Of course, we did not have a complete set of personnel or equipment. We lacked artillery and some types of small arms. Our tank brigades only had 40–45 tanks, most of which were vehicles that had just been repaired. But it was a considerable force and we waited for the order to bring it down on the enemy.{152}
Rumyantsev was designed as a relatively simple, brute-force plan. Vatutin deployed the 5th and 6th Guards Armies (5 GA, 6 GA) northwest of Belgorod and intended to use them to blast a hole through two German infantry divisions of the LII Armeekorps. Once a breakthrough was achieved, Vatutin would commit 1 TA and 5 GTA as front-level mobile groups to exploit and envelop Kharkov from the west. Each combined arms army would also have an independent tank corps to act as army-level mobile groups, which would open a new chapter in the Red Army’s operational use of tanks. The intermediate operational objective was Hoth’s headquarters, near the rail junction at Bogodukhov, 56km northwest of Kharkov. Three other armies from the Voronezh Front would mount supporting attacks to widen the breach, while Konev’s Steppe Front would use the infantry of 53rd and 69th Armies to mount a direct assault on Belgorod. Zhukov believed that Hoth’s PzAOK 4 would be encircled and destroyed in or near Kharkov. Rumyantsev was not a hastily-thrown together operation like the counter-attack at Prokhorovka, but a carefully planned effort that tried to assemble everything that the Red Army had learned so far about combined arms warfare.
At 0500 hours on 3 August, the Voronezh Front began a 170-minute artillery preparation in its designated attack sectors. The density of the barrage was much larger than the Germans were accustomed to and the LII Armeekorps’ forward positions were devastated. While the barrage was in progress, Soviet sappers moved forward and began clearing lanes through the German mines. Vatutin provided his two main assault armies, the 5 GA and 6 GA, with a special sapper brigade for obstacle removal. At 0750 hours, Vatutin’s ground assault began. The 5 GA hit the boundary between the German 167. and 332. Infanterie-Divisionen with two corps-size shock groups, the 32nd and 33rd Guards Rifle Corps. Each of these shock groups had three rifle divisions, a tank brigade and self-propelled guns for close support and engineer battalions to clear mines – all indications that the Red Army was learning how to conduct offensives more efficiently. The correlation of forces in the assault sector was over-whelming and 5 GA rapidly broke through the LII Armeekorps first line of defence and smashed the 167.Infanterie-Division. Only three hours after the ground attack began, Vatutin committed the lead elements of 1 TA and 5 GTA into battle to hasten the German collapse in this sector. Each tank army was led by a reinforced tank brigade, which acted as an advance guard well ahead of the main body. In Katukov’s 1 TA, it was Polkovnik Nikolai V. Morgunov’s 200th Tank Brigade, from 6 TC, that was out in front. By nightfall, Vatutin’s armour had achieved a penetration of 14km into Hoth’s lines. In general, the supporting attacks also went well, although Zhukov brow-beat commanders into committing their tactical armoured reserves too quickly, before breakthroughs had been achieved.
There was little that Hoth, in his headquarters at Bogodukhov, could initially do to contain Rumyantsev. Both 1 TA and 5 GTA advanced southward, side-by-side, with nearly 1,000 tanks. Hoth positioned Schmidt’s 19.Panzer-Division and its attached Panthers to create a Stützpunkt at Tomarovka on the west side of the Soviet breakthrough, but there was a growing gap in the LII Armeekorps sector that could not be closed. Assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 911 and Crisolli’s 6.Panzer-Division tried to close the gap, but this proved impossible. A mobile delay with armoured forces is fought as a series of meeting engagements in reverse. Typically, the Germans would deploy a platoon of Pz IV medium tanks in concealed positions with their main guns slewed over the back deck; when the lead Soviet tanks appeared they would destroy the first few tanks and then race back to the next terrain feature to repeat the process. These ambush tactics usually resulted in tankers running up their ‘kill tallies’ without the risk of heavy losses. Mobile delay could be nerve-wracking, however, when crews were tired and inattentive; sometimes the pursuing Soviet tanks could approach from an unexpected direction.
Hoth ordered what was left of LII Armeekorps to establish hedgehog defences in towns but most of Katukov’s 1 TA blew past the Tomarovka Stützpunkt. Instead, much of 6 GA’s infantry and Kravchenko’s 5 GTC (which was supposed to be an army-level mobile group) became focused on seizing this one town. Rotmistrov’s 5 GTA lagged behind Katukov and 6.Panzer-Division conducted a mobile delay which slowed it even more. Meanwhile, the 53rd and 69th Armies eliminated the German defences north of Belgorod and closed in on the city. In order to envelope the city, Rotmistrov directed General-major Boris M. Skvortsov’s 5 GMC to push in Crisolli’s screen west of Belgorod. By 5 August, General der Panzertruppen Erhard Raus’ XI Armeekorps was nearly surrounded in Belgorod and he was forced to evacuate the city.
Major Karl von Sivers, an educated former cavalry officer, commanded the remaining Panthers, deployed in blocking positions just outside Tomarovka. He had missed Zitadelle due to illness, but was now to able to lead Panthers into combat under more favourable circumstances. By 4 August, T-34s from Morgunov’s 200th Tank Brigade were trying to skirt around Tomarovka to encircle the town, but von Siver’s Panthers engaged them at long range and knocked out seven. When sitting in a defensive position, the Panther’s long 7.5cm gun completely outclassed the opposition. However, by 5 August Tomarovka was nearly surrounded and von Sivers’ Panthers and Schmidt’s 19.Panzer-Division had to abandon the town and retreat southwest down the Vorskla River valley. Before evacuating the city, German pioniers blew up 72 damaged Panthers in the local Werkstatt; Hitler had ordered that no intact Panthers should fall into Soviet hands. Several long columns with thousands of German troops retreated westward, with the Panthers using their long-range gunnery to keep the wolves at bay. Over the course of 5–9 August, von Sivers’ Kampfgruppe, which became separated from the main body, retreated 100km and fought their way through Soviet roadblocks. At one point, Kravchenko’s 5 GTC manoeuvred a company-size force to block the road ahead of the retreating Germans, but von Sivers’ Panthers knocked out eight T-34s and shoved the rest aside. On the road march, the Panthers would have run out of fuel, but von Sivers radioed the Luftwaffe to provide some via airdrop. Finally, von Sivers’ Kampfgruppe linked-up with the Großdeutschland near Akhtyrka on 9 August. In five days of combat, the Panthers had destroyed 40 T-34s at no combat loss to themselves, but 16 Panthers broke down from mechanical faults on the retreat. Von Sivers’ was left with only nine operational Panthers.{153}