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

Stalin was also becoming fixated on the Stalingrad axis and was worried about the rapid approach of German mechanized forces to Kalach. At this point, the smart play for Gordov’s Stalingrad Front was to sit tight behind the Don river and wait for Paulus to begin crossing the river near Kalach, then hit his schwerpunkt with two concentrated tank armies. However, Stalin refused to wait and instead ordered Gordov to commit both of the still-forming 1st and 4th Tank Armies to an immediate counter-offensive across the Don to rescue the trapped elements of the 62nd Army. This was one of the most hair-brained Soviet armoured operations of the Second World War, with the forces involved being given just six hours to plan and prepare; at the tank battalion and tank regiment level, this meant a quick oral briefing at best. Many of the tanks in both armies were undergoing maintenance and not yet ready for action, but they were committed nonetheless.

General-major Kirill S. Moskalenko was an artilleryman but had gained considerable experience fighting German panzers since June 1941 and now led the 1st Tank Army into battle against the XIV Panzerkorps on the morning of 27 July. Initially, Moskalenko only had Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps in action across the Don, but he tried to feed General-major Georgi S. Rodin’s 28th Tank Corps into battle as soon as possible. Altogether, Moskalenko’s 1st Tank Army had seven tank brigades with 330 tanks, including 162 T-34s and thirty KV-1s, but he was unable to get more than a couple of brigades into action at once. Hube’s 16.Panzer-Division was hard-pressed on 27 July, being caught with its four kampfgruppen dispersed, outnumbered and low on fuel. Tanaschishin’s tankers managed to surround Kamfgruppe Witzleben from Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 16, but lost about fifty tanks to Oberst Rudolf Sieckenius’ Panzer-Regiment 2 in a series of meeting engagements around Verkhne-Buzinovka. Hube requested air support from Fliegerkorps VIII, which had about eighty Ju-87D Stukas from StG 2 based at Tatsinskaya airbase.⁵²

The Stukas caught Tanaschishin’s armour in the open and he lost thirteen T-34s and seven T-70s to air attack. Part of Georgy S. Rodin’s 28th Tank Corps also crossed the Don and engaged the 3 and 60.Infanterie-Division (mot.) with some success. Yet General-major Vasily D. Kriuchenkin’s 4th Tank Army, which had 370 tanks in seven tank brigades, was unable to begin crossing the Don until 28 July, which saved the XIV Panzerkorps from a serious defeat. A significant part of Kriuchenkin’s tanks fell out due to mechanical difficulties on the road march to the Don, which limited his ability to feed forces into the battle. Nor did the eight OTBs in the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which comprised 200 tanks, play any significant role in the counter-offensive due to lack of coordination. On 28–31 July, the tank battles continued to revolve around Verkhne-Buzinovka as the two Soviet tank armies attempted to break through the XIV Panzerkorps to the three encircled divisions of the 62nd Army. The Soviet 8th Air Army finally provided some significant air support, including a regiment of Il-2 Sturmoviks, which managed to shoot up some German columns. However, the improvised nature of the Soviet armoured counter-offensive meant that Gordov was unable to provide any significant artillery support to the two tank armies and very little motorized infantry was available.