Every American infantryman in Europe heard the same thing: the M1 bazooka cannot kill a Tiger tank. The armor is too thick. The rocket is too weak. Don't even try.
On December 5, 1944, Sergeant George Burns didn't have the luxury of following that advice. A Tiger had broken into his company's position in Lucherberg, Germany. The anti-tank gun — gone. The company commander — wounded. Both bazookas — destroyed two days earlier. And the one American vehicle built specifically to kill German tanks was sitting fifty yards away with its hatches locked and its crew refusing to come out.
Burns was twenty-one. He had a weapon the Army told him was useless, a volunteer he'd never met, and ten rockets. What happened over the next fifteen minutes earned him the Distinguished Service Cross — and exposed a crack in American tank doctrine that ran all the way back to Washington.
The crew of that tank destroyer never opened their hatches. Burns never learned his loader's name.
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