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

At 0805 hours (local time) on 10 January 1943, Operation Koltso began with a massive 55-minute artillery barrage. Despite some cloud cover, visibility was fairly good and the Soviet artillery fire hammered the German frontline positions. In the 65th Army sector on the western side of the pocket Voronov was able to mass over 500 guns/howitzers and 450 multiple rocket launchers across a 12km-wide attack sector – the highest Soviet artillery density yet of the war. Once the artillery fire lifted, Soviet ground attack aircraft from the 16th Air Army (16 VA) strafed and bombed German positions to the rear of the HKL. Around 0900 hours, the shock groups of the 65th Army, comprised of five rifle divisions supported by the 91st Tank Brigade and six tank regiments (a total of 111 tanks) advanced against the still-smoking positions of the 44.Infanterie-Division. A squad of Soviet infantrymen was mounted on the back deck of each tank. The 65th Army had almost half of Rokossovsky’s armour, including about 60–70 KV-1S heavy tanks and 21 Churchill (Mk-IV) tanks in the 10th Guards Tank Regiment (10 GTR). The British-built Churchills were slower than the KV-1S but had slightly better armoured protection. On the flanks of the 65th Army, the 21st and 24th Armies launched smaller supporting attacks with a total of five rifle divisions and 27 tanks, intended to prevent the Germans from transferring units from these sectors to help the 44.Infanterie-Division. Clearly, the Red Army was learning how to mass combat power in a critical sector.

Although the front of the 44.Infanterie-Division was smashed in fairly quickly and four depleted infantry battalions were overrun, the remaining Sturmgeschütz and anti-tank guns inflicted a fearsome toll on the attacking Soviet armour.⁹ At the tactical level, the Red Army’s coordination between tanks and infantry was still fairly primitive and a platoon of three ex-Soviet 7.62cm PaK 36 (r) anti-tank guns from Panzerjäger-Abteilung 46 was able to pick off a number of the KV-1S tanks before the unit was overrun.¹⁰ The other Soviet supporting attacks went fairly well. In the south, the 57th Army routed the Romanian 20th Infantry Division, causing the IV Armeekorps to recoil inward, abandoning 26 of its precious PaK guns.¹¹ In the Marinovka salient, Hauptmann Rudolf Haen’s 1./Pz.Abt. 103 from the 3.Infanterie-Division (mot.), supported by some 8.8cm flak guns, managed to shoot up virtually all of the 21st Army’s 18 tanks. However, by the end of the second day of the offensive, the XIV Panzerkorps’ 3. and 29.Infanterie-Division (mot.) were increasingly exposed in the Marinovka salient and Haen’s Panzer-Kompanie was isolated. Overall, Hube’s corps lost 30 of its 46 tanks and 11 of 18 PaK guns in the first 48 hours of the Soviet offensive.¹² In the northwest, the 24th Army’s attack forced Strecker’s XI Armeekorps to commit the last four assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 177 at the Kotluban rail station. These four assault guns knocked out four Soviet tanks before two of the StuG IIIs were destroyed by direct hits and a third suffered a mobility kill when struck on its final drive. Likewise, the 6.Armee succeeded in limiting the Soviet advance by committing its remaining AFVs and PaK guns, but this only prevented a complete collapse. Due to ferocious German resistance, the Don Front suffered 26,000 casualties in the first three days of Operation Koltso and 135 out of 264 tanks were knocked out.¹³ The KV-1S heavy tanks performed particularly poorly, with nearly three-quarters disabled – a very disappointing combat debut. Nevertheless, the western side of the pocket was nearly smashed in and the decimated German units from the IV and VIII Armeekorps and XIV Panzerkorps were forced to retreat toward Stalingrad. While Soviet armour losses were heavy, the Germans had also lost over 60 tanks and assault guns in the opening phase of Operation Koltso.