Ponder on the exploits and death of Trooper Joe Ekins, 88.

[Bootie]

Joe Ekins, formerly of the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, died last Wednesday at the age of eighty-eight. How appropriate an age: “88†[millimetre] was the calibre of the famous – infamous – gun on the German Tiger tank, which on that August day he made such short work of, and in a duel with one of the Waffen SS’s most celebrated “tank aces†SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer (Captain) Michael Wittmann.
Wittman had destroyed nearly three hundred enemy tanks and guns, mainly on the Eastern Front, but he had gained particular notoriety for his ambush of elements of the 7th Armoured Division (Desert Rats) in the battle of Villers-Bocage a week after D-Day, during which he destroyed fourteen tanks, fifteen personnel carriers and two anti-tank guns within the space of fifteen minutes.
Joe Ekins, at the time a 21-year-old tank gunner, had only ever fired five practice rounds before his encounter with Wittmann near St Aignan de Cramesnil, but in twelve minutes of steady, accurate shooting, the young trooper knocked out three Tigers – including one commanded by the veteran hauptsturmfuehrer – with the 17-pounder gun of his Sherman Firefly.

Later that morning he destroyed another German tank before his own tank was hit.
The Firefly was a specially modified Sherman – an American tank – whose 76mm gun did not have enough “punch†to penetrate the armour of the Tiger. The Firefly variant carried the British 17-pounder gun, which had a greater muzzle velocity.
The Wittmann kill was claimed by a number of Allied units, including Canadians, Poles and various airborne forces, but later evidence showed that it was Trooper Ekins’ Firefly that fired the fatal shot.
In an interview for the Mail in 2006 he recounted how, following the D-Day landings, he and his comrades had been stuck in the bridgehead for six weeks as the British tried to batter their way through the German defensive lines.

http://mallinsonblog.dailymail.co.u...-exploits-and-death-of-trooper-joe-ekins.html

 

[mTk]

Or...
The most recent claim
After discrediting the main claimants other than Joe Ekins, Brian Reid then discusses another possibility, as there was another armoured regiment much closer to Wittmann’s tank. A Squadron of The Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment, 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade, commanded by Major Sydney Radley-Walters, was positioned in the chateau grounds at Gaumesnil. This area, south of Hill 112, is parallel with the Delle de la Roque woods and the location of Joe Ekin’s Firefly. The regiment at this time was made up of several Sherman III and 2 Sherman VC, whose tankers had created firing holes in the property's wall. From this position, based on verbal testimony of the Canadian tankers, they engaged several tanks (including Tigers) and self-propelled guns driving up the main road and across the open ground towards Hill 112.[SUP][/SUP]

Reid puts forth the opinion that, with the range Joe Ekins would have to fire over to hit Wittmann’s tank,[SUP][/SUP]the proximity of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment to the tank, no other evidence to suggest anything other than tank-to-tank combat, that the latter are most likely responsible for Wittmann's death.[SUP][/SUP] Because of changes in land use from orchards to ploughed fields since 1944, it is problematic to establish the exact location of Ekin's Firefly at the beginning of the engagement and even more difficult to know the position of the claimed kill shot as Ekins' tank moved during the engagement. At a minimum, the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry was positioned over 1,000 metres (1,100 yd) away, possibly as much as 1,200 metres (1,300 yd), while the Canadian tanks were only around 500 metres (550 yd) away.[SUP][/SUP] Recent field studies that located the exact position of the Sherbrooke tanks puts the range at less than 150 yards (140 m) and the firing angle from their position behind the Chateau's now removed east wall coincides exactly with the damage area to Wittman's Tiger in the left rear engine compartment. There are no official Canadian records to back up this position due to the Regimental Headquarters halftrack being destroyed by a stray USAAF bomb.[SUP][/SUP]


Ken Tout, who at the time of Operation Totalize, was a member of C Squadron of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, published a postwar account of the battle and of Wittmann’s demise. Tout credited Joe Ekins at that time. However, when researching his new book on the subject, he interviewed former members of A Squadron, Sherbrooke Fusiliers. In this book, for the first time, he does not claim Wittmann for the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry and acknowledges that other regiments were in the area at the time and had engaged the attacking Tigers.[SUP][/SUP][SUP][/SUP]


With the Tigers caught in a crossfire between the Northamptonshire Yeomanry and the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment, it is understandable that both regiments claimed to have destroyed his tank. The significant hole in the belief that Ekins was Wittman's killer is that, if Wittman's Tiger was one of three Tigers engaged and destroyed by Ekins that afternoon - a truly remarkable feat of tank gunnery, who then is responsible for one of the three Tigers nearest to where Ekins fired from. He killed three Tigers and if one was Wittman's, someone else had to engage and kill one of these three destroyed Tigers within 800 yards (730 m) of Ekins position. There is no record or claim by any other Allied tank for any of these three Tigers.


In the appendix of “No Holding Back”, devoted to Wittmann’s demise, there is a topographical map[SUP][/SUP] of the engagement, diagrams of the tank[SUP][/SUP] and the location of the shell strike.[SUP][[/SUP]

 

[mTk]

Sorry, double post. Doh!

 

[Bootie]

I dont think we will ever know.

 

[Bert Blitzkrieg]

A bit like "who killed Von Richthofen".