From “An Army at Dawn,” pges. 203-204:
[i]The approaching Mk IV Panzer tanks, (BTN commander, Lieutenant Colonel) Waters soon realized, had a new long-barreled 75mm gun unknown to Allied intelligence (with a) muzzle velocity of nearly 3,000 feet per second was twice that of American tank guns and had correspondingly greater penetrating power.
From the ridge southeast of the farm, Major Siglin, in a tank named Iron Horse, and eleven other Stuarts from Company A now charged down the hill to the valley floor. Machine-gun and tracers rounds lashed the air in crimson flails. The Stuarts main guns barked and barked. An Italian armored car was struck, and lurched to a smoky stop.
The German panzers answered with a deep roar and a Stuart lurched up. Less than a hundred yards away, Lieutenant Freeland A. Daubin Jr., commanding a platoon of three tanks on Company A’s right flank, saw “long searing tongues of orange flame” erupt from every hatch of the shattered tank and “silver rivulets of aluminum” puddle beneath the engine block. Sparks spouted from the barrel as the ammunition began to cook. Thick black smoke boiled form the burning rubber tracks and bogey wheels.
Another Stuart was hit, and another. They brewed up like the first. Crewman tumbled from hatches, their hair and uniforms brilliant with flame, and they rolled across the dirt and tore away their jackets in burning shreds. Others were trapped in their tanks with fractured limbs, and their cries could be heard above the booming tumult as they burned to death in fire so intense it softened the armor plates. Even near misses from the German guns were devastating. A shell that failed to penetrate the hull still carried enough force --thousands of G’s–to shear off a Stuart’s rivet heads, which then ricocheted in the tank like machine-gun bullets…
Wreathed in gray smoke, the panzers closed within 300 yards. Siglin’s Iron Horse and the other surviving Stuarts scooted up and back, their drivers blinded by smoke and dust as they wrestled their gearshifts and steering levers. Compared to the German tank guns, the Stuart 37mm “snapped like a cap pistol,” a platoon leader observed. “Jerry seemed annoyed.” Lieutenant Daubin on the right flank pumped more than eighteen rounds at a single German Mk IV; the shells simply bounced off the the bard plates, which shed “sparks like a power-driven grindstone.” Daubin tapped furiously tap-danced furiously on his driver’s shoulders and shouted instructions to zigzag backwards. At less than fifty yards, and panzer round struck the forward hatch and the Stuart’s front end buckled like a tin can hit with a hammer. The blast killed the driver and blinded the bow gunner. Bullets cut down the loader as he climbed from the hatch. Wounded but alive, Daubin tumbled to the ground and crawled into a ditch…
In ten minutes half of Captain Siglin’s twelve tanks had been destroyed. But now Waters sprang the trap for which A Company had been the bait. In their zeal to attack Siglin’s Stuarts, the Germans failed to notice Major Tuck’s Company B hidden behind the ridge just north of the entrance to Chouigui Pass. As the Axis formation passed, less than a hundred yards away, Tuck and his tanks came pounding over the crest of the hill to fall on the enemy flank and rear. At point-blank range even the squirrel gun’s two-pound shell could punch through the thin armor on the panzer engine doors and docks. The enemy tried to wheel around a bit but it was too late. Dozens of American rounds ripped into the German tanks. Seven panzers were destroyed, including a half-dozen new (up-gunned variant of the) Mk IVs.
Axis survivors fled down the Tine, pursued by yelling, vengeful Americans… [/i]
–Rick Atkinson