Often up to ten vultures, formed up in a closed circle, would dive on our positions, dropping bombs and strafing troops with machine guns. Our aviation still did not make its appearance, while we had very little of air defense artillery. It could not cover all of corps’ positions. The Fascist fliers knew that and with almost complete impunity bombed our rear echelons, destroying ammunition trucks and fuel tankers.[27]
The 12th Artillery Regiment received the full brunt of German un-tender mercies. Regiment’s commander, Maj. I. I. Tseshkovskiy, and his deputy, Captain N. F. Ozirniy, were both wounded. Losses of command personnel were such that a Senior Lieutenant Klinka took over command of one of the battalions. Still, despite severe losses, this regiment, armed with 122mm and 152mm howitzers, gave a good accounting of itself in the face of German tanks. Several times when the German tanks broke through the forward Soviet defenses, fire brigades composed of two to three KV-1s would be sent forward to plug the gap.
When, by the end of the day, the Germans broke off their attacks, Ryabyshev remembers hearing cannonade coming from northeast. He was hoping that this was the sound of the IX and XIX Mechanized Corps attempting to link up with him at Dubno. He said, “Everything was quiet behind the left flank of our divisions, where the units from Maj. Gen. I. I. Karpezo’s XV Mechanized Corps were supposed to operate. We still have not received any instructions from Gen. R. N. Morgunov, who was supposed to have been coordinating actions of VIII and XV Mechanized Corps.”[28]
What’s worse, when the VIII Mechanized Corps shifted northeast against Dubno, it opened an undefended gap between the left flank, the 7th Motorized Rifle Division, and the right flank, XV Mechanized Corps’ 212th Motorized Division. The 7th Motorized Rifle Division became surrounded from three sides; by German 75th Infantry Division from the north, 11th Panzer Division from east and now the 57th Infantry Division, which got into the unoccupied gap, from the west. In order to prevent his division from being completely cut off, Ryabyshev ordered its retreat through the narrow corridor to the southeast.
After the main body of the VIII Mechanized Corps ceded the blood-soaked ground, the 16th Panzer Division finally had a chance to consolidate gains, rest, and reorganize.
While the 16th Panzer Division was slowly grinding down Ryabyshev’s corps, its sister 11th Panzer Division was having a tough time in Ostrog. This division moved far forward, and when Task Force Popel cut its resupply line, it began experiencing difficulties. Its lead elements were being bloodied just beyond Ostrog in a tough contest with Task Force Lukin, while its rear echelons found themselves pressed hard by Commissar Popel’s group at Dubno: “At the same time, it had to deal with constant strong enemy attacks against Ostrog bridgehead, while behind them, in the area of Dubno, the German troops had to contend with strong enemy motorized forces with tanks.”[29]
Disruption in supply caused severe concerns for 11th Panzer Division, especially with fuel and ammunition. A temporary airlift by several He-101 squadrons attempted to resupply division’s forward units, but the amount delivered was insufficient to cover the expenditure of vital supplies.
The Soviet Air Force, despite being much-maligned in recollections of many Soviet memoir writers for its conspicuous absence, nonetheless made a significant impression on Gustav Schrodek. While not always extremely effective in delivering their payloads on target, it had a demoralizing effect on soldiers of the 11th Panzer Division. Recollections of Gustav Schrodek attest to that:
It started raining during the night, raising hopes that today it would cause the Russian fliers to cancel their activity. But it was not to be. The rain stopped at daybreak, and the Soviet airplanes again emerged immediately afterwards, falling upon column after column of rolling units from 11th PD, which continued arrived at Ostrog during the day…. For their part, the tank crews, in order to protect themselves from attacks from the air, would dig foxholes, over which they would position their well-camouflaged tanks. They weathered these air attacks in these pits. Unfortunately, further personnel loses could not be avoided. It can not be denied that the Soviet opponent, here at least, has the absolute air supremacy…. Never in its history did the 15th Panzer Regiment experience so many air attacks as here, in and around Ostrog [emphasis added].[30]
This last sentence would come as a great surprise to majority of Soviet servicemen who survived the first stage of the war, being left to the un-tender mercies of the Luftwaffe without their own air force’s interference. Overall, the limited Soviet aviation assets still available to the South-Western Front conducted almost four hundred sorties during the day in the face of overall German air superiority.
CHAPTER 12
Fall Back to Old Border, June 29–30
JUNE 29, 1941
South-Western Front, Colonel General Kirponos Commanding
IT RAINED HEAVILY ALL NIGHT, adding to the misery of both warring sides. In the drizzly morning of June 29, under the overcast sky, Major General Potapov’s Fifth Army held the line of Goryn River from the area of Klevan, northwest of Rovno, following the turns in the river south to Goscha. From there south to Mogilyani, a distance of roughly fifteen miles, the area was occupied only by small Soviet reconnaissance patrols. The Mogilyani village was the extreme right flank of Task Force Lukin, still containing the Germans in their bridgehead on the east bank of Goryn River opposite Ostrog.
However, looking southwest from Ostrog, the situation looked tenuous for the Soviet troops. The area between Ostrog and Dubno was virtually unoccupied by Soviet forces for almost twenty miles west to Dubno-Kremenets road. The XXXVI Rifle Corps was deployed from the east bank of Ikva River to Kremenets. Going south along the Ikva River, the 14th Cavalry Division extended the line southwest to Dunayev.
The XV Mechanized Corps was in a vulnerable position at Lopatin, northwest of Brody. The XXXVII Rifle Corps was hurrying from Busk, southwest of Brody, to shore up the escape corridor for the XV Mechanized Corps.
As the Sixth, Twenty-Sixth, and Twelfth Armies continued falling back from the Lvov pocket, the fighting came uncomfortably close to Tarnopol. In late morning of June 29, Kirponos and Purkayev made the decision to move the headquarters of the South-Western Front farther east to Proskurov (modern day Khmelnitskiy). The evening was spent hastily packing up the headquarters, and the large convoy departed for Proskurov during the night of June 29–30. As during the previous move just one week and lifetime ago, Colonel Bagramyan was assigned to stay behind with a small staff at Tarnopol. He was to follow the main body of the Front headquarters element in the morning of June 30, after receiving the word that it arrived at Proskurov. The vacated command post of the South-Western Front in Tarnopol was to be occupied by the headquarters of the Sixth Army.
Russian historian A. V. Isayev described the German wedge impaled between the Soviet Fifth and Sixth Armies as a giant trapezoid. Its base, anchored on Kivertsi in the north and Brody in the south, was roughly forty-five miles long. The sides of the trapezoid stretched approximately sixty miles, with its top following Goryn River for about twenty-five miles.