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

Fliegerkorps VIII’s relentless ground attack sorties helped to balance out the Soviet 2–1 numerical superiority in tanks. Kriuchenkin gradually fed General-major Aleksandr A. Shamshin’s 22nd Tank Corps, General-major Abram M. Khasin’s 23rd Tank Corps and Polkovnik Nikolai M. Bubnov’s 133rd Heavy Tank Brigade (forty KV-1) into the battle from the northeast. Tanaschishin’s 13th Tank Corps managed to break through to the encircled 62nd Army units from the south and facilitate a partly-successful breakout operation, while other Soviet tanks overran the XIV Panzerkorps command post. Gordov’s armoured counter-offensive did succeed in halting AOK 6’s advance on Stalingrad for a week, although German supply difficulties would have accomplished much the same result. Otherwise, the commitment of this mass of Soviet armour into open steppe terrain allowed the Germans to shoot and bomb the 1st and 4th Tank Armies to pieces over the course of a week. By 31 July, AOK 6 had halted the Soviet counteroffensive and the Stalingrad Front lost more than 600 tanks in a week. The Soviet armoured counter-offensive in the Don Bend was a virtual repeat of the 1941 Battle of Dubno – an uncoordinated, piecemeal meeting engagement that handed a tactical victory to the Germans on a silver platter. The Soviet preference for impulsive, unplanned attacks – usually instigated by Stalin – was a near-lethal tendency that the Germans continually exploited. Yet Stalin ignored his own role in the disastrous Battle of the Don Bend and issued a scathing Stavka Directive in its aftermath:

Our tank units and formations often suffer greater losses through mechanical breakdowns than they do in battle. For example, in the Stalingrad Front, when we had a significant superiority in tanks, artillery and aircraft over the enemy, during six days of battle, twelve tank brigades lost 326 out of 400 tanks, of which about 200 were lost to mechanical problems. Many of the tanks were abandoned on the battlefield. Similar instances can be observed in other fronts. Since such a high incidence of mechanical defects is implausible, the Supreme High Command sees in it covert sabotage and wrecking on the part of certain tank crews who try to exploit small mechanical problems to leave their tanks on the battlefield and avoid battle.⁵³

Stalin had finally stated what many field commanders already knew: halftrained tank crews that were fed into poorly-planned battles like so much cannon fodder would often choose personal survival over mission accomplishment. Whereas German tankers usually continued to fight their tanks even after suffering one or more non-penetrating hits, many Soviet tankers abandoned tanks that were still combat effective and walked back to their assembly areas. Photographic evidence of numerous captured T-34s from mid-1942 indicates that many had little or no evidence of major damage. Stalin had already issued his ‘Not One Step Backward!’ [Ni shagu nazad!] command in Order No. 227, but tankers clearly needed more explicit guidelines. By summer 1942, Soviet tank units began to distinguish between tanks that ‘burned’ on the battlefield – indicating catastrophic damage – and those that were abandoned but not burned. Crews that abandoned a tank that did not burn were now sent to penal units, which served to discourage others from abandoning their tanks.⁵⁴