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

Belov attacked first on the morning of 5 July, committing the 12th Guards Rifle Division and the 192nd Tank Brigade as his main effort against the boundary of the German 112 and 296.Infanterie-Divisionen. Over 250 artillery pieces were available to support the attack, but most of their ammunition was fired in the initial prep bombardment. Achieving local surprise, the Soviet guardsmen managed to create a 3km-deep dent in the German security zone before being stopped by mines and well-directed artillery fire in front of the German HKL (main line of resistance). Nor was Soviet air support very helpful and the 192nd Tank Brigade lost six of its tanks to fratricidal Soviet air attacks.⁵⁷ When the Soviet attack stalled, the Germans were able to rush reinforcements, including Hauptmann Martin Buhr’s Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 202, to strengthen their HKL. Despite failing to achieve a breakthrough, Belov decided to commit his armoured exploitation force – General-major Dmitri K. Mostovenko’s 3rd Tank Corps with 192 tanks – at 1400 hours on 7 July. By this point, the element of surprise was gone and the German HKL in front of Belov’s shock groups had been made nearly impregnable with assault guns, 8.8cm flak batteries and additional panzerjägers. Unsurprisingly, Mostovenko’s armour suffered heavy losses from anti-tank fire as they arrived on the battlefield and Belov’s artillery no longer had the ammunition to suppress the enemy guns.

There is an important lesson in Mostovenko’s situation, in that an operational-level commander must ensure that he has sufficient fire support remaining when his exploitation force is committed. Instead, the 3rd Tank Corps was stopped cold and bloodied by determined German infantry divisions and could not advance. Although Belov continued attacking for another five days, he achieved nothing.

By waiting an extra day to attack, Rokossovsky’s 16th Army was able to make a considerably stronger opening effort, with three rifle divisions, five rifle brigades and three tank brigades in the first echelon. General-major Vasily G. Burkov’s 10th Tank Corps, with 152 tanks, waited to exploit the breakthrough. Rokossovsky used 400 artillery pieces to support the attack, as well as over 600 tactical air support sorties, but due to the difficult terrain in his sector he chose to attack across a fairly wide 20km frontage; this was the exact opposite of the German schwerpunkt, which committed all resources at a decisive point. The Zhizdra sector was also heavily wooded and marshy, which made armoured operations difficult – Zhukov apparently had not considered terrain in his decision to attack. Kicking off at 0800 hours on 6 July, Rokossovsky’s infantry managed to advance 3–5km into the 208.Infanterie-Division’s defenses before encountering the same determination as Belov had discovered. Even worse, the 17 and 18.Panzer-Division were both available to reinforce the front-line German infantry divisions in this sector. Unteroffizier Erich Hager, a Pz.IV driver in the 6./Pz.Regt 39, noted that his battalion had completed two days of gunnery training just prior to Rokossovsky’s offensives, so the crews were well-honed.⁵⁸

Rokossovsky’s first echelon included the 94th, 112th and 146th Tank Brigades and the 519th Tank Battalion with flamethrower tanks, a total of 131 tanks, while Lemelsen decided to initially commit only small armoured kampfgruppen into battle to stabilize the front, but kept some armour in reserve to deal with the Soviet tank corps. Both panzer divisions had been forced to contribute a Panzer-Abteilung to reinforce the divisions involved in Blau, leaving only seventy-one tanks in the 17.Panzer-Divisionen and forty-seven tanks in the 18.Panzer-Division. Hager’s 6.Kompanie was committed, but quickly lost three of its eleven Pz.IV (short-barreled) tanks. Hager noted that the Soviets had a 4–1 superiority in tanks in his sector. On 7 July, Lemelsen committed more of his armour to prevent a breakthrough of the infantry HKL, resulting in a brutal nine-hour battle between the opposing tanks and artillery. Hager’s Pz.IV was hit three times, once in the hull and twice on the turret, but only one crew member was injured by spalling (splinters from the armour). Some tank-vs.-tank combat occurred as close as 200 meters. Hager noted,