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The one-sided duel with Pat Dyas

As Wittmann's Tiger now moved cautiously towards the centre of town, it passed the side street where the Cromwell of Captain Dyas had been lurking; shortly after seeing the German vehicle rumble past up Rue Georges Clémenceau (today Rue Pasteur), Dyas rolled out after it, a scene witnessed by Lieutenant John L. Cloudsley-Thompson, whose own command vehicle had been one of the the three Cromwells 'brewed up' by Wittmann's Tiger. As Cloudsley-Thompson nervously watched Dyas slowly follow Wittmann up the road, Wittmann's next encounter was with a Sherman Firefly belonging to 'B' Sqn., commanded by Sergeant Stan Lockwood which had turned into Rue Georges Clémenceau from the Place Jeanne d'Arc. Having sustained a light hit from the 17-pdr cannon of Lockwood's Firefly, Wittmann half-turned into a section of wall, causing the rubble to fall down upon the British vehicle.

Amid this confusion Captain Dyas, who had up to this point kept his Cromwell at a safe distance in following Wittmann's Tiger, seized the opportunity to have a crack at his much larger adversary. The brave Dyas did manage to get two 75mm shots off against the massive German vehicle, but instead of claiming his prize he saw both shells bounce harmlessly off the Tiger's thick armour. Dyas was not to get a second chance; with Wittmann now aware of the danger the Tiger's massive gun quickly turned itself on the now helpless and exposed British vehicle, and an accurate shot from Woll succeeded in blowing Dyas clean out of his cupola, leaving him dazed but unhurt. His gunner and driver were not so fortunate, however.

Left: The wreck of a British Cromwell tank knocked out by Wittmann's tiger inside the town of Villers-Bocage. Right: Wittmann's Tiger on the shattered streets of Villers-Bocage, having been knocked out by a British anti-tank gun. The men in the foreground are part of the attached Leibstandarte Panzergrenadier Division.

Huet-Godefroy: Exit and escape

Having turned away from the threat posed by the advancing Cromwells of 'B' Sqn. to the west, Wittmann passed Dyas's burning vehicle and headed back down Rue Georges Clémenceau, whereupon his Tiger was struck on the tracks - its weakest point - by a shell from a British 6-pdr anti-tank gun located in a small side alleyway. Given the earlier exchanges with far heavier Allied weaponry, that the mighty Tiger was disabled by the comparatively lightweight 6-pdr was more than ironic. With one of the drive sprockets damaged by the shell, Wittmann's vehicle ground to a halt in front of the Huet-Godefroy clothes store. Knowing that further resistance was impossible, Wittmann and his crew exited their vehicle in the hope that it might be later retrieved, and succeeded in making their way some fifteen kilometers on foot back to the HQ of the Panzer Lehr Division at Chateau d'Orbois, where Wittmann provided a thorough briefing on the situation. Later that day, tanks belonging to the Panzer Lehr initiated their own counter-attack, accompanied by the 1st Company of the 101st LSSAH led by SS-Hauptsturmführer Rolf Möbius. By this time the element of surprise had been lost, however; there was to be no repeat of that morning's rout.

In all, Wittmann's own calculations amounted to a roll call of some twenty-one enemy tanks and an unspecified number of half-tracks, troop carriers and Bren gun carriers; in what what one of the most astonishing feats of arms during the war, he had more or less single-handedly prevented the British advance. Naturally, the German propaganda agencies had a field day, and bloated kill figures were naturally thrown about: Wittman was initially credited with the single-handed destruction of 27 of the 30 British tanks that had been destroyed. Ever after a more sober analysis however, Michael Wittmann's achievement at Villers-Bocage still stands out as highly significant in the annals of armoured warfare; in one short sortie his Tiger had destroyed a staggering twenty-seven enemy vehicles, including a dozen tanks - five Cromwells, two Sherman Fireflies, three Stuarts, and two commands vehicles, one a Cromwell and the other an M4A4 Sherman.

In all some thirty British tanks were destroyed in and around Villers-Bocage on the morning of 13 June, as well as an unspecified number of other vehicles. On the German side eleven tanks were knocked out or disabled, among them six Tigers including Wittmann's Nr. 222. Three of these six vehicles were later salvaged and repaired. While Michael Wittmann may not have won the battle single-handedly as the German propaganda bulletins at the time suggested, his bold and instinctive action was without doubt the catalyst for an action that had driven the enemy out of Villers-Bocage and left them reeling and on the defensive; it was one of the very few occasions on which the Germans would have any sort of ascendancy during these last two years of the war.

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