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

The battles of Heeresgruppe Mitte against the Western and Kalinin Fronts in early 1943 have not made much of an impression on Eastern Front historiography to date, but these actions did impact the availability of armour on other fronts and influenced the coming summer campaigns. As if to highlight this point, on 1 March Model’s 9.Armee began Operation Büffel (Buffalo), the evacuation of the Rzhev salient. Within three weeks the evacuation was completed and had reduced the German front line by over 300km. Operation Büffel freed three Panzer-Divisionen to deploy elsewhere and provided Hitler with a sizeable operational reserve to use for either offensive or defensive purposes.

Relief of Leningrad: Operation Spark ( Iskra ), 12 January–19 March 1943

At the northern end of the line, the continuing siege of Leningrad dominated events. Heeresgruppe Nord’s 18.Armee (AOK 18) had the city under siege since September 1941. Inside the city, General-leytenant Leonid A. Govorov’s Leningrad Front was no longer starving and had recovered some of its combat capability. Outside the city, General Kirill A. Meretskov’s Volkhov Front made two attempts during 1942 to break through the German siege lines, but failed. The main area being fought over was the Siniavino corridor east of the Neva River, a swampy and heavily-wooded region measuring 15 x 15km that had no real roads. Although the two Soviet fronts were separated by less than 14km, the German XXVI Armeekorps had heavily fortified the Siniavino Corridor and the terrain greatly favored the defence. Hitler was determined that the Red Army not raise the siege of Leningrad and in order to reinforce the German defence in the Siniavino corridor, he had ordered that the very first Tiger tanks sent to the Eastern Front go to this sector. In September 1942, the 1./s. Pz. Abt. 502 had arrived by train and its Tigers were the first to see combat. By early January 1943, this single company – which still had seven Tigers and 16 Pz III tanks operational – was the main operational reserve for the XXVI Armeekorps.³⁵ In addition, the Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 226 was stationed in the Siniavino corridor.

Meretskov’s plan for Operation Iskra (Spark) was similar to previous attempts: the Volkhov Front’s 2nd Shock Army would attack the Siniavino corridor from the east while simultaneously, the Leningrad Front’s 67th Army would cross the Neva River and attack the western side of the corridor. If the plan succeeded, the two Soviet fronts would link up somewhere in the corridor and a ground route opened to encircled Leningrad. The main weight of the attack came from the 2nd Shock Army in the east, which would attack with five rifle divisions and plenty of artillery. Although the 2nd Shock Army had 217 tanks (including 83 T-34 and about 20 KV-1) in its four tank brigades, one guards tank regiment and four OTBs, it could only employ company-size detachments of armour due to the marshy, restricted terrain. The 67th Army committed three tank brigades and two OTBs to the offensive, totalling another 222 tanks; altogether the Red Army committed 439 tanks to the offensive against no more than 50 German tanks and assault guns.³⁶