braine, France, the 486th had been tipped off by the Free French Underground that a trainload of Germans was due along a certain track. An M-15 half-track from Battery C commanded by Sgt. Hollis Butler was hurridly moved into position, training its 37 mm cannon and two .50 caliber's on the track Approximately fifteen minutes later the train came puffing into view. A 37 mm high-explosive round blew apart the locomtice engine, stopping the train dead. The crew continued firing, including racking the train cars with the .50's with devastating effect. One hundred and fifty prisoners were taken, thirty were wounded, and much equipment including a Mk IV tank and four medium tanks was destroyed. Twenty-five Germans were killed. All crew members were rewarded with Bronze Stars and Sgt. Butler, in addition, received the French Croix de Guerre. From left to right in above photo: Sgt. Hollis B. Butler, Cpl. James A. Cavanaugh, Jr., Tec 5 Raymond J. Nareau, Pfc. Benjamin Santorello, Pfc. John W. DeGrasse, Pfc. Luc U. Pomerleau, and Tec 5 Albert M. Riccio.



The Story of "One Shot Webb"

 

Just inside Belgium near Mons on Sept. 2, 1944, a German vehicle towing a multiple 20 mm anti-aircraft mount was trying to escape by bypassing a 3rd Armored Div. column, and was covering its retreat with a light machine gun. Cpl. Earle Webb's Battery A M-15 half-track was the last vehicle in the column. Its 37 mm cannon was in a horizontal position covering the rear as the enemy vehicle approached. Webb waited until it was close enough so that he felt he could not miss. He put one round of high explosive through the windshield, killing one man outright and wounding the rest. Incredibly, the enemy vehicle continued rolling forward and came to rest within three feet of the muzzle of the 37 on Webb's track.

On October 18, 1944, Cpl. Webb was again the gunner of the 37 mm on his track in an area that was under intermittent German artillery fire. Suddenly a German aircraft appeared and Webb wheeled into action in his usual methodical but quick way. He fired a single shot from his gun and there was instantly no doubt about the result. The shell exploded in the fuselage just forward of the tail and breaking the plane in two in a most dramatic and spectacular way. Shouts of disbelief rang out from nearby troops. This act, and the event of stopping the enemy vehicle near Mons with one shot, gave Webb what was to be a life-long nickname - "One Shot Webb."


Luftwaffe Russian-front veteran is shot down
on his first attack against American troops.

 

On December 3, 1944, Luftwaffe planes came over 3rd Armored positions in numbers during the grind toward the Roer River. It was one of the few times that they dared to show themselves at low altitude. It was a stormy day, and the clouds offered good cover at a low ceiling. An M-16 half-track from Battery A, commanded by Cpl. Joseph Makauska, was in position on a wooded strip between two open valleys. Tec 5 Dominic Rizzo was manning the quad-.50's. The majority of the enemy planes came down the valley to the M-16's rear and out of the field of fire. Suddenly an ME-109 dropped out of the clouds and came directly toward their vehicle. Rizzo opened fire just as the plane dropped its wing bombs and banked away. The bombs caused no casualties, but the .50's had found their mark, and the 109 was smoking. The pilot made a forced landing in a field between 3rd Armored outposts and the German lines, and the infantry captured him. He told interrogators that he had made 268 missions over Russian lines without being shot down, but this was his first and last trip over American territory. Others on the M-16 crew were Tec 5 Albenie Dubay, Pfc. Thomas Skidgel, and Pfc. Abraham Schiller.


 

ADDITIONAL SAMPLE ACTION


Attack on Enemy Tank Crew

During the night of July 31, 1944, in northern France, Capt. Philip Shaw commanding Battery B discovered a Mark V tank while on a reconnaissance. This tank was parked just over the hedgerow from the battery's position. Crawling under the tank, Capt. Shaw attempted to blow it up with a hedgerow breaching charge, but this was thwarted when the tank started up and slowly began to move away. Capt. Shaw and two men jumped onto the rear deck of the tank and attacked the crew. An incendiary grenade was a good enticement for the Germans to abandon the vehicle. One of the Germans was killed with a hatchet, a traditional American weapon.


German Infantry's Worst Nightmare

In the city of Mons, Belgium, on Sept 3, 1944, Sgt. Stone's M-16 squad from Battery A opened up its quad-.50's at a group of thirty German foot soldiers who had refused to surrender and were returning fire. Twenty-five were killed in less than a minute.


Trapped Behind German Lines

On the night of the Dec. 24, 1944 in the Battle of the Bulge, a group of vehicles from Battery B became trapped behind German lines. The order then came to destroy all equipment and prepare to move out on foot. Since fire and noise were prohibited, everything had to be destroyed as quietly as possible. Radios were crushed, tires and tracks chopped up, transmissions were filled with water, and ammunition buried in an old well. That included the destruction of an M-15, M-16, and a one-quarter ton truck. Then out they came on Christmas night. They walked for fourteen hours and covered about twenty-three miles, passing through a German artillery battery where they could hear the battery executive giving firing orders. Sgt. Sawtelle was the only Battery B man missing at the end of the march; he came out alone three days later.


Persuasion to Surrender

About one mile south of Paderborn, Germany, on March 30, 1945, Sgt. Nevers and Sgt. Cunningham of Battery C cleaned out a woods full of fanatical SS troopers who had been firing panzerfausts and schmeiser pistols at the 67th Field Artillery's men. Approximately three hundred of the German troops had been in this woods, but repeated splintering of the trees with the quad-.50's changed their minds about fighting, and there was a mass surrender.


486th Casualties - Never to be Forgotten

Ironically the 486th AAA Battalion suffered quite a few casualties in the closing days of the war during April, 1945. Just before reaching the Elbe and the Mulde Rivers the second platoon command car and jeep of Battery D were hit by an 88 millimeter high explosive shell from a concealed gun two hundred yards from the road. Miraculously the only casualties resulting were some burns. But on April14, Sgt. John Rogers' complete Battery D crew became casualties -- Tec 5 William Weaver and Tec 5 Cecil Howard were killed, and three others wounded. The second platoon of Battery A under 1st Lt. Clinton L. Harris was given the mission of protecting a bridging operation across the Mulde. This operation met with heavy resistance, and in the ensuing battle, an M-16 was hit by bazooka fire, causing the death of S/Sgt. Elmer Smolinsky, Pfc. Clyde Smith, and Cpl. William Bradley. In other combat, and within days of the formal German surrender in May, several 486th men were killed or wounded in action against marauding, die-hard German foot soldiers who were themselves killed or captured.




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