Attacking into the face of heavy artillery and dug-in infantry, commander of the 43rd Tank Division, Colonel I. G. Tsibin, placed his four KV-1 and T-34 tanks in the first echelon, acting as mobile armored screen for his light-skinned T-26s. The see-saw battle lasted all day, with both sides constantly conducting small-unit attacks and counter-attacks. Slowly gaining ground, the 43rd Tank Division reached the Ikva River on the eastern outskirts of Dubno. However, the price it paid was high: Colonel Tsibin’s division lost both of its KV-1 tanks and fifteen T-26 tanks, an irretrievable loss of over 22 percent of armored vehicles.
By late afternoon, the Soviet attacks started petering out. German 13th Panzer Division broke through the defensive positions of the 228th Rifle Division and began flanking the 40th Tank Division around the left. The 11th Panzer Division went around the left flank of the 43rd Tank Division south of Dubno, and one of its combat groups raced towards Ostrog and Zdolbunov. A breach began developing between the two tank divisions of the XIX Mechanized Corps.
Fearing his corps being fragmented and surrounded, Major General Feklenko ordered his units to disengage and pull back. The majority of the 228th Rifle Division accompanied Feklenko’s corps in retreat.
Ostrog: Task Force Lukin vs. 11th Panzer Division
The German breakthrough to Ostrog was not foreseen by the Soviet command, and this town was lightly held by a small garrison unit, incapable of offering any resistance to the Germans. The way to Shepetovka, an important railroad junction, looked open. Gustav Schrodek, describing the actions of 15th Panzer Regiment of the 11th Panzer Division, writes:
The regiment’s advance resumes already at 0200 hours, and by 0630 hours Mlodowa is taken after a tough fight against enemy infantry and artillery.[1] However, this was achieved at a loss of three of our own panzers.
By 1400 hours the regiment was in a renewed fight with enemy tanks which advanced from northeast—and were stopped again. Part of the regiment, Battle Group Angern, advanced there and in the afternoon already stand five kilometers west of Mizoch, approximately 20 kilometers northwest from Ostrog.[2]
And here the German intelligence failure came into play. Unbeknown to the Germans, the Soviet Sixteenth Army, one of the two armies forming the second strategic echelon, was located near the town of Berdichev. At the start of the war, the Sixteenth Army was just finishing up its move from Siberia. On June 26th, the Sixteenth Army and its sister Nineteenth Army, also newly arrived in Ukraine, received orders to move by train north to Byelorussia to shore up the crumbling Western Front there.
Since the morning of June 26, the units of the Sixteenth Army under Lt. Gen. M. F. Lukin were moving towards their railhead at Shepetovka. Finding out about the German breakthrough at Ostrog and realizing the severity of the situation, Lieutenant General Lukin, on his own initiative, diverted the 109th Motorized Rifle Division of his V Mechanized Corps from the embarkation and personally led it towards Ostrog.
Its 173rd Reconnaissance Battalion arrived in Ostrog just before the Germans. It did not have time to dig in before the German 61st Motorcycle Battalion from the 11th Panzer Division slammed into them. After a sharp fight, the German motorcycle troopers pushed their Soviet counterparts to the northeast of the town, where the Red Army men were able to dig in, partially surrounded.
However, the fighting that raged on the flanks of the 11th Panzer Division created many anxious moments for its men:
Employment of our own Air Force eliminates the activity of the Russian aircraft, which is generally pleasantly noted. Considering the situation which was becoming ever more unclear, it was welcomed to be able to completely turn one’s attention on the battlefield alone. The Russians tried to break through everywhere and thereby temporarily created quite critical situations. For a short time the Russians succeeded in closing the route of advance towards Ostrog with a flank attack…. By the evening of 26th, however, the situation was again quite secure.”[3]
During the night of June 26–27, all the forces that Lieutenant General Lukin could divert from Shepetovka gathered just east of Ostrog. Organized into Task Force Lukin, they were the 109th Motorized Rifle Division composed of 173rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 381st Motorized Rifle Regiment, 2nd Battalion of the 602nd Motorized Rifle Regiment, and the 404th Artillery Regiment, plus several small garrison and rear echelon detachments. The rest of Lukin’s army already departed or were in the process of leaving for the Western Front.[4]
IX Mechanized Corps, Major General K. K. Rokossovskiy Commanding
Realizing that his orders to attack on the 26th would be virtually suicidal, Major General Rokossovskiy was not eager to throw his weak corps into the meat grinder. His motorized rifle division, the 131st, was fighting detached east of Lutsk. The majority of artillery belonging to his 9th Mechanized Corps had not arrived yet, and only his two tank divisions were available for the attack. However, though never blessed with an abundance of tanks, the march towards the sound of the gun further depleted the numbers available to him.
The IX Mechanized Corps started the war with right around three hundred tanks, not a single one of them being new T-34s or KV-1s. In fact, roughly 20 percent of tanks in Rokossovskiy’s formation were armed only with machine guns. Approximately a third of his tank strength was contained in the 131st Motorized Rifle Division, which was being steadily ground down east of Lutsk. With large numbers of breakdowns during the march, Rokossovskiy had only small numbers of light T-26s, BT-5s, and BT-7s with which to attack. His 20th Tank Division, numbering around thirty tanks, was basically a reinforced rifle regiment. The 35th Tank Division, with slightly over one hundred tanks, would have to bear the brunt of the offensive.
Even on the day of the offensive, Rokossovskiy did not have contact with neighboring corps, nor coordination from above: “Nobody was tasked with coordinating actions of the three corps. They were committed into combat piecemeal and directly from the march, without any consideration given to condition of the forces which already fought with strong enemy for two days, and without taking into consideration their distance from the area of expected contact with the enemy.”[5]
Lack of coordination from the higher echelons could be further demonstrated by the fact that Rokossovskiy thought that the XIX Mechanized Corps would be advancing on his left and the XXII, on his right. He had no idea that XXII Mechanized Corps was so thoroughly disordered that it no longer functioned as a corps.
Not being able to completely ignore his attack orders, Rokossovskiy made a display of being on the offensive, while basically maintaining his positions. In mid-afternoon on June 26, he conducted limited counterattacks. While not achieving territorial gains, Rokossovskiy’s attack relieved some pressure from the hard-pressed XIX Mechanized Corps, allowing it to fall back in some semblance of order.
Accepting enormous responsibility, Rokossovskiy decided not to continue attacking. Instead, he assumed a completely defensive posture, shifting his 20th Tank Division to his right flank to further strengthen defense of Lutsk-Rovno highway.
During this day, as already became norm, Rokossovskiy was severely hampered by lack of information, especially from the headquarters of the Fifth Army: