At 10:42 a.m. on December 1, 1944, a 26-year-old lieutenant named Alfred Rose pressed his eye to the rubber cup of an unfamiliar gunsight and did something nobody had ever trained him to do.

Three weeks earlier, he hadn’t even met his crew. Now he was about to take a shot with a brand-new weapon at a range that armored doctrine said was essentially fantasy.

The shot worked.

It would stand for nearly half a century as one of the longest recorded tank-versus-tank kills in military history.

This is the story of how a green tank destroyer officer, a hurriedly fielded American vehicle, and one German Panther on the wrong road at the wrong time produced an engagement that still lives in the footnotes of armored warfare.

A New Gun for a Deadly Problem

By late 1944, the U.S. Army in northwest Europe had a big problem with a very specific face: the German Panther.

Its thick, sloped frontal armor and high-velocity 75 mm gun meant that:

It could knock out most American tanks at long range.

American tank destroyers, like the M10 Wolverine with its 3-inch gun, often had to close inside 500 yards to have any hope of penetrating a Panther’s armor.

In practice, that meant the same grim pattern over and over:

The Germans spotted first, fired first, and the first hit often turned an American vehicle into a burning wreck before the crew even knew what was shooting at them.

By November 1944, the 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion, to which Lieutenant Rose had just been assigned, had already lost 11 tank destroyers and 17 crewmen in a month. Most of those losses came at ranges where German crews remained comfortable and American crews were fighting for survival.

The Army’s answer arrived late in the war and just in time: the M36 Jackson.

Built on the proven Sherman chassis.

Armed with the 90 mm M3 gun, adapted from anti-aircraft artillery.

Capable—on paper—of punching through Panther and Tiger armor at 1,000 yards and beyond.

The M36 was a huge improvement. But there was a catch:

The crews had just gotten them.

A New Weapon, a Thin Learning Curve

Lieutenant Alfred Rose had been with the 814th for only three weeks.

He’d fired the M36’s 90 mm gun exactly four times in training.

He was still learning:

The traverse and elevation controls in the cramped turret.

The markings in the M76F telescopic sight, which ran all the way out to a range setting of 4,600 yards.

How the Jackson handled compared to the older M10s.

The truth was simple and unsettling: he didn’t have the kind of instinctive familiarity with his weapon that experienced gunners develop over months of combat.

He was parked on high ground northeast of Begg, Germany, in support of Operation Clipper, the push against the Sigfried Line fortifications around Geilenkirchen. Across the sector, elements of the German 5th Panzer Army were maneuvering with Panthers and self-propelled guns. Counter-attacks were a daily threat.

The ridge his tank destroyer occupied provided:

Excellent sightlines across open countryside.

Clear views of roads and distant treelines.

It also made him a potential target for German observers and artillery.

But on that December morning, the first move wasn’t made by the Germans.

It was made by Rose’s right hand on the traversing handle.

A Silhouette at the Edge of What’s Possible

At about 11:15, something dark appeared at the far edge of his sight picture.

He fine-tuned the elevation and traverse wheels. The shape resolved into a familiar profile:

Low hull

Long gun barrel

Sloped armor plates

It was a Panther, moving on what appeared to be a road or highway, at a steady speed, perpendicular to his position. Perfect broadside—but at extreme distance.

In most armored fights in Europe:

Engagements took place at 500–800 yards.

1,000-yard shots were considered long.

Anything beyond that was artillery business, not tank gunnery.

The M76F sight in front of Rose, however, had range markings all the way up to 4,600 yards, the maximum distance at which the sight was calibrated.

He had never heard of anyone shooting at a tank that far away.

His first instinct:

Call it in and let somebody else deal with it.

But the Panther wasn’t being cagey. It wasn’t weaving or taking cover. It was simply rolling along that distant highway, unaware that an American tank destroyer on a ridge 2½ miles away had just drawn a bead on it.

Rose took a harder look through the optic.

The men who had designed that sight and that gun had engraved those 4,600-yard markings for a reason. The 90 mm gun could throw a round that far. The question was whether a human could hit anything at that distance.

He decided to find out.

Improvising a Ballistics Problem With Seconds to Spare

Rose called out the contact to his commander:

“Panther, extreme range, moving left to right.”

The commander joined him and took a look through a second optic. After a pause, he gave Rose the kind of backing that matters in a turret:

“Rose’s call. Rose’s shot.”

Now the real work began.

The tank was:

Moving laterally (left to right).

At a range he roughly estimated at 4,000+ yards.

Oblivious to their presence.

The Jackson’s main ammunition at the ready was the M82 armor-piercing capped round:

24-pound projectile.

High explosive filler.

Designed to punch through armor, then detonate inside the target.

At normal combat ranges:

At 500 yards, it could penetrate about 5 inches of armor.

At 1,000 yards, about 4.8 inches.

Panther frontal armor, heavily sloped and thick, was hard to defeat even at modest ranges. But its side armor was relatively thin—roughly 40–50 mm (about 1.6–2 inches). And that, crucially, could be vulnerable at long range.

First problem: range. He needed feedback.

In normal tank combat at a few hundred yards, the idea of “ranging shots” is suicidal. Fire one short, one long, and adjust? You’ve just announced your position to a very angry enemy with a big gun and better armor.

But at 2½ miles, the Panther crew likely wouldn’t hear the gun. They almost certainly wouldn’t see where the shots landed. They might not even know they were under fire.

So Rose did something closer to artillery practice than tank doctrine.

Shot One – Guessing Short

He:

Set his elevation for an estimated 4,000 yards.

Led the Panther by about 50 yards, estimating how far it would travel in the roughly 6 seconds of flight time.

Fired.

The Jackson recoiled. Dust and smoke obscured the sight picture for a moment.

Nothing. The round landed where he couldn’t see it.

Not useful yet.

Shot Two – Finding the Bracket

He:

Increased elevation for 4,500 yards.

Increased his lead slightly, maybe 60 yards, to account for a longer flight time.

Fired again.

This time, as he watched through the optic, he saw it:

A puff of dust on the highway about 20 yards short of the tank.

He’d just turned a guess into data.

Now he knew:

He was very close on elevation.

His lead was nearly correct.

The target was indeed right at the outer edge of his sight.

And with that, he dialed in for the shot that would go into the record books.

The Third Shot: 2.61 Miles

Rose cranked a tiny adjustment:

A hair more elevation, taking the sight to the full 4,600-yard mark.

A small increase in lead, pulling his aim point ahead of the Panther just enough to account for the travel in 7 seconds of flight.

Then he waited a moment for the tank to move into that invisible point where his line of fire and its line of travel would cross.

He pressed the trigger.

The 90 mm round left the barrel at roughly 2,700 feet per second. Over 4,600 yards (2.61 miles), it lost velocity, but it didn’t need full cannon-muzzle energy to do its job. It just needed enough punch left to penetrate the thin side armor of a Panther, and then let the internal explosive filler and the tank’s own ammo do the rest.

Roughly 7 seconds later, Rose saw it through the M76F:

A flash on the Panther’s left side, just behind the front road wheel.

A moment later, a much larger secondary explosion.

He had hit the ammunition storage area.

That kind of hit was catastrophic in any tank, but especially in German designs like the Panther, which carried dozens of 75 mm rounds in that part of the hull. It meant:

The loader was likely killed instantly.

Everyone else in the fighting compartment was either killed or concussed.

Fire would spread rapidly inside the tank.

For Rose, the engagement wasn’t over.

Tank destroyer doctrine was blunt: “Don’t assume it’s dead until it’s burning.”

He fired again. Then again:

A second and third armor-piercing round hammered the same area.

Follow-on high explosive shells ripped into the hulk.

Soon, thick black smoke and flames were pouring from the tank’s turret and hatches. The Panther stopped moving. No crew emerged.

Only then did Rose stop shooting.

What That Shot Really Meant

The battalion’s operations officer later verified the engagement:

Mapped the Jackson’s position northeast of Beek.

Confirmed the line of sight and time of engagement.

Verified that the burning wreck on that distant highway was indeed a Panther and not an American vehicle.

The official after-action record shows:

Panther destroyed at 4,600 yards by Lt. Alfred Rose, M36 Jackson, 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion.

For nearly 50 years, that shot remained:

The longest recorded U.S. tank-versus-tank kill, and

The second longest in the world, surpassed only in 1991 when a British Challenger 1 tank engaged an Iraqi target at about 5,100 yards using laser rangefinders and computerized fire control.

Rose had none of that:

No digital fire control.

No laser rangefinding.

No night vision.

Just optics, mechanical elevation wheels, basic ballistic tables—and two ranging shots that told him what he needed to know.

In cold technical terms, his engagement proved:

The 90 mm M3 gun could be used effectively at the outer limit of its sight’s calibration.

The M76F optics were not just optimistic engineering—they were usable in combat when conditions allowed.

Under ideal conditions—high ground, stationary firing platform, exposed target, no immediate threat—extreme range direct fire against armor was possible.

But those conditions were rare, and Rose knew it.

When the 814th redeployed to fight in the Battle of the Bulge just two weeks later, nothing about that kind of shooting applied. There, he fought Panthers and other German armor:

At 300–800 yards.

In snow, forests, towns, and chaos.

With German guns firing back.

In that fighting, his survival depended not on long-range ballistics, but on reaction time, crew coordination, and the raw nerve to shoot first at “normal” tank ranges.

A Record That Outlasted the War

Alfred Rose survived the war.

He left active service in 1946.

He turned down offers to become an instructor at places like Fort Knox.

He went home and lived quietly, with no memoirs, no TV interviews, no touring lecture circuit.

His 4,600-yard shot sat in the archives, invisible to the public, known only to specialists and those who combed through dusty after-action reports years later.

When British armor set a new record in 1991, the story of that Challenger 1 shot was told with modern flair:

Thermal sights.

Computerized ballistic solutions.

Depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds.

Rose’s shot looks almost primitive by comparison. But that’s exactly what makes it so impressive.

He didn’t prove that every M36 crew should start lobbing rounds at tiny specks on the horizon.

He proved something quieter and more enduring:

That in the right hands, with the right combination of physics, nerves, and opportunity, even “theoretical” capabilities stamped in a manual can become very real on a battlefield.

Why Stories Like This Matter

There’s a reason this engagement matters beyond the trivia of “second longest tank kill ever.”

It reminds us that:

Weapons are only as effective as the people behind them.

Training, doctrine, and engineering set the stage—but individuals still make the calls that change history.

Extreme moments of precision and courage often go unnoticed outside a handful of typed lines in a report.

Most of Lt. Alfred Rose’s kills—46 out of 47—came at ordinary battle ranges, under extraordinary pressure. That’s what kept him and his crew alive.

But on one cold morning northeast of Beek, with time to think and a Panther in his sights so far away it might as well have been on another planet, he took a shot nobody expected to work.

And made it count.

If you’d like more stories like this—about the quiet, precise moments where individuals changed the course of a fight—stick around. These stories are worth keeping alive, just like the men who lived them.