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

The first objective of Blau was for Hoth’s 4.Panzerarmee to smash in the left flank of General-leytenant Filipp I. Golikov’s Bryansk Front with a massive armoured attack, then advance eastward to seize the city of Voronezh, a city of 326,000 people, on the Don.³⁸ Once Voronezh was seized, Hoth would pivot southward to conduct a double envelopment of Timoshenko’s Southwest Front in conjunction with Paulus’ AOK 6 and von Kleist’s 1.Panzerarmee. The basic scheme of maneuver for Blau was similar to that used in Typhoon in the Battle of Vyazma-Bryansk, but it was premised that the Red Army would do as it had in 1941 – stand and fight. Hoth assembled his XXIV and XXXXVIII Panzerkorps east of Kursk, opposite the Soviet 40th Army of Bryansk Front. Hoth selected the sector north of the town of Tim, which was the boundary between the Soviet 13th and 40th Armies, for his two-corps schwerpunkt. The offensive opened on the morning of 28 June with a thirty-minute artillery preparation, followed by Luftwaffe air strikes on targets in the enemy rear areas. It was a warm, cloudy day, perfect for a Blitzkrieg. Although the Soviet armies were defending with two layers of rifle divisions or brigades arrayed in depth, Hoth’s armour had no difficulty breaking through the front line. The XXIV Panzerkorps committed the 11.Panzer-Division against the 143rd Rifle Division from 13th Army and the 9.Panzer-Division against the 121st Rifle Division from 40th Army. Both Soviet divisions were veteran, pre-war units but lacked the defensive firepower to stand up to an attack by nearly 300 tanks; after suffering heavy losses, they retreated but lived to fight another day. The 212th Rifle Division in the path of 24.Panzer-Division from XXXXVIII Panzerkorps was less fortunate and was quickly overrun and demolished. The Sd.Kfz.251/2 half tracks mounting 8cm mortars proved particularly useful in this kind of fast-moving operation, enabling the Panzer-Abteilungen to request HE or smoke rounds to suppress enemy strongpoints in villages. Generalleutnant Johannes Baeßler’s 9.Panzer-Division succeeded in quickly seizing a railroad bridge over the Tim river, which enabled the panzers to advance about 20km the first day, but the retreating Soviets managed to destroy the next bridge over the Kshen River. In its first action, Generalleutnant Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild’s 24.Panzer-Division had the best first day, advancing over 30km.

Overview – the front line, 28 June 1942. German objectives, major tank battles of 1942 on the Eastern Front.

After achieving their initial breakthrough, Hoth’s armour spread out into a large armoured wedge, with the 9, 11 and 24.Panzer-Divisionen in the lead, followed by the 3 and 16.Infanterie-Division (mot.) and the Grossdeutschland Infanterie-Division (mot.). Heavy rain on 29–30 June slowed the rate of advance, but the German panzer units continued to advance. Golikov was not slow to react – he quickly committed the two tank brigades belonging to the 40th Army to delay Hoth’s advance, while committing General-major Mikhail E. Katukov’s 1st Tank Corps and General-major Mikhail I. Pavelkin’s 16th Tank Corps to stop Hoth at the Kshen River. Nervous that Hoth’s attack suggested a new push on Moscow from the southwest, as Guderian had done the previous year, the Stavka ordered Timoshenko on the night of 28–29 June to send his 4th and 24th Tank Corps to reinforce Golikov’s crumbling left flank. Although some Soviet rifle units were withdrawing under pressure from Hoth’s panzers, Stalin refused Golikov’s request to allow his 13th and 40th Armies to retreat in order to avoid encirclement and demanded a major armoured counterattack as soon as practical. In just the first few days of Blau, the refitted armoured forces of both sides were committed to a major trial of strength against each other.