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

The Luga position was gradually enveloped as Reinhardt enlarged his Kingisepp bridgehead in the west and other German forces captured Staraya Russa and Novgorod in the east. The Soviets briefly managed to divert German attention away from the main battleground by launching their own bold counterattack at Staraya Russa, which encircled X Armeekorps on 16 August and forced Höpner to dispatch von Manstein to rescue the trapped German infantry. Meanwhile, Reinhardt’s panzers finally crushed Soviet infantry around Kingisepp then pushed eastward toward Moloskovitsy, where there was a head-on clash between the 1.Panzer-Division and General-major Viktor I. Baranov’s 1st Tank Division on 15 August. Baranov was one of the most experienced senior Soviet tank leaders, having commanded a tank battalion in the Spanish Civil War and then a tank brigade in the Russo-Finnish War, where he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union (HSU) for his role in breaking through the Mannerheim Line. However, the Battle of Moloskovitsy went badly for the Soviet tankers, who lost fifty-two of sixty-five tanks, including six KV, four T-28, thirty-two BT-7, six T-50 and four T-26, and the division was forced to retreat to Krasnogvardeysk. Baranov claimed that his tankers inflicted the loss of 103 tanks and forty-one antitank guns upon Reinhardt’s corps, but the Germans were not seriously damaged. Once in Krasnogvardeysk, which was a strongly fortified position blocking access to Leningrad, the 1st Tank Division received additional new-built tanks and trained reservists to replace its losses. The division was reorganized into a three-battalion armoured group with a total of fifty-nine tanks. Baranov put the thirty-four-year-old Kapitan Iosif B. Spiller in command of his 1st Tank Battalion, which had twenty newly-built KV tanks. Spiller was another very experienced Soviet tanker, with prior combat experience against both the Japanese and the Finns. Contrary to the mass of English-language, German-influenced historiography which often depicts Soviet tankers as untrained and unskilled buffoons, the Red Army did in fact possess men who were every bit as experienced and capable as their opponents.

After the debacle at Moloskovitsy, Baranov decided to avoid large-scale battles with Höpner’s panzers, since Red Army tank units were not yet ready to employ combined arms warfare. Instead, Baranov opted to use his tanks in platoon-size ambushes to disrupt and delay the German advance toward Leningrad. It took Reinhardt’s panzers three days to advance 30km on the road from Kingisepp to the outskirts of Krasnogvardeysk, being engaged daily by Baranov’s tankers employing ‘shoot ‘n scoot’ ambush tactics. Höpner transferred the 8.Panzer-Division, recovered after its defeat at Soltsy, to Reinhardt’s corps, where it was made the vanguard on 18 August. Spiller was tasked with defending the outskirts of Krasnogvardeysk and he deployed a platoon of five KV-1 tanks under Leytenant Zinoviy G. Kolobanov just west of the city, along the route that 8.Panzer-Division was approaching. On the morning of 19 August, Kolobanov’s KV-1s, which were the ‘ekranami’ model with extra 35mm-thick armour plates welded on the turret, waited hull-down in ambush.³⁶ Once again, the 8.Panzer-Division demonstrated a propensity for falling into enemy ambushes and a certain tactical mediocrity, as its lead kampfgruppe drove straight into the kill zone unaware. Kolobanov’s five KV-1s opened fire at a range of 450 meters, engaging the lead elements of the Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 59 (reconnaissance battalion) and quickly destroyed an assortment of armoured cars, half tracks and wheeled vehicles. Panzerjäger-Abteilung 43 tried to deploy its 3.7cm and 5cm Pak into firing positions on the road, but Kolobanov easily blasted them to pieces with high explosive rounds and then hosed down the survivors with his 7.62mm coax machine-gun. The III./Panzer Regiment 10 managed to get a company or more into action, but its Pz.38(t) and Pz.IV could not defeat Kolobanov’s platoon.³⁷ Kolobanov’s tank was hit repeatedly without being knocked out, although his sights were eventually demolished and his turret jammed. He broke off the action after firing his entire basic load of ninety-eight rounds. The Soviets claimed that Kolobanov’s platoon had destroyed forty-two German tanks, including twenty-two by Kolobanov himself, without a single KV-1 being lost. While Soviet kill claims were exaggerated by counting every AFV as a tank, there was little doubt that General Erich Brandenberger’s 8.Panzer-Division had gotten another bloody nose. The KV had also demonstrated that it was an excellent defensive tank.³⁸