Disaster on the Dnieper Loop ETO (id:#60424)

(Turning the Tide ID: U32)   [next]   [previous]

Prior Publication: SL SE107

Dnieper loop between Kaniv and Rzhishchev, Russia 1943-09-24 (2 others)

Overview:

STAVKA (the Soviet high command), detached the Central Front's 3rd Tank Army to the Voronezh Front to race the weakening Germans to the Dnieper, to save the wheat crop from the German scorched earth policy, and to achieve strategic or operational river bridgeheads before a German defence could stabilize there. The 3rd Tank Army, plunging headlong, reached the river on the night of 21–22 September and, on the 23rd, Soviet infantry forces crossed by swimming and by using makeshift rafts to secure small, fragile bridgeheads, opposed only by 120 German Cherkassy flak academy NCO candidates and the hard-pressed 19th Panzer Division Reconnaissance Battalion. Those forces were the only Germans within 60 km of the Dnieper loop. Only a heavy German air attack and a lack of bridging equipment kept Soviet heavy weaponry from crossing and expanding the bridgehead. STAVKA, sensing a critical juncture, ordered a hasty airborne corps assault to increase the size of the bridgehead before the Germans could counterattack. On the 21st, the Voronezh Front's 1st, 3rd and 5th Guards Airborne Brigades got the urgent call to secure, on the 23rd, a bridgehead perimeter 15 to 20 km wide and 30 km deep on the Dnieper loop between Kaniv and Rzhishchev, while Front elements forced the river. Soviet aerial photography, suspended for several days by bad weather, had missed the strong reinforcement of the area, early that afternoon. Lead aircraft, disgorging paratroopers over Dubari at 1930, came under small arms, machine gun, and quad-20 anti-aircraft fire from the armored personnel carrier battalion (Pioneers) of the 73rd Panzer Grenadier Regiment and elements of the division staff of 19th Panzer Division. Some paratroops began returning fire and throwing grenades even before landing; trailing aircraft accelerated, climbed and evaded, dropping wide. Of 4,575 men dropped (seventy percent of the planned number, and just 1,525 from 5th Brigade), some 2,300 eventually assembled into 43 ad-hoc groups, with missions abandoned as hopeless, and spent most of their time seeking supplies not yet destroyed by the Germans. Others joined with the nine partisan groups operating in the area. About 230 made it over (or out of) the Dnieper to Front units (or were originally dropped there).

Defender: German (Bataillon I, Panzer-Regiment 73, Panzer-Division 19)  

Errata (source)