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

Von Manstein developed an operation plan dubbed Trappenjad (‘Bustard Hunt’) to crush Kozlov’s 44th, 47th and 51st Armies in a short-term, high-intensity attack. At first glance, the odds did not appear to favor a successful German attack upon the Soviet defensive line centered upon Parpach. Even by stripping all other sectors, von Manstein was only able to concentrate the 22.Panzer-Division, five German infantry divisions and two and a half Romanian divisions to attack a total of nineteen Soviet divisions and four tank brigades (230 tanks). Kozlov had his forces deployed in depth, with General-leytenant Vladimir N. L’vov’s 51st Army defending a 9km-long front in the north with eight rifle divisions, three rifle brigades and two tank brigades and General-leytenant Stepan I. Cherniak’s 44th Army defending the southern sector of the front along the Black Sea with five rifle divisions and two tank brigades. In reserve, Kozlov had two rifle divisions and one cavalry division from General-major Konstantin S. Kolganov’s 47th Army. Under pressure from Stalin to mount another break-out attempt soon, Kozlov intended to launch another offensive in the north and had massed the bulk of his forces to support this plan. Kozlov did not expect a major German attack given that his forces outnumbered the enemy by more than 2–1 and the marshy terrain along the Black Sea coast appeared unfavorable for offensive operations. Furthermore, the VVS-Crimean Front had controlled the skies over the eastern Crimea for months and Kozlov assumed that Soviet air superiority would deter a German offensive.

However, Soviet intelligence failed to detect the deployment of Generaloberst von Richthofen’s Fliegerkorps VIII to airfields in the Crimea in early May. This elite formation had over 600 aircraft, including Schlachtgeschwader 1 (SchG 1) equipped with forty-three of the new Hs 129 B-1 ground attack planes; this aircraft was armed with two 20mm and one 30mm cannon. Von Manstein deliberately chose to place his schwerpunkt in the worst terrain – the southern sector held by Cherniak’s 44th Army. He planned to use the three infantry divisions of Generalleutnant Fretter-Pico’s XXX Armeekorps in the first echelon to breach the Soviet lines, then push the 22.Panzer-Division into the breach to exploit. Clearly von Manstein had learned from the debacle with 22.Panzer-Division in March and this time he intended to hold his armour back until Fretter-Pico’s infantry created a penetration corridor through the enemy’s defenses. Von Manstein skillfully provided Fretter-Pico with the tools to unlock Cherniak’s defense: a total of fifty-seven StuG III assault guns from the 190, 197 and 249.Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen, two batteries of 8.8cm flak guns and assault boats from the 902.Sturmboote Kommando to mount an amphibious landing behind Soviet lines. Trappenjad is an interesting use of German armour in two separate capacities – assault guns for infantry support and breakthrough, tanks for exploitation. While the German 46.Infanterie-Division and the Romanian 7th Mountain Corps fixed the strong Soviet right wing with a series of feints, von Manstein intended to smash in the weaker left wing and then pivot north with 22.Panzer-Division to trap the main Soviet forces against the Sea of Azov. Only through careful security could the 11.Armee conceal the fact that more than half of its combat forces were massed against the southernmost point of the Soviet line and that the rest of the front was only lightly held.

Operation Trappenjad began at 0315 hours on 8 May, with a ten-minute artillery barrage against the forward echelon of the Soviet 44th Army. Precision Stuka attacks assisted the German infantry in piercing Cherniak’s first two lines of defense in just three and a half hours and reaching an 11-meter-wide anti-tank ditch that marked the boundary of the 44th Army’s final line of defense. Not only had the Soviets mined the approaches to this anti-tank ditch, but they had also emplaced steel girders in it to stop tanks, although they made the amateurish error that the most formidable obstacle is of little value if not covered by fire. German infantry crossed the ditch and accompanying pioneers began to clear the obstacles. At a cost of just 388 casualties, the XXX Armeekorps ripped open the left flank of the Crimean Front. Belatedly, the 44th Army committed its 56th Tank Brigade and 126th OTB with ninety-eight tanks, including seven KV-1, to attack the 28.Jäger-Division near the breach site. However, the tanks were caught in the open by the Stukas of StG 77 and the Hs 129 Bs of SchG 1 and blasted to pieces in a hail of bombs and cannon fire; forty-eight tanks were knocked out, including all seven KV-1.