The attack begins

At 23:00 hours on 7 August, 1020 RAF bombers began the preparatory bombardment. As the 3517 tonnes (3462 tons) of bombs were exploding, the armoured columns started their engines and moved forward into the attack. For the next six hours, the columns pushed nearly 5km (3.1 miles) into the stunned German 89th Infantry Division. Resistance was patchy, but in terms of the previous attempts to take the Bourguebus ridge, the assault troops suffered relatively low casualties: in the region of 300 men. As dawn was breaking, the Allied troops had to all intents and purposes blasted open the German front. Shell-shocked survivors were streaming away from the fighting. For a few hours only one man stood between the Allies and victory: the Hitlerjugend's commander, Kurt Meyer.

He had rushed to the threatened sector to carry out a reconnaissance, and early in the morning stood on Route 158 as hordes of fleeing German infantry rushed past. Armed only with a carbine, he shamed the soldiers into standing firm with a couple of Hitlerjugend Panzerjöger IVs that had just arrived in the village of Cintheaux.

Wittmann's last battle

By midday, Meyer had brought up his battalion of Panzer IVs, some Panzerjöger IVs, and Michael Wittmann's Tigers to his improvised "stop line". Not content with just holding the onslaught, Meyer was going to attack. His mind was made up when he saw an American B-17 flying overhead dropping flares to mark targets for follow-up waves of bombers. The panzers would be safer from the American bombs if they mixed with the British, Canadian and Polish tanks. Wittmann's Tigers led the Panzerkeil (or wedge) forward. Meyer climbed on to the Waffen-SS ace's Tiger tank to wish him luck, not knowing that this would be Wittmann's last battle.

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