The tank duel was just a small slice of the fighting Bates filmed that day in Cologne, but the stunning footage drew plenty of notice, particularly once it made its way into newsreels back home. A frame from that footage became the cover art for Spearhead. He then asked Earley and his men to stand up in the tank so he could film them. Once everything appeared safe, Bates ran toward the Pershing and shouted at Early “I think I got it!” The tank commander was momentarily confused before Bates explained that he believed he had been able to film the encounter. Those three rounds fired by Smoyer from the Pershing’s 90mm gun destroyed the Panther, leaving it a flaming wreck that was still smoking the following day. You can watch the footage and the interview with Bates in this 1994 video produced by the Pikes Peak Library District. … The very second that he stopped, I was shooting by that time, and in the film you can see the armor-piercing shell going through the bottom of the picture on the still shots. About that time, I heard our tank coming up. I was just a little impatient and I got out and I think the German tank … saw me, because he started to turn his turret around.
I sat there and it seemed like forever and a day for them to get started, but of course they had to get all of the mathematics and everything set just exactly right so they knew exactly what they were going to do at the very second they stopped that tank.
Just 21 years old at the time, Smoyer would fire the three shots immortalized on the critical 48 seconds of film Bates shot that day.Īfter his brief scouting missing with Earley, Bates took his small 16mm camera to the mezzanine level of a building on a corner that would give him a clear shot of the action to come. The events of March 6 are painstakingly documented in Adam Makos’ remarkable 2019 book, Spearhead, which follows the tank gunner Clarence Smoyer through the war.
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