Dubno 1941

The Greatest Tank Battle of the Second World War

Alexey Isaev

• Publisher: Helion and Company
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781912866977
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

In June 1941 - during the first week of the Nazi invasion in the Soviet Union - the quiet cornfields and towns of Western Ukraine were awakened by the clanking of steel and thunder of explosions; this was the greatest tank battle of the Second World War. About 3, 000 tanks from the Red Army Kiev Special Military District clashed with about 800 German tanks of Heeresgruppe South. Why did the numerically superior Soviets fail? Hundreds of heavy KV-1 and KV-2 tanks, the five-turret giant T-35 and famous T-34 failed to stop the Germans. Based on recently available archival sources, A. Isaev describes the battle from a new point of view: that in fact it's not the tanks, but armored units, which win or lose battles. The Germans during the Blitzkrieg era had superior tactics and organizations for their tank forces. The German Panzer Division could defeat their opponents not by using tanks, but by using artillery, which included heavy artillery, and motorized infantry and engineers. The Red Army's armored units - the Mechanized Corps - had a lot of teething troubles, as all of them lacked accompanying infantry and artillery. In 1941 the Soviet Armoured Forces had to learn the difficult science - and mostly 'art' - of combined warfare. Isaev traces the role of these factors in a huge battle around the small Ukrainian town of Dubno. Popular myths about impregnable KV and T-34 tanks are laid to rest. In reality, the Germans in 1941 had the necessary tools to combat them. The author also defines the real achievements on the Soviet side: the blitzkrieg in the Ukraine had been slowed down. For the Soviet Union, the military situation in June 1941 was much worse than it was for France and Britain during the Western Campaign in 1940. The Red Army wasn't ready to fight as a whole and the border district's armies lacked infantry units, as they were just arriving from the internal regions of the USSR. In this case, the Red Army tanks became the 'Iron Shield' of the Soviet Union; they even operated as fire brigades. In many cases, the German infantry - not tanks - became the main enemy of Soviet armored units in the Dubno battle. Poorly organized, but fierce, tank-based counterattacks slowed down the German infantry - and while the Soviet tanks lost the battle, they won the war.

1

Army Group South

Army Group South command appeared in August 1939 and took its name from the southern wing of the front line in the Polish campaign. On 23 October 1939 the command of this army group was renamed and became the uninspiring Army Group A, it was under this name that the group participated in combat operations in the West. Finally on 22 April 1941 the army group headquarters arrived at the Soviet-German demarcation line, where up until 21 June 1941 it was known as the Silesian Sector Headquarters. On 21 June 1941 the name ‘Army Group South’ appears once again in archive documents. Throughout this period the commander of this army group was Gerd Von Rundstedt.

The objectives for Rundstedt’s army in Operation Barbarossa, according to a directive from Wehrmacht Supreme Command dated 31 January 1941, were allocated as follows:

Army Group South is to attack using its augmented left flank in the general direction of Kiev, with the mobile units out in front. The overall objective is to destroy the Soviet forces in Galicia and Western Ukraine to the west of the river Dniepr and capture the Dniepr river crossings around Kiev in good time, in doing so creating the prerequisites to continue the operation east of the Dniepr. The offensive needs to be carried out in such a way that the mobile forces are concentrated to enable an attack from the area around Lyublin in the direction of Kiev.

In accordance with this objective for the army and panzer group, which takes its orders directly from Army Group South Command the following tasks need to be completed:

The 11. Armee is to ensure that the Romanian territory is protected from invasion by Soviet forces, taking into account the critical importance of Romania to the course of the war. During the course of the invasion by the forces of Army Group South, the 11. Armee will contain the attacking enemy forces creating an illusion of a strategic deployment of enormous numbers of troops and depending on how the environment develops will impede an organised retreat of Soviet forces beyond the Dniester river by inflicting, in cooperation with air power, a series of strikes on the retreating forces.

Panzergruppe 1, in cooperation with the forces of the 17. and 6. Armees, will break through the enemy’s defences that are concentrated along the border between Rava-Ruska and Kovel, and advance via Berdichev to Zhitomir. In good time it will close in on the Dniepr river close to Kiev, as well as areas further south. Subsequently, and without wasting any time, the advance along the Dniepr river in a south-easterly direction will continue in accordance with the orders issued by Army Group South Command, to obstruct the retreat of the Soviet alignment that is active in Western Ukraine, beyond the Dniepr river and to destroy the alignment via the back door.

The 17. Armee will break through the enemy’s defences on the border to the north-west of Lvov, using its strong left flank to advance rapidly, driving the enemy back south-eastwards and destroying them. Subsequently this army, taking advantage of the successful advance by the forces of the panzer group, will close in on the area around Vinnytsia and Berdichev and depending on the circumstances, continue its advance either southwards or south-eastwards.

The 6. Armee, in conjunction with the formations of the Panzergruppe 1, will break through the enemy front line close to Lutsk and in doing so will cover the army group’s northern flank from possible attacks from the Pripyat Marshes. The principal forces will depart for Zhitomir as quickly as possible on the trail of the Panzergruppe.

The troops in this army should be ready, under orders from army group command, to transfer their principal forces to the south-east, that is to say west of the Dniepr river in order that they would be able, in conjunction with the Panzergruppe 1 to obstruct a retreat by enemy forces beyond the Dniepr river, and to destroy these forces.

Thus according to the plan drawn up by the German command the operation against the Soviet forces in Ukraine should be akin to an ‘assymetric canna’, in which one wing of the encircling forces is comprised of mechanised formations, while the other of infantry. This was one of the predominant approaches in German military thinking in the 1940s, which was used on more than one occasion in the course of the Blitzkriegs.

The Panzergruppe 1 became the sole mobile formation in Army Group South (see table). Since the German command were very well aware that the troops in the Kiev Special Military District were the most numerous of the Soviet border districts, they did not send a single division into battle with the Panzergruppe 1 that was equipped with Czech built 35(t) and 38(t) tanks. All the panzer formations in the group were divisions made up of two battalions, which were equipped with German materiel. In addition the Panzergruppe 1 was characterised by the divisions of which it was formed, which were themselves formed in 1940. None of them could boast of their participation in the Polish campaign and only the 9th Panzer Division had any experience of the French campaign (up until that time it had been the 4th Light Division). The latter group however had been formed in Vienna and the combat readiness of the Austrian units had always been significantly less than that of their German counterparts. The main thrust of the Dubno battles was born by the divisions that had arisen from the reorganisation of panzer forces which began in July 1940. As a result of this reorganisation the number of panzer divisions in the Wehrmacht was doubled. This doubling of the number of divisions occurred by dint of the splitting up of the panzer brigades in the existing divisions and the creation of new divisions, on the basis of the newly released panzer regiments. There was now one panzer regiment, that was formed of two or three battalions, across all the panzer divisions in the Wehrmacht in place of two. To a considerable extent this was balanced by a quantitative and qualitative enhancement in the strike capabilities of the panzer companies in these battalions.

Shortly after their formation the 11th and 14th Panzer Divisions were given their baptism of fire during Operation Marita in the spring of 1941 in the Balkans. During the course of Marita the 16th Panzer Division were in reserve, but for the 13th Panzer Division Barbarossa became their career debut as a panzer formation.

Table 1.1 The Composition of the Panzers in the divisions of the Panzergruppe 1

To a certain extent this was balanced by the fact that these new divisions were formed of infantry formations that had already gained experience in the Polish and French campaigns. Nevertheless the new 13th and 16th Panzer Divisions were placed by command in the second echelon.

Naturally if in Soviet terms the panzer divisions in the Panzergruppe 1 were well equipped, there were signs of a high degree of completeness inside the Wehrmacht itself. Specifically this related to the mechanised infantry formations being equipped with the half-track ‘Hanomag’ armoured personnel carrier. These vehicles were only present at company level in the panzer divisions of Army Group South. These were: the 1st Company of the 9. Schützen-Brigade, 9th Panzer Division, the 1st Company of the 110th Schützen-Regiment, 11th Panzer Division and the 1st Company of the 66th Panzergrenadier Regiment, 13th Panzer Division. The Panzergrenadier company that operated armoured personnel carriers would normally consist of 13 Sd.Kfz.251 armoured personnel carriers: 10 standard Sd.Kfz.251/1 and three Sd.Kfz.251/10 platoon commanders’ vehicles armed with a 37mm anti-tank gun. There were no armoured personnel carriers at all in the 14th and 16th Panzer Divisions. We note that two companies equipped with armoured personnel carriers had appeared in the 16th Panzer Division by May 1942, but only appeared in battalion strength in 1944. The 11th Panzer Division advanced outside Kursk with two companies of armoured personnel carriers in the entire division. Put simply the image of the Germans armed across the board with MP-40 sub-machine guns and advancing exclusively in coffin-shaped armoured personnel carriers is no more than a figment of a cinematographer’s imagination. The Hanomag armoured personnel carrier was a comparatively rare bird and the overwhelming majority of the Wehrmacht’s Panzergrenadiers moved forward on a march in trucks and, in battle, on their own two feet. Self-propelled artillery in the panzer divisions of Army Group South was represented by the self-propelled artillery of the 701st Self-Propelled Artillery Company, which consisted of six 15cm sIG Sfl. Ausf.Pz.I Ausf.B (a 150mm heavy infantry gun mounted on a Pz.I tank chassis) in the 9th Panzer Division. Another sign that the Germans were well equipped was the 10cm corpslevel artillery, which replaced four of the twelve 15cm heavy howitzers in one artillery regiment. The armour piercing round from the 10cm K-18 corps-level armament, which weighed 15.56kgs and had a velocity of 827m/sec, could penetrate any Soviet tank up to, and including, an IS-2. According to available data it was only the 16th Panzer Division that was not equipped with this armament. In an irony of fate it was this very regiment that encountered the newest Soviet tanks on more than one occasion.

Aside from the panzer divisions, mechanised infantry divisions entered the line-up of the Panzergruppe 1. These were the 16th and the 25th Motorised Divisions. In contrast to the standard motorised divisions they had two and not three infantry regiments, which were however fully motorised. The artillery regiments in these motorised divisions were made up of three battalions in contrast to the four battalions in a standard infantry division, although...