The Pinwheel Battle (August 18 – 20)
 |
| A portion of the situation map for August 20, 1943 from David Glantz’s excellent From the Don to the Dnepr (1991) shows the unfolding of the pinwheel effect: the 47th Army piercing the German line in the upper left, while the Grossdeutschland division pushes in the opposite direction below. Totenkopf attempts to link with GD, even as the German 34th Infantry Division holds the southernmost line against the 4th Guards Tank Army. Bogodukhov is in the center. |
Although Grossdeutschland (GD) continued to press forward on August 17, both sides essentially paused to regroup. The Soviets themselves would later regard that day as one of "comparative calm" after the brutal exchanges of the previous few days, but the exhausted panzers had one more card to play.
The German plan was ambitious given their depleted state. General Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army, supported by GD and other formations, would continue to attack southeast from the Akhtyrka area while Totenkopf (after 24 hours of replenishing fuel, ammo and a little sleep) pushed northwest from its positions south of the Merchyk River. If they could link up, they would trap significant Soviet forces in a classic double envelopment.
GD penetrated about 15 miles into Soviet positions. Despite the difficulty of the Tiger tanks of GD and the 503 Tiger battalion navigating the hastily set Russian minefields, the attack was progressing. But on August 18 GD was fighting on two fronts simultaneously – advancing through 27th Army southeast while 4th Guards Army and 1st Tank Army launched coordinated attacks into GD's left flank, which was defended mostly by 7th Panzer Division.
This was the "lower" part of the "pinwheel." The "upper" part consisted of 47th Army launching the primary Soviet assault north of Akhtyrka, driving west, deep into the German rear area simultaneously with GD's drive east and the ancillary attacks along its left flank. The 47th was met by counterattacks from 11th and 19th Panzer Divisions and an assortment of infantry kampfgruppen. In this fascinating situation, both sides penetrated about as far as the other in the opposite direction – hence Glantz's pinwheel analogy.
Meanwhile, Totenkopf faced the complex challenge of breaking out of defensive positions and fighting its way north through quickly prepared Soviet defenses. The division was reinforced with the 34th and 223rd Infantry Divisions on its flanks for this push, essentially carrying the southern axis of the German pinwheel attack with little support. Das Reich was bogged down with local counterattacks and defensive actions, unable to contribute meaningfully to the coordinated assault that had been envisioned. It will be recalled they had arrived on the field before the other elite divisions, so had been fighting longer without pause. Despite fighting with only some infantry support, Totenkopf was able to secure crossings over the Merla River, a tactical achievement that opened the door for further advance.
But what the Germans faced wasn't the disorganized retreat they might have expected earlier in the war. The Soviets understood exactly what the Germans were attempting and threw everything available into preventing the linkup between GD and Totenkopf. The mathematics of Soviet reinforcement were about to assert themselves with clarity.
This pinwheel operation is my favorite specific land encounter of World War Two, maybe of all time. These simultaneous offensives spinning in opposite directions were a phenomenon that started happening more regularly on the Eastern Front. So while the pinwheel west of Bogodukhov is not exceptional by itself, this is one of its earlier manifestations and a harbinger of things to come as war went on. But this one, in August 1943, captures the exact moment when German operational art reached its absolute peak while simultaneously proving it was no longer enough.
As Glantz stated above, these two offensives unfolded in opposite directions within about 60 miles of each other, like a gigantic swirl between two heavyweight boxers going at it late in the match. By nightfall on August 18, the German thrust from Akhtyrka had split General Sergie Trofimenko's 27th Army, severing communications between the army headquarters and its units in the Kotelva area.
But GD could not widen the opening they had created – the coordinated Soviet offensive striking GD's left flank prevented exploitation of the breakthrough. This was the essence of the pinwheel: Germans attacking east and north while Soviets attacked west and south, with neither side able to achieve decisive results despite tactical successes. The Soviets were demonstrating the kind of improvised, rapid response that had been impossible earlier in the war.
August 19 brought the climactic phase of this pinwheel battle. The gap between the two German forces narrowed to barely ten miles, close enough that forward observers could see friendly units across the contested ground and close enough that Soviet commanders could feel the noose tightening around their forward formations.
At this very moment, Totenkopf received about 1,400 new recruits to partially restore the division's strength. It is telling that the division needed these men and yet had no time to acquaint them or train them. They were inexperienced to the brutality of the Eastern Front and about to get some serious "on the job" training, something the Soviets had known about for years. These fresh troops were thrown immediately into the breakthrough attempt, many of them seeing combat for the first time.
Meanwhile, GD was being attacked simultaneously from the south by IV Guards Tank Corps and by III Guard Tank Corps and X Tank Corps from the north and east. Various Soviet rifle divisions supported both efforts. Hectic fighting continued for the next couple of days. The Soviet response demonstrated both their tactical maturation and their determination to prevent the German linkup at any cost.
There was bitter fighting around Kolontayev with heavy losses on both sides, and the arrival of Totenkopf's panzers in the afternoon to swung the battle in favor of the Germans. But even this local success came at enormous cost. Every tactical victory required coordination between units that were operating on the edge of exhaustion.
The tactical brilliance was real and measurable. During the height of the fighting, individual German commanders like SS-Obersturmführer Bochmann had demonstrated exactly how superior training and tactical coordination could overcome numerical disadvantage. In one engagement near the sunflower fields west of Bogodukhov, Bochmann deployed his Tigers and Panzer IVs in a classic ambush formation, positioning lighter Panzer IIIs on the flanks to exploit the thinner side armor of attacking T-34s. When approximately 40 Soviet tanks charged through the concealing sunflower stalks, German crews opened fire from prepared positions at 2,000 meters. The result was the systematic destruction of the entire Soviet force, with German tanks knocking out T-34s as they emerged from cover or tried to withdraw. This kind of tactical masterpiece was being repeated across the battlefield daily.
On a single day's fighting during the peak of the battle, Totenkopf and Das Reich (fighting defensively) claimed more than 80 tank kills between them. Even allowing for the inevitable exaggeration of combat reports, these numbers reflected genuine tactical dominance at the unit level. German crews were simply better trained, better coordinated, and more experienced at this kind of fighting than their Soviet counterparts. But Soviet crews were learning and their tactics were evolving. The German advantage would lessen significantly in 1944.
Kulik's 4th Guards Army reinforced Soviet positions. The race between German operational art and Soviet reinforcement capacity was reaching its climax. Meanwhile, 47th Army farther north was launching attacks that forced Hoth to pull away units, which undermined the German linkup.
Despite GD making good headway, Totenkopf still could not reach them – the Soviet defensive screen combined with its simultaneous offensive pressure was working. The SS division had to slash through the remaining Soviet defenses in a narrow corridor, fighting off counterattacks from both flanks while pushing north through terrain that offered little cover and no opportunity for rest, all while GD fought its own battle against flank attacks from 4th Guards Army and 1st Tank Army.
With stupendous effort, Totenkopf finally pushed north through that narrow corridor to unite with elements of 10th Panzergrenadier Division elements at Pakhomovka. Though GD made enormous progress during this time, a supporting division had to find the leading elements of Totenkopf and form a thin but defined line. GD had no troops to spare.
The formations that had been fighting almost continuously for over a month, operating under separate commands with degraded assets, coordinated their movements precisely enough to achieve junction against determined enemy resistance. This despite GD fighting simultaneous battles of moving forward against aggressive Soviet flank attacks (which were contained). Meanwhile, Totenkopf crawled through the defensive screen until August 22 (after a week and a half of high-intensity combat except the August 17 respite).
At that point, the Soviet 71st Rifle Division and the entire IV and V Guards Tank Corps, badly mauled by days of fighting, all were completely cut off. It was exactly the kind of pocket that German mobile tactics were designed to create and exploit. The Germans had done this many times during the course of the war on the Eastern Front. They would do it even more frequently before the war was over. But this one was the best they could do in August 1943. Just a tiny corridor. Still, it formed a pocket of over two captured Soviet corps.
But the mathematics of exhaustion were inexorable. The moment the Germans achieved their encirclement, Manstein and Hoth understood they lacked the resources to capitalize on it. The threat to the rear of German forces that had advanced from Akhtyrka was now acute and required urgent attention.
Soviet counterattacks were so intense, so sustained, that the Germans found themselves fighting for survival rather than exploitation. The pocket they had created with such tactical skill became a secondary concern compared to avoiding their own encirclement. This is one of the amazing moments in the battles around Bogodukhov. The Germans barely managed to pocket the leading Soviets while, simultaneously, were almost pocketed themselves by steady Soviet attacks.
By August 20, GD’s front was overextended, strung out across terrain it lacked the manpower to properly defend while simultaneously fighting off flank attacks. The 4th Guards, 27th, and 1st Tank Army forces north of the Akhtyrka penetration continued their attacks against what had become an exposed salient, with 7th Panzer Division and improvised ad hoc infantry groups barely holding the left flank against coordinated Soviet pressure.
The decaying situation further north forced the Germans to begin transferring forces to the threatened sector and to order GD and its neighboring units to go on the defense. 47th Army had been at least as successful as GD's advance. The Soviets had actually captured more territory than they had lost in the giant pinwheel battle.
Most tellingly, Hoth was forced to abandon any possibility of further attacks, effectively ending German offensive operations in the sector. The pinwheel had stopped spinning, and when it did, both the Germans and the Soviets found themselves in exposed positions they could neither exploit nor abandon. As events continued to unfold, it would be the Germans who ultimately began a strategic retreat. The Soviet offensives would continue with few pauses before they finally won the war in May 1945.
(to be continued)
Comments