Battle of the Bulge: How 4th Armored Broke Through to Bastogne (Siege of Bastogne, 1944)

How four Shermans and one road broke the siege of Bastogne on 26 December 1944. The Battle of the Bulge, minute by minute, on a model of the real ground. On 26 December 1944 the 101st Airborne had been surrounded at Bastogne for almost a week, down to about ten shells per gun. That afternoon Lt Col Creighton Abrams sent Team C of the 4th Armored Division, Lt Charles Boggess in the Sherman "Cobra King" in front, straight up the road through Assenois, past eight German anti-tank guns, behind thirteen batteries of American artillery. This video follows the Third Army's turn north, the villages that cost the 4th Armored its tanks, the rush through Assenois, the contact at about 16:45-16:50, and why getting in was the easy part. Sources disagree on several numbers (prisoners, German strength, who "relieved" the town), so the video shows ranges. 0:00 Cobra King, 4:45 pm: first tank to the 101st 0:54 Dec 16–21: Bulge attack, Bastogne cut off 2:28 Dec 22: the surrender demand and “Nuts!” 3:44 Christmas inside the ring: ten shells a gun 5:09 Patton turns the Third Army 90° north 7:08 The rule: break through at one point, never stop 8:13 The real ground: ridges, woods and one road 9:31 Dec 23–25: Chaumont, Warnach and Bigonville 11:18 Dec 26: Abrams picks the road through Assenois 12:58 Concentration Number Nine hits Assenois 14:13 Cobra King races down the village street 16:19 The last two miles to the paratroopers' foxholes 17:36 Dec 27: supply trucks in, 964 wounded out 18:29 Dec 27 on: the corridor holds, but narrowly 19:40 The count: prisoners, losses and who relieved whom 21:48 Why it worked: one point, speed, timing 23:06 What if Abrams had attacked at Sibret instead 23:55 The rule in one line, from Abrams to the Abrams Sources H. M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge (US Army in World War II, Center of Military History, 1965), chapters XIX, XXI and XXIV Dave Melancon, U.S. Army Europe, "'Cobra King' led 4th Armored Division column that relieved Bastogne," army.mil, 2009 Michael E. Bigelow, "Relieving Bastogne (26 DEC 1944)," DVIDS, 2024 (after-action report of the 37th Tank Battalion) The 4th Armored: From the Beach to Bastogne (G.I. Stories, Stars and Stripes, 1945) Stanley Weintraub, "General George S. Patton and the Battle of the Bulge," Military History Quarterly National Park Service, "Eisenhower and the Battle of the Bulge" Combat Studies Institute, 101st Airborne Division's Defense of Bastogne (Fort Leavenworth) Kenneth J. McAuliffe Jr., "The story of the NUTS! reply," army.mil, 2013 Positions and movements are a reconstruction from the accounts above. Archive photos: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-732-0132-43A (Wikimedia Commons: «Hasso von Manteuffel mit Oberst Niemack», Lithuania, 5 August 1944) (Bauer (Propagandakompanie)), CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Archive photos: Imperial War Museums B 13243; Wikimedia Commons; NARA 111-SC-199295; Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... U.S. Army Signal Corps SC 171646, NARA, digitized by Signal Corps Archive, via Wikimedia Commons; U.S. Army Signal Corps photo 183202, NARA, via Wikimedia Commons / DPLA; U.S. Army Signal Corps; Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... U.S. Army photograph; U.S. Army; Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Wikimedia Commons File:M1A2 Abrams, August 14, 2014.JPG — public domain. Archive photo: U.S. Army (army.mil/article/17393, Release #2009-02-24-03); Wikimedia Commons (U.S. Army Photo (photographer not named)), Public domain (PD-USGov-Military-Army). Archive photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps (via olive-drab.com); Wikimedia Commons (U.S. Army Signal Corps photographer (not named)), Public domain (PD-USGov-Military-Army). Archive photo: NARA 111-SC-199295 (Defense Imagery VIRIN HD-SN-99-02733, NARA ID 531242); Wikimedia Commons (Pfc. Donald R. Ornitz, 166th Signal Photo Co., U.S. Army Signal Corps), Public domain (PD-USGov-Military). Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Heights: EU-DEM, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service; SRTM, NASA (via Terrain Tiles on AWS). #BattleOfTheBulge #Bastogne #WW2 #Patton