TheTroubleshooters.com Home                   Catalog                   World War 2                   World War 1                  Links

Patton's Troubleshooters Book                        Patton's Troubleshooters DVD

The following photos come from the collection of Major Robert Rawls, 305th Combat Engineer Battalion.  Major Rawls passed away recently, and the photos were purchased from his estate. My thanks to Joel Parkinson, whose uncle was in the 80th for making these photos available!

These are tanks of B Company, 702nd Tank Battalion.  The tank in the foreground is named "Hammers O Hell", and belonged to my dear friend, the late Sgt. Amos J. Moore.  Amos was in Lt. "Slim" Rives platoon, so I presume that all the tanks pictured here were from "Slim's" platoon.  The rocket launchers put out a tremendous amount of firepower, but the rockets were nearly impossible to aim.  The rockets were difficult to keep supplied, and the launchers tended to break easily.  The 702nd was the first combat unit to test these launchers in battle.  They didn't kill very many Germans because they were so inaccurate, but they frightened many German soldiers into surrendering out of fear for these hellish weapons.  As quickly as they could, the Red Devils discarded their rocket launchers alongside the road, and went back to fighting their tanks as they were designed for.