Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

Partially refueled, Kampfgruppe Eberbach bolted north along the road to Tula in a sudden burst of speed, bypassing Soviet rifle units and forcing the 11th Tank Brigade to fall back. Despite mud and snow, Eberbach advanced about 20km per day and he attempted a broken-field play when he saw that Tula, a city of 272,000, was garrisoned only by militiamen, anti-aircraft troops and some NKVD troops. Soviet 37mm and 85mm anti-aircraft guns were used to engage Eberbach’s panzers on the road south of Tula, but these were knocked out by sprenggrenate from the 7.5cm howitzers on the Pz.IVs. At 0530 hours on 30 October, Eberbach attacked the thin Soviet defenses in the south end of the city with about sixty panzers and several battalions of infantry. Normally, Soviet militia would have collapsed under tank attack but, in this case, they mounted a stubborn defense that inflicted significant casualties upon Eberbach’s infantry – three company commanders were killed. Soviet 37mm anti-aircraft guns, fired over open sights, damaged a number of German tanks. Unwilling to advance into a city without infantry support and with his ammunition nearly exhausted, Eberbach pulled back to regroup, but his window of opportunity had closed. That night, Polkovnik Ivan Yuschuk’s 32nd Tank Brigade arrived with thirty-four tanks (five KV-1, seven T-34, twenty-two T-60) and a battalion of infantry by rail, followed soon thereafter by three more rifle divisions. Yuschuk launched a counterattack the next morning on 31 October, in an effort to push Eberbach’s forces back from the southern outskirts of the city, but lost two KV-1 and five T-34s knocked out by German tank and anti-tank fire. Eberbach had learned from experience to pull his panzers back when faced by Soviet heavy tanks in daylight and let the 8.8cm flak guns engage the enemy. Unable to storm Tula, Guderian’s spearhead was stymied 160km south of Moscow.

Continued rain and frost made the German logistic situation in Tula even more precarious in the first week of November, with Guderian increasingly dependent upon using captured horse-drawn panje wagons and SPW half tracks to move a bare minimum of fuel and ammunition forward. Morale among Guderian’s troops fell with the thermometer as soldiers were unprepared mentally or materially for living outdoors in freezing conditions. Schweppenburg’s XXIV Armeekorps (mot.) was forced onto the defensive south of Tula and hit repeatedly by small company and battalion-size Soviet counterattacks.

Eventually, the ground began freezing around 11 November and von Schweppenburg’s corps regained some of its mobility. However, Guderian’s Panzermee 2 was scattered across a large area and he now lacked the resources to overcome Tula’s defenses on his own. His nearest railhead was 130km behind his forward forces and the road from Orel to Tula was a mess, so the supply situation was not going to improve anytime soon. General-Leytenant Ivan V. Boldin’s 50th Army was solidly dug in around Tula with six rifle divisions, the 11th and 32nd Tank Brigades and the 131st OTB with 21 Mk III Valentine tanks. Guderian could only commit 3, 4 and 17.Panzer-Divisionen, but he decided to have one last attempt at a pincer attack against Tula, with some help from the XLIII Armeekorps of von Kluge’s 4.Armee. The Germans massed 102 operational tanks from the three panzer divisons into an armoured fist and attacked southeast of Tula at 0530 on 18 November. Panzer crews had white-washed their tanks to provide camouflage on the snow-covered battlefield. Although the first issue of winter clothing (earmuffs and greatcoats) arrived on 7 November, it was only sufficient to equip one-quarter of the troops.¹³⁰ The rest had to operate outside in –25°C (–13°F) cold in their summer uniforms. The Soviet 413th Rifle Division – one of the famed ‘Siberian’ units – was holding the Bolkohovo sector chosen for the German breakthrough; the Siberian troops were tough and inflicted several hundred casualties on the supporting Schützen-Abteilungen, but could not stop massed armour. Matisovich’s 11th Tank Brigade and Yuschuk’s 32nd Tank Brigade had deployed some T-34s and KV-1s forward to support the Siberians, but they were picked off individually by German 8.8cm flak guns. After penetrating the Soviet defenses, the German schwerpunkt fanned out, with the 3.Panzer-Division curving inward toward Tula with fifty tanks, the 17.Panzer-Division heading due north toward Venev with fifteen tanks and the 4.Panzer-Division heading towards Stalinogorsk with thirty-five tanks.¹³¹