The Americans break through Hausser's front

The offensive got off to an inauspicious start on 25 July when cloud obscured part of the target. Elements of the bomber force dropped their deadly cargo on US troops waiting to go into the attack, killing more than 100 and wounding almost 500. The effect on the Panzer Lehr Division, positioned in the centre of the target box, was even worse, though. Almost 1000 men died, and a regiment and a whole kampfgruppe were put out of action, along with all the division's tanks and guns. Despite this onslaught, the survivors came out of their trenches and bunkers fighting, holding up the offensive for 48 hours. Then Bradley committed the 2nd "Hell on Wheels" Armored Division en masse. Unlike Dietrich east of Caen, Hausser had no reserves to plug the breach in his line because Bradley had ordered all his troops to stage diversionary attacks to tie down German forces along the whole of the Normandy Front. Disaster threatened.

Hausser had tried to pull Das Reich's Panther battalion out of the line to the west to throw against the American breakthrough, but it could not disengage in time. In the end only five Panthers made it to help the Panzer Lehr, and they were soon put out of action. The breakthrough broke the cohesion of the German front. By 27 July, huge columns led by 600 American tanks were streaming south towards Avranches with nothing to stop them. German units started to crack under the strain of constant American attacks and almost six weeks of fighting without relief. The Das Reich and 17th SS Divisions managed to pull back and form a line north of Coutances on 27 July, which held the Americans at bay for a day. Then the front behind them collapsed, and the two Waffen-SS divisions and the army's 353rd Infantry Division were soon trapped in a pocket south of Roncey. Fuel was running short and scores of tanks had to be abandoned. In the chaos, Das Reich's commander, SS-Brigadeführer Heinz Lammerding, was wounded and then his replacement, the division's panzer regiment commander, SS-Obersturmbannführer Christian Tychsen, was killed in action. On the night of 28/29 July, the trapped troops made a bid for freedom, cutting through a loose cordon of US troops. Dodging past most of the Americans, the column clashed with a US armoured regiment.

The American tanks came off worst in the encounter, and by dawn on 30 July the three units were free. In their wake they had left roads littered with abandoned tanks, trucks, guns and other debris of war. US troops rounded up 4000 prisoners in the aftermath of the German escape bid. By the end of the month, some 20,000 Germans would be in American prison camps and Patton's tanks would be in Avranches.

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