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

The Stavka had been expecting von Manstein to retreat to the Dnepr at any time and once indications of withdrawal were detected by Soviet aerial reconnaissance, Stalin issued orders directly to the fronts for the advance to the Dnepr. Five fronts surged toward the Dnepr with over two million troops and 2,000 tanks. Vatutin would head for Kiev and the Dnepr Knee and was provided Rybalko’s partly-refitted 3 GTA (7 GMC, 9 MC, 6 GTC, 7 GTC, 91 TB) to act as a mobile group (podvizhnyi grupp) in the drive toward the Dnepr from the Romny area. Although Rybalko only had about 50 per cent of his authorized tanks and one of his motorized brigades had no trucks, it was still a powerful force with over 300 tanks. Both Katukov’s 1 TA and Rotmistrov’s 5 GTA had been temporarily pulled back to refit after weeks of heavy combat, leaving Rybalko’s half-strength tank army as the only large mechanized formation available for the time being. Konev was ordered to head for Kremenchug, Malinovsky for Dnepropetrovsk and Tolbukhin for Melitopol. While all these fronts received additional reinforcements from the RVGK, ammunition and fuel stockpiles at the front were very low after weeks of heavy combat and this impaired the ability of the Red Army to conduct high-tempo mobile operations for more than a few days.¹⁷⁷ Nor did the Red Army logisticians have the means of moving large amounts of supplies forward, due to shortages of trucks and the damage inflicted upon the rail lines by the retreating Germans. In terms of engineer support, the fronts moving toward the Dnepr had five pontoon bridging brigades and three heavy pontoon regiments, but the problem was that the ‘scorched earth’ tactics used by the Germans made it difficult to push these cumbersome support units forward to where they needed to be and the insufficient amount of fuel available was mostly going to combat units.¹⁷⁸

Recognizing the difficulty of crossing the Dnepr, the Stavka began preparing several airborne brigades to support an assault crossing of the Dnepr. Vatutin was given operational control over a provisional airborne corps (1st, 3rd and 5th Guards Airborne Brigades) with 10,000 paratroopers and the authority to employ them. On the night of 19–20 September, Rybalko’s 3 GTA began advancing toward the Dnepr, with Podpolkovnik Trofim F. Malik’s 56th Guards Tank Brigade as the advance guard. The Stavka believed that the Germans would have all the major crossing sites well defended (a false assumption, as it turned out) so Rybalko was ordered to head for the so-called ‘Dnepr Knee,’ a great bend in the river south of Kiev and near the Kanev crossing site. Soviet partisans had reported that there were no German forces in this area and the Stavka hoped that Rybalko could ‘bounce’ this undefended section of the Dnepr before the Germans arrived.

Nehring’s XXIV Panzerkorps retreated toward Kanev with the 10.Panzergrenadier-Division, Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 239 and elements of three battered infantry divisions. Unknown to him, Rybalko’s armour was coming up fast behind him, but Nehring did not opt to conduct any delaying actions. Oberst Hans Källner’s 19.Panzer-Division crossed the Dnepr at Kiev on 20 September, the first of von Manstein’s armoured units to regain the western bank. Even before Källner’s division was assembled in Kiev, he was ordered to dispatch his reconnaissance battalion to the Dnepr Bend to look for any signs of Soviet crossing activity. Meanwhile, the III. and XXXXVIII Panzerkorps fought a bitter – and futile – delaying action at Poltava on 20–22 September against Konev’s forces, before abandoning the city on 23 September.