12th SS Rolled Into Krinkelt. The Fog Killed Its Tanks

12th SS Rolled Into Krinkelt. The Fog Killed Its Tanks December eighteenth, nineteen forty-four. A Panther of the Twelfth SS Panzer Division noses down a farm lane in Rocherath, its long seventy-five millimeter gun swinging for a target it cannot find. Thirty yards to its side, an American crew waits in a barn. Their gun cannot punch through that Panther's front plate. On the field today: December 1944: the 12th SS Panzer Hitlerjugend rolls Panthers into the twin villages of Krinkelt and Rocherath, the best tank on the north shoulder of the Bulge, aimed at the road to the Meuse. Fog cuts sightlines to a few yards and drops the fight to point-blank, cancelling the Panther's long 75mm gun and thick frontal armor in the narrow village lanes. PFC William Soderman's bazooka disables three Panthers at point-blank near Rocherath; the 644th TD Battalion's M10s destroy 17 tanks; two Shermans knock out five Panthers boxed into a street. The 2nd and 99th Divisions trade the villages for time and fall back intact onto Elsenborn Ridge, which the Sixth Panzer Army never took. The 12th SS loses dozens of tanks in two farm towns and 8,569 casualties of 20,540 men across the Ardennes, beaten not by a better machine but by weather and a lane too narrow to turn a Panther around in. The steel sheet on Krinkelt-Rocherath is pinned below the video. Subscribe for more armor history, and pick the next duel in the comments. #WW2 #BattleoftheBulge #Panther #12thSS #ElsenbornRidge #Tanks