XBradTC

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XBradTC

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Leon Kent, who stopped a line of tanks at Battle of the Bulge, dies at 99 – Veterans – Stripes

In the first desperate hours of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, a young Army lieutenant was given an order that seemed impossible: stop a fast-moving column of German tanks from advancing. The three soldiers assigned to the lieutenant were not trained in anti-tank warfare. The only artillery piece available was designed to…

In the first desperate hours of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, a young Army lieutenant was given an order that seemed impossible: stop a fast-moving column of German tanks from advancing.

The three soldiers assigned to the lieutenant were not trained in anti-tank warfare. The only artillery piece available was designed to bring down airplanes, not tanks. And the firing position provided no cover if the tanks returned fire.

A battlefield dispatch from The Associated Press described what happened:

“Anti-aircraft gunners, who stayed behind when the infantry withdrew, played a vital role in preventing a major German breakthrough in Belgium. … One battery, commanded by Lt. Leon Kent of Los Angeles, knocked out five tanks, including one King Tiger tank, in two hours.”

via Leon Kent, who stopped a line of tanks at Battle of the Bulge, dies at 99 – Veterans – Stripes.

Dark days then. And it’s not like AAA crews expected to find themselves on the front lines.

Thank you sir, for your devotion to duty, and a life well lived afterwards.

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  1. captainned

    Dartmouth ’35 and Yale Law ’38. Add 60 years to those and who would think that that man would stand and deliver with a panzer column headed straight for him. Hell, it’d be an oddity that that man was even in service.

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  2. Bill Brandt

    I have to wonder what in the AA arsenol could stop a King Tiger? Heck, most of our tanks couldn’t stop it.

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  3. Craig Swain

    90mm AA gun, which compared very favorably to the German 88mm.

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  4. xbradtc

    Interestingly, there’s a pretty fair number of vets going to Ivies as either undergrads, or more commonly, as grad students. Sadly, they lack the critical mass to move the trajectory of the campus culture.

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  5. Bill

    It was comparable to the German 88, but the US 90mm M2 was not really capable of penetrating a King Tiger head on.

    Kent was interviewed for the Veteran’s Project. The transcript of that is at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp-stories/loc.natlib.afc2001001.07607/transcript?ID=sr0001

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  6. Craig Swain

    I wrote a post on this some time back. There’s a lot of misleading information in the “coffee table books,” with a lot of overlooking the primary source material. The 90mm compared VERY, VERY favorably to the German 88mm (something the Germans admitted as early as 1942). However, there was a problem in regard to the ammunition. As the Ordnance Dpt. figured it was an AA gun, with a secondary role of anti-ship for the Coast Artillery, the AP ammunition was the standard AP-BC projectile. The standard AP projectile, however, was indeed effective against the Tiger with good penetration at shorter ranges. (As you have cited, Kent offers an example of such.) Only mid-war was any effort put to making a proper Anti-tank projectile. And that saw use on M36 TDs and Pershings late in the war. Same improved projectile did good work against T-34s and other AFVs in Korea.

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