U.S. attack
Before daylight on 4 April, the third
battalion of the 100th Division's
398th Infantry Regiment slipped silently across the Neckar in assault boats a mile or so north of Heilbronn, starting from the suburb of Neckargartach. As the men turned south toward the city after daybreak, a German battalion, using, in some cases, tunnels to emerge in the rear of the U.S. troops, counterattacked sharply. The ensuing fight forced the American infantrymen back to within a few hundred feet of the river. There they held, but not until another battalion of the 398th crossed under fire in late afternoon were they able to resume their advance. Even then they could penetrate no deeper than , scarcely enough to rid the crossing site of small arms fire. Until the bridgehead could be expanded, engineers had no hope of building a bridge. Later on 4 April, General Burress of the 100th Division had the
397th Infantry Regiment cross the Neckar just south of the 398th's position. Although three of the 100th Division's battalions eventually crossed into the little bridgehead north of the city to push south into a collection of factories on the northern outskirts, the going always was slow. Since the crossing site remained under German fire, engineers still had no hope of putting in a bridge. Without close fire support, the infantrymen depended upon artillery on the west bank of the Neckar, but fire was difficult to adjust in the confined factory district. Protected from shelling by sturdy buildings, the Germans seldom surrendered except at the point of a rifle, though many of the Hitler Youth had had enough after only a brief flurry of fanatic resistance. At one point, in response to intense
mortar fire, a
platoon of Hitler Youth soldiers ran screaming into American lines to surrender while their officers shot at them to make them stop. During the night of 5 April, a battalion of the 397th Infantry crossed the Neckar south of Heilbronn and found resistance at that point just as determined. There engineers had nearly completed a bridge during the afternoon of the 7th when German artillery, controlled by observers in the hills on the east edge of Heilbronn, found the range. Although the engineers at last succeeded early the next morning, less than a company of tanks and two platoons from the
824th Tank Destroyer Battalion had crossed before German shells again knocked out the bridge. Two days later much the same thing happened to a heavy
pontoon ferry after it had transported only a few more tanks and tank destroyers across. On 8 April, the U.S.
399th Infantry Regiment crossed the Neckar to the south of Heilbronn, moving into southern industrial suburbs and the village of Sontheim. Most of Heilbronn was under U.S. control by 9 April, but not until 12 April was the rubble of Heilbronn cleared of Germans and a bridge built across the Neckar. On that day, the 397th Infantry took two hill summits to the east of the city, nicknamed "Tower Hill" and "Cloverleaf Hill". These actions, coupled with the general advance of all three U.S. regiments, signaled the end of organized German resistance in Heilbronn. In nine days of fighting, the 100th Division lost 85 men killed and probably three times that number wounded. In the process, men of the 100th captured 1,500 Germans. The U.S.
63rd Division, aided in later stages by tanks of the
10th Armored Division, had in the meantime kept up constant pressure against the enemy's line along the Jagst River, driving southwestward from the vicinity of the Jagst-
Tauber land bridge in hope of trapping the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division near the confluence of the Jagst and the Neckar. Although a contingent of armor at last established contact with the 100th Division near Heilbronn on 14 April, the panzer grenadiers had left. ==Assessment==