Tank Destroyer Battalion (United States) - Sicily and Italy

Sicily and Italy

The second theater of operations for tank destroyer units was the Italian campaign, beginning with the landings in Sicily in July 1943, and continuing into mainland Italy that September. While German armor was present in the theater, it was rarely committed to battle in large groups; this was partly a result of the broken, heavily cultivated, terrain, but also due to a growing conservatism and defensive ethos on the German side. As a result, the tank destroyers found themselves used for a variety of other tasks, most commonly local artillery support.

A report in late 1944, reviewing the use of tank destroyer units in combat, found that in practice they were often expected to fulfill the roles of armor support:

During the planning stage for an attack it was found that practically without exception the infantry commanders were reasonable in their requirements and expectations of support by the tank destroyers. But once the battle was joined, the original plans with few exceptions were often discarded and the destroyers were ordered to go forward as tanks ahead of the infantry...

When operating with armored forces, it was common to attach a company or a platoon to a tank battalion or company, and use them in an overwatch role. When operating in defense, tanks and tank destroyers were pooled as a rear-area reserve and brought into the line to blunt tank-led attacks against infantry positions.

A major lesson learned from the Italian campaign was that the conversion to towed guns was not as advantageous as had been previously thought. The mobility and protection of the tank destroyer was found to outweigh the towed anti-tank gun's low profile. At Anzio, a number of British towed anti-tank gun units were overrun and knocked out simply because they were unable to redeploy on short notice, while self-propelled guns were able to fall back and continue fighting.

In Italy, the M3 GMC was replaced by the M10. Although the M10 was incapable of dealing with the frontal arc of Panther tanks and Tiger tanks, it was more than efficient against most enemy armor encountered in Italy, and against heavy tanks from the flank. The M18 was first deployed in the summer of 1944, and was not seen as a great success in the Italian theater; its high speed was only of limited use in the restricted terrain, and as a result it was effectively a slightly up-gunned but substantially less survivable M10.