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

While Katukov and Rotmistrov was struggling to push south and envelop Kharkov, the 27th and 40th Armies were pushing westward toward Akhtyrka with the help of three tank corps (2 TC, 10 TC, 4 GTC) to expand the Voronezh Front’s breakthrough. The LII Armeekorps and XXXXVIII Panzerkorps had established a thin line between Akhtyrka and Trostyanets with the Großdeutschland, 7. and 11.Panzer-Divisionen to try and prevent the Soviet advance from demolishing any link between Hoth’s PzAOK 4 and 2.Armee. By the morning of 9 August, General-major Vasily M. Alekseev’s 10th Tank Corps, acting as the mobile group for 40th Army, was threatening the rail junction at Trostyanets. Most of Großdeutschland’s armour was still en route, but a small Kampfgruppe with four Tigers from 13.Panzer-Regiment Großdeutschland and seven Panthers from 4.Panzer-Abteilung 51 were assembled and sent to stop Alekseev’s tanks.[37] On paper, this small Kampfgruppe should have been a formidable force, but it lacked any kind of support or information about enemy dispositions. En route to Trostyanets, one Panther’s engine caught fire and burnt out. Approaching the town, the Kampfgruppe was engaged by numerous anti-tank guns and T-34s concealed in a wooded area; the Panther’s long 7.5cm gun claimed several victims but when the tanks imprudently moved into the town, they were engaged at point-blank range. Here, Aleekseev’s tankers were fighting as a combined arms team, with infantry, anti-tank guns and tanks working together, whereas the Germans were disadvantaged as an armour-pure force. Two Tigers and five Panthers were knocked out and abandoned, with the remaining three tanks beating a hasty retreat.¹⁵⁶

On 10 August, General-major Pavel P. Poluboyarov’s 4 GTC tried to rush Akhtyrka with two of his tank brigades before Großdeutschland arrived in strength, but the rest of Panzer-Abteilung 51’s Panthers detrained in the town just before they arrived. A screen of Panthers met Poluboyarov’s T-34s outside Akhtyrka and repelled their attack, but the lack of pre-battle preparation was costly for the Germans. A total of 11 Panthers were knocked out against 16 T-34s, which was not a very favorable exchange ratio. After this rebuff, Poluboyarov tried to envelop Akhtyrka, since there was a large gap with no German forces to the south of the town. Kravchenko’s 5 GTC was sent into this gap, advancing against negligible opposition.

At the same time, Rotmistrov and Katukov were continuing to press Breith’s III Panzerkorps hard and managed to drive an armoured wedge between Das Reich and 3.Panzer-Division on 10 August. Counter-attacks by both German divisions temporarily restored the situation and inflicted heavy losses on the 18 TC and 29 TC, but 3.Panzer-Division was nearly combat-ineffective. The loss of Panzergrenadiers in defending static positions in towns was particularly painful and once a Panzer-Division lost a good part of its infantry it could not maintain a coherent front. While Soviet tank losses were heavy, both tank armies continued to receive march companies with new tanks and crews which kept them in business. Furthermore, Katukov and Rotmistrov’s units usually retained the battlefield now, improving the probability that their knocked out tanks would be recovered and repaired. However, the real problem was not shortage of tanks but the insufficient number of wheeled vehicles available to the Voronezh Front, which made it difficult to move artillery and supplies forward in a timely manner to support the advance of the tank armies.