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

The Soviet response to the invasion was sluggish and confused. Once Kuznetsov was sure that the Germans were across the border in force, around 0930 hours, he decided to commit his armour to counterattack. However, Luftwaffe air attacks seriously disrupted Soviet high-level communications and 8th Army did not issue its own counterattack order until 1400 hours.⁴ Due to these communications problems, Kuznetsov’s orders did not reach the 12th Mechanized Corps until 2340 hours. The orders directed Shestopalov to advance southward 70km and strike the left flank of the German invasion group.

However, the 8th Army order temporarily diverted the 23rd Tank Division to assist the 10th Rifle Corps in restoring the border near Memel, which dispersed the counterstroke by the 12th Mechanized Corps; this indicated the divide within the Red Army between those who viewed mechanized forces as best used en masse as a shock force and those who wanted it dispersed for infantry support. Kuznetsov had also sent orders to General-major Aleksei V. Kurkin’s 3rd Mechanized Corps, assembling west of Vilnius behind the 11th Army, instructing him to detach his 2nd Tank Division to attack the German right flank somewhere near Raseinai. In order to coordinate the attack, Kuznetsov sent Polkovnik Pavel P. Poluboiarov, the Northwest Front commander of tank and mechanized forces. Kuznetsov’s concept of an armoured double pincer attack was not a bad plan, just not feasible under current conditions.

Shestopalov’s corps began moving forward during the night of 22–23 June, but lacked the fuel to move all his tanks at once. Efforts to send supply convoys back to Riga for more fuel were frustrated by confusion and jammed roads. Kuznetsov wanted the armoured counterattack begun at dawn, but Poluboiarov was able to convince him to delay the operation until the bulk of the 3rd Mechanized Corps was ready. Polkovnik Ivan Chernyakhovsky, commander of the 28th Tank Division, made a forced march of 60km to reach the front, but at dawn the Luftwaffe detected the Soviet armoured columns and attacked, knocking out forty-four tanks and a large number of wheeled transport. Despite this, Chernyakhovsky’s advance guard finally reached their assembly areas in the late afternoon of 23 June. Chernyakhovsky was supposed to wait for the rest of the corps, but instead decided to conduct a hasty attack with forty T-26 and BT-7 light tanks from Major Sergei F. Onischuk’s 55th Tank Regiment. Moving forward to contact without infantry or artillery support, Onischuk ran straight into the German 21.Infanterie-Division around 2100 hours and lost two BT-7 and three T-26 tanks to German anti-tank guns.

Chernyakhovsky followed Onischuk’s mixed battalion in his own command BT-7TU and, according to Soviet accounts, personally engaged a German Pz.IV medium tank (possibly from the 1.Panzer-Division) at a range of 800 meters. When his 45mm AP rounds failed to penetrate at this range, Chernyakhovsky maneuvered his BT-7 closer and knocked out the Pz.IV with a flank shot from 400–500 meters.

Onischuk sent his deputy, Major Boris P. Popov, on a flanking maneuver through the woods with seventeen BT-7 light tanks and Popov succeeded in overrunning some German infantry and a couple of 3.7cm Pak guns. Popov, coming from a peasant background and with only a secondary education, lacked the training of his German panzer counterparts but was recklessly brave and steadfast. He pressed the attack even as the Germans began to rally and his BT-7 was struck repeatedly and set afire. When Popov attempted to exit his burning tank, he was shot and killed by German infantry; he would soon be posthumously decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union (HSU). Although Chernyakhovsky’s hasty attack inflicted some damage, three hours of fighting cost him seventeen of forty tanks engaged and he ordered Onischuk to disengage. Realizing that the Germans were too strong, Chernyakhovsky decided to regroup and wait for reinforcements.