Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1943-1945: Red Steamroller

By 20 July, Harpe had stabilized the situation in the north and reduced Bagramyan’s advance to a crawl. The OKH transferred several infantry divisions to rebuild the gap where the LIII Armeekorps had been and Model successfully lobbied for the Großdeutschland to be transferred to him from von Manstein’s front. Bagramyan’s 11 GA had also outrun its supplies. However, Popov’s Bryansk Front was still in good supply since it had two functioning railheads nearby and Popov decided to use Rybalko’s 3 GTA to break open Rendulic’s increasingly thin frontline. Yet instead of using the armour in mass, Popov made the mistake of ordering Rybalko to split his armour and advancing on two divergent axes: the 15th Tank Corps and 2nd Mechanized Corps would proceed northwest to cut the rail line at Otrada while the 12th Tank Corps would advance southwest to overrun one of Rendulic’s infantry divisions. The result of this dispersal was that the Soviet armour gained ground and knocked the German front line back toward Orel, but 3 GTA failed to encircle or destroy any German units. Instead, the Germans hunkered down with 12.Panzer-Division blocking Rybalko’s 3 GTA from entering Orel. In the north, Harpe conducted a strong defence around Bolkhov and the Western Front opted to fight an extended positional battle for this unimportant town rather than using its mobility to outflank Harpe’s Panzers. For nearly a week, Model’s hard-pressed troops fought all three Soviet fronts to a near standstill. However, the cost was high in terms of resources and the Ferdinands, which had proved themselves as excellent defensive weapons, were almost all non-operational now due to mechanical defects and lack of spare parts.¹³⁸

It was not until 26 July that the Soviets were able to make any progress. Rybalko’s 3 GTA shifted south and reinforced an attack by 63rd Army against the boundary between the XXXV Armeekorps and XXXXVI Panzerkorps. Although Rybalko’s armour was unable to break through, when Rokossovsky committed his forces to this axis as well, the Germans gradually began pulling back. German anti-tank fire devastated Rybalko’s armour, knocking out 669 of his tanks in a week of combat. In the north, Zhukov finally released Badanov’s 4th Guards Tank Army (4 GTA) and Kriukov’s 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps (2 GCC) to reinforce the Western Front’s offensive, but achieved only modest results. The Großdeutschland arrived just in the nick of time to block Kriukov’s cavalry from severing the Orel-Bryansk rail line and 4 GTA only managed to force Harpe to abandon Bolkhov.¹³⁹ Model did the best he could to delay the inevitable and inflict maximum damage on the enemy, while conserving his own forces, but on 31 July he requested and received permission from Hitler to abandon Orel and retreat to the Hagen Stellung. Unlike von Manstein, Model had developed a contingency plan and had carefully prepared a rearward defensive line along the Desna River.

The 12.Panzer-Division conducted the rearguard mission in Orel, delaying the Soviet entry into the city and ensuring that all bridges over the Oka River were destroyed. On the night of 4 August, 12.Panzer-Division evacuated the city and the Soviet 63rd Army marched in the next morning. Badanov’s 4 GTA and Rodin’s 2 TA mounted a pursuit against Model’s forces as they withdrew to the Hagen Stellung, but Model used his Panzer-Divisionen as mobile rearguards, successfully fending off Soviet probing attacks. During these missions, German tank platoons were deployed in defilade positions with their main guns over the rear deck; when the lead Soviet tanks appeared they would be knocked out and the German tanks would fall back to the next position to repeat again. These delay tactics were costly for the Soviets and induced caution in the advance tank brigades. By 18 August, Model’s AOK 9 and the remnants of PzAOK 2 were entrenched in the Hagen Stellung and the Stavka declared Operation Kutusov to be completed with the liquidation of the Orel Salient. The 38-day Operation Kutusov inflicted four times as many casualties upon Model’s forces as Operation Zitadelle had, a total of 88,000, including 27,000 dead or missing. All eight Panzer-Divisionen under Model’s command had suffered considerable losses, including 229 tanks and tank destroyers. Between Zitadelle and Kutusov, Heeresgruppe Mitte had lost one-third of its armour.