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

Within a few weeks of receiving the first production Tigers – which had many technical deficiencies that were still being addressed by the manufacturer – all three heavy tank battalions were directed to send one of their two tank companies to the front. Apparently, the OKH put no real thought into the initial operational deployment of these three Tiger I companies and it was poorly executed. The 1./502 schwere Panzer-Abteilung 502 (s.Pz.Abt. 502) was deployed by rail to the Leningrad front in August–September and eventually fielded nine Tiger tanks. The s.Pz.Abt. 501 was sent with eleven Tigers to Tunisia in November and the s.Pz.Abt. 503 was designated to reach Heeresgruppe A before the end of December with twenty Tigers. By deploying forty-odd Tiger tanks to three different areas, the OKH ensured that the new tanks would have no more than a localized, tactical impact and would prematurely expose the technical capabilities of the new weapon to both the Western Allies and the Red Army before they were available in quantity. It was an idiotic decision. Making the choice of deployment even more problematic, the OKH disregarded the difficulty of supporting a new tank type in company-size detachments. Albert Speer, as minister of armaments, warned that splitting the available Tiger tanks up into small detachments across different fronts would make logistical support virtually impossible, since very few spare parts for the Pz.VI were manufactured. Maybach only provided one spare transmission and engine for each ten Tigers, which led to a very low operational readiness rate for Tigers at the front.⁶⁹

Nor was the combat debut of the Tiger auspicious. Shortly after receiving most of its Tigers, Heeresgruppe Nord committed 1./s.Pz.Abt. 502 in an ill-judged infantry support attack east of Leningrad on 22 September.⁷⁰ The terrain in this area was marshy, with heavy vegetation and non-existent road networks – totally unsuitable for the use of heavy tanks. In this kind of terrain, Soviet tanks and antitank guns had better opportunities to ambush Tigers at close range and defeat their thick armour. The Tigers were also suffering from endemic problems with their transmissions, which had not yet been perfected for field conditions. Nevertheless, four Tigers were committed to the attack, which proved to be a fiasco, with all four lost to either mechanical defects or anti-tank fire. Three damaged Tigers were recovered, but one had to be abandoned. The 1./s.Pz.Abt. 502 continued to serve in the Leningrad area throughout the rest of 1942, but due to adverse terrain and poor operational readiness rates, it accomplished very little. The lead elements of s.Pz.Abt. 503 were sent to Heeresgruppe Don on 27 December, but arrived too late for Operation Wintergewitter.

The appearance of the Tiger, even in token quantities, did worry the Red Army and helped to spur qualitative improvements to Soviet armoured forces. Soviet tank design had basically frozen on 22 June 1941, with only minor improvements to the T-34, which had been sufficient for the battlefield of 1941–42. However the GABTU became concerned when the Germans introduced the long 7.5cm KwK 40 L/43 gun in spring 1942 and recognized that once German tanks with 8.8cm guns and thick armour became more common on the battlefield, the T-34 would be put at a grave disadvantage. In June 1942 the GABTU tasked the KhPZ design team, now at Nizhniy Tagil, to reexamine the pre-war T-34M in order to develop an improved T-34. By the time that the first Tigers appeared on the Eastern Front, a prototype T-43 was completed; this utilized a new larger, three-man turret, torsion-bar suspension and thicker armour, but still relied upon the same 76.2mm F-34 gun.⁷¹ After trials indicated that the heavier T-43 had less mobility compared to current model T-34/76 tanks, the GABTU decided to defer production and continue development.

Likewise, the SKB-2 team at Chelyabinsk was directed to develop a follow-on to the KV-1, designated as the KV-13. Like the T-43, the KV-13 would still employ the F-34 gun.⁷² Although the development of larger 85mm, 100mm and 122mm guns was considered, the GABTU’s main intent at this time was to develop a ‘Universal Tank’ to merge the best features of both T-34 and KV-1, not to develop an all-new tank. Impressed by the usefulness of the German StuG-III series, the GABTU also became interested in developing assault guns and tank destroyers for the Red Army. By late December, the first Su-122s would enter limited production.

Operation Uranus, 19–23 November