The commander of the U. S. Fourth Armored Division, Major General John Wood, and his corps commander, Major General Manton Eddy, believed the first clash was only a local counterattack, not something that should stop the offensive they had already planned for the next day. Only when reports of heavy German movements continued to arrive throughout the night did they cancel the attack and order Combat Command “A” to withdraw and reposition near Arracourt.
By the time Manteuffel’s main attack began at dawn, the Americans knew something was coming. But they did not yet know its size. By mid-morning, the German staff estimate seemed to be proving correct. The armor broke through the American line north of Lunéville and surged toward Clark’s own command post, close enough for his staff to hear the fighting outside their tents.
Behind that leading edge, the unarmored trucks and half-tracks, which supplied the combat command with food, fuel, and radio communications, found themselves trapped between the panzers and the rest of the division, immobilized and cut off. On the map that morning, the attacking force had accomplished what its own planners had promised faster than expected. The fog did not lift, though. It hung over the wheat fields all morning, working against whichever side needed to see the farthest to win.
A Panther could knock out a Sherman from a distance the Sherman’s gun could not answer, and that range gap was the essence of the entire attack plan, summarized in a single number on a specifications sheet. The fog erased that number. At 200 yards, the farthest anyone could see that morning, the Sherman’s 75 mm gun could penetrate the side or rear of a Panther just as easily as the Panther could hit it from the front at a thousand yards; range no longer mattered. What mattered now was which crew saw the other tank first, and the Americans, positioned in ground they had walked over the day before, usually did.
The German tanks were buttoned up, advancing blind, and the Shermans were waiting for them. They knocked out the leading Panthers one by one, creating a pile of burning wrecks that blocked the roads and fields for the rest of the column. Lamisón then pushed a platoon of Shermans forward toward a low hill, letting the column itself try to withdraw across it, and then hit four more tanks from the flank as they passed underneath. The attack stalled.
The Germans tried again with a second wave, and then a third, but each time the Shermans, using the terrain for cover and their speed to reposition, broke up the assaults before they could close. The fog, which had been meant to neutralize the American advantage, now worked against the Germans, who could not see their targets until they were close enough to be seen themselves. By late afternoon, the fighting on the ridge had died down, but the battle for the line was not over. The Germans had committed their main force expecting a breakthrough, and the Americans had held, but the outcome was still uncertain.
The surviving Panthers and self-propelled guns pulled back to reorganize, and the American crews, low on ammunition and exhausted, waited for the next wave. What they did not know was that the German attack had already been broken, not by a lack of will or courage, but by that single number on a specifications sheet: the range advantage that the Panther was supposed to have, and that the fog had taken away. The Battle of Arracourt would continue for days, but from that moment on, the initiative had shifted. The German tankers, who had been told they would sweep the Americans aside, had instead lost nearly a third of their number in a single morning of close-quarters fighting.
The Shermans, which had been expected to be outmatched at long range, had proven deadly at close range, and the open fields east of Nancy, which had looked like perfect tank country, had become a killing ground. Clark’s command post, which had nearly been overrun, was now safe, and the Fourth Armored Division, which had been expected to be surrounded and destroyed, was still holding the line. For the German staff, the arithmetic of the battle was clear: they had lost too many tanks to continue the attack, and the Americans were not going to break.
The surprise, the fog, and the numbers had all been on the side of the attackers, but the battle itself had been decided by the men inside the tanks, who had seen each other first.