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

On 1 July, the 23.Panzer-Division made another effort to storm the Soviet strongpoint at Ssirotino but, after being repulsed again, they were forced to employ a flanking maneuver. Eventually, Kampfgruppe Muller flanked the Soviet position and managed to pick off four T-34s with flank shots, causing the Soviet tank brigade to fall back a few kilometers to the next defensive position. This process was repeated for the rest of the day, with the Soviets forcing the 23.Panzer-Division to conduct time-consuming flanking maneuvers. By the end of the day, the 23.Panzer-Division had advanced another 8km, but the real breakthrough occurred on their left flank, where the infantry of VIII Armeekorps rolled up the right flank of the 21st Army. Oddly, it was the infantry that led the way in the AOK 6 sector and the panzers which had to call upon the infantry for support. Indeed, VIII Armeekorps was rolling over the 21st Army so rapidly that General-major Petr E. Shurov’s 13th Tank Corps was directed to counterattack the AOK 6 infantry divisions, rather than Stumme’s stalled armour. Shurov, who was known as an excellent trainer of tankers and who had been commanding the Stalingrad Tank Training facility just six weeks before, struck the German 305 and 376.Infanterie-Divisionen as they were trying to get across the Oskol River near Chernyanka. Amazingly, the panzerjägers in the infantry divisions were strong enough to repulse the attack, knocking out dozens of Soviet tanks.

Shurov was mortally wounded by artillery. The fact that a German infantry division could defeat a Soviet tank corps without organic armoured support speaks volumes about the fragility of the new Soviet armoured formations. After repulsing the 13th Tank Corps, the VIII Armeekorps reached Stary Oskol the next day and linked up with XXXVIII Panzerkorps. However, the Stavka had authorized the 21st and 40th Armies to escape the forming kessel, so the maneuver failed to destroy any large Soviet units.

By 3 July, Soviet resistance between the Olym River and Voronezh evaporated and the defeated 17th Tank Corps retreated east, across the Don. While Balck’s 11.Panzer-Division, assisted by some infantry from AOK 2, held off the 1st and 16th Tank Corps, Hoth sent the rest of his armour east toward Voronezh. The Grossdeutschland Division was able to capture an intact bridge over the Don at 1930 hours on 4 July and the 24.Panzer-Division seized two bridgeheads over the Don the next morning. Once again, the Red Army had failed to leave any units to garrison a major city and the 24.Panzer-Division advanced into the city on 6 July. General-major Ivan D. Chernyakhovsky’s 18th Tank Corps arrived just in time to put up a fight for the city center, but quickly lost its 180th and 181st Tank Brigades with 116 tanks.⁴³ German video within Voronezh shows many intact T-34s, in column, which suggests that many tankers may have abandoned their tanks when they feared being cut off by the German advance. Once again, German panzers seized a major Russian city with a coup de main. However, in this case the Germans had only seized Voronezh to protect the left flank of Heeresgruppe Süd as it advanced to the Volga, and they had no intention of exploiting east across the Don, even though there was now a significant gap between the Bryansk and Southwest Fronts.

Even before Voronezh had fallen, Stalin pressured Golikov to commit his main armoured reserve – General-major Aleksandr I. Liziukov 5th Tank Army – to strike the flank of Hoth’s advance to the Don. The Stavka hastily transferred General-major Pavel A. Rotmistrov’s 7th Tank Corps from the Kalinin Front to join Liziukov’s 5TA at the Elets railhead. In fact, Rotmistrov’s corps was the first to reach its jump-off positions, while General-major Andrei G. Kravchenko’s 2nd Tank Corps and General-major Aleksei F. Popov’s 11th Tank Corps were slower to get into position. Despite the fact that no artillery or air support was available and that only two of nine tank brigades were ready to attack, Liziukov ordered the counterattack to begin at 0600 hours on 6 July. Thus, the first offensive operation conducted by a Soviet tank army in the Second World War was not a carefully planned action, but rather a meeting engagement where forces were fed into battle piecemeal.