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

Von Manstein advanced directly toward Porkhov with 8.Panzer-Division and 3.Infanterie-Division (mot), pushing aside the wreckage of 3rd Tank Division. On 10 July he captured Porkhov and then advanced northeast toward Soltsy, with the intention of outflanking the Luga position. Reinhardt made his first probes against Luga on the same day, but the 1.Panzer-Division was repulsed. He sent 6.Panzer-Division on a flanking maneuver to the west, but their advance along forest tracks was slow and tortuous, the exact opposite of Blitzkrieg. Normally, the German instinct for envelopment over frontal attack was the correct one, but at Luga Höpner failed to recognize that he was in a race against time and that the schwerpunkt should have remained there, instead of trying lengthy flank marches through slow-go terrain.

On the Soviet side, the bulk of the 10th Mechanized Corps’ 21st and 24th Tank Divisions had just returned by rail from Karelia and greatly stiffened this position, which was held by a rifle corps. The Soviet Northwest Front – now under the command of Marshal Kliment Voroshilov – became aware of the German outflanking efforts and realized that Reinhardt’s decision to split Panzergruppe 4 into non-supporting corps offered the Red Army an ideal opportunity to defeat at least one of the German spearheads and thereby reduce the threat to Leningrad. General-leytenant Nikolai F. Vatutin, the talented and aggressive chief of staff of the Northwestern Front, recommended committing the 11th Army’s reserve to encircle and destroy von Manstein’s LVI Armeekorps (mot), which was furthest from any potential help. Vatutin requested and received the 21st Tank Division, as well as five rifle divisions, to establish an ambush position near Soltsy, along the forest trail that von Manstein would have to pass.

Von Manstein advanced up the sandy trail from Porkhov to Shimsk with Brandenberger’s 8.Panzer-Division strung out in a long march column, with a one-tank front. Brandenberger’s 8.Panzer-Division had not yet suffered significant losses and still had 163 operational tanks.³² The Germans advanced without flank guards through the forest and the Luftwaffe failed to detect any Soviet concentrations in this area. On the morning of 15 July, Vatutin sprang his ambush, with the fresh 70th Rifle Division cutting the road behind 8.Panzer-Division’s lead kampfgruppen, while another rifle division and the remaining thirty-five BT-7 tanks from 3rd Tank Division conducted a fixing attack against the 3.Infanterie-Division (mot). Von Manstein soon found that he had advanced into a linear ambush, with elements of five Soviet divisions attacking him from all directions. The next day, the 21st Tank Division attacked the flank of 8.Panzer-Division at Soltsy with 128 T-26 light tanks and a handful of KV heavy tanks against Pz.38(t) and Pz.IV tanks. Vatutin ensured that the attack was supported by Soviet bombers and artillery, although tank-infantry cooperation was still problematic. After three days of heavy fighting, the 8.Panzer-Division fought its way out of the encirclement, but was forced to abandon Soltsy and retreat all the way back to Dno. Reinhardt sent the SS-Division Totenkopf to assist von Manstein in breaking away, but the result was still a German tactical defeat, since they had to abandon damaged vehicles on the battlefield. The Soviets claimed to have destroyed seventy German tanks, but the actual number was twelve tanks as total losses (two Pz.II and ten Pz.38(t)) and twenty-seven damaged, although losses of wheeled vehicles were much heavier.³³ The Soviet 21st Tank Division lost fifty-four of its 128 tanks, but for once the heavy Soviet armoured losses were justified, since von Manstein’s effort to outflank Luga had failed. After von Manstein extracted his corps from Vatutin’s ambush, Höpner sent the shaken 8.Panzer-Division into reserve (although the division still had 124 operational tanks), leaving von Manstein with no armour.³⁴

Despite the setback at Soltsy, Reinhardt succeeded in gaining a small bridgehead across the Luga at Poretsye with Kampfgruppe Raus from 6.Panzer-Division on 14 July, and then 1.Panzer-Division gained another bridgehead at Sabsk. Nearby Soviet militia units, supported by some tanks, immediately began counterattacking both bridgeheads with great ferocity. Raus, whose kampfgruppe was isolated from the rest of his division and virtually out of supply, was struck the hardest. A Russian militia company, supported by a single KV-1 heavy tank, managed to infiltrate through nearby forests and launched an attack that caught Kampfgruppe Raus by surprise: