Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (31 page)

The close air support command arrangement worked out so well in the II Air Corps zone that Colonel General Loehr copied it. He established Close Air Support Command South (Lieutenant Colonel Count Schoenborn) to support the First Panzer Army and Close Air Support Command North (Maj. Guenther Luetzow) to support Sixth Army. Both controlled three groups of fighters and dive-bombers. Luetzow, who was simultaneously commander of the 3rd Fighter Wing, was particularly successful in his relentless support of German ground forces.
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The last Russian units in the Bialystok Pocket surrendered or were destroyed on July l, but another huge pocket had been created in the Minsk sector on June 27, when Hoth and Guderian linked up east of the city. Crushing the pocket was, of course, another task, as the Soviets tried desperately to break the encirclement. Several units did manage to escape to the east, and Richthofen’s headquarters was besieged by requests from ground commanders for air support against this or that Soviet formation, which was either counterattacking or trying to escape the pocket. On July 5 Richthofen complained in his diary that the army refused to realize that the Luftwaffe could not be committed everywhere in dribbles, but rather must be concentrated at major points.
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General Plocher later wrote: “Everyone in the Army wanted to take over the Luftwaffe, but the Army was completely unaware of the potentialities of air power.”
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In fact, many unit commanders in the army demanded close air support for their units and were unable to see the larger framework in which air power must be employed. This was an understandable and very human failing on their part, but the Luftwaffe commanders found it frustrating nevertheless. Many calls for air support had to go unanswered.

Minsk fell on July 9. Two days later the OKW reported that 328,898 prisoners had been taken in the double battle of Minsk-Bialystok, and that 3,332 tanks, 1,809 guns, and large quantities of other war material had been captured or destroyed.
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Meanwhile, Hoth and Guderian had diverged once more, only to join hands again near Smolensk on July 16, forming another huge pocket, which was not cleared until August 5. Operating under the general direction of Kesselring’s 2nd Air Fleet, VIII Air and II Air Corps flew devastating sorties against the Russian units, prompting a desperate counterattack by the trapped Russians. Richthofen had moved his command post and his close air support aircraft (mainly Stukas) to the Dukhovshchina area, near the edge of the pocket. This base was the objective of a heavy Soviet armored attack on July 23. Once again the Stukas flew in defense of their own airfields. Richthofen committed the 99th Antiaircraft Regiment—which had been attached to VIII Air Corps for airfield defense—to the fighting. Many Soviet tanks were knocked out by the 88mm antiaircraft guns, but the Russians kept advancing. The Stukas and 88s delayed the Russians just long enough for the army to rush ground forces to the sector. These units counterattacked and pushed the Russians back, just in time to save the Dukhovshchina airfields.
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It appears that, on this occasion, Richthofen’s desire to provide close air support led him to select a base a little too close to the front.

The fighting at Smolensk ended on August 5. The Germans took another 310,000 prisoners, as well as 3,205 tanks and 3,120 guns.
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Meanwhile, to the south, Loehr, Greim, and Pflugbeil were also heavily engaged in what was now their primary mission: close air support of the ground forces.

Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group South struggled forward against difficulties Field Marshal von Bock did not face to the north. The wooded and swampy terrain of Soviet Galicia and the western Ukraine did not lend itself to rapid mobile operations, as did the terrain to the north. Also, Rundstedt had only one panzer group (Col. Gen. Ewald von Kleist’s 1st), as opposed to Army Group Center’s two. In addition, Rundstedt faced the bulk of the Soviet army and most of its armored and mechanized forces. Indeed, Stalin’s forces in June, 1941, had not been disposed in a defensive arrangement at all. Concentrated in the south, they were better positioned for an attack against Rumania (and the vital oilfields), leading one to believe that Stalin planned just such a move sometime in the future, possibly when the Germans were decisively engaged on the western front. Hitler, however, had forestalled him.

The first crisis in the south came on June 26, when the Soviets mounted a massive tank attack along the Kholoyuv-Brody line against Kleist’s rapidly advancing flank. Greim’s V Air Corps was committed immediately. It launched continuous, low-level attacks on the Soviet spearheads and troop concentrations, disrupting the Russian offensive and allowing Kleist to continue his advance. A similar crisis took place near Dubno, where V Air’s Ju-88 and He-111 bombers destroyed 40 tanks and 180 other vehicles and damaged hundreds more. Many of these tanks were the superheavy fifty-two-ton models, superior to anything Germany had in 1941 (the Tigers and Panthers did not appear until 1943). “The equipment of the Red Army amazes us again and again,” the chief of staff of the V Air Corps wrote.
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Meanwhile, the Red Army began to withdraw. Ranging far to the rear, the fighters of V and IV Air Corps strafed retreating Soviet troop columns while the Kampfgeschwadern bombed important road junctions. Interdiction of railroad traffic was also an important bomber mission, as it prevented the Russians from regrouping and, at the same time, allowed rapidly advancing ground forces to capture important rolling stock, which was needed to resupply both ground and air units.
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On July 13, 1941, Col. Gen. Franz Halder, the chief of the General Staff of the army, noted in his diary that thirty-four isolated trains had been captured in the Cherkassy sector alone. In the Gusyatin area, the 5th SS Panzer Grenadier Division “Viking” captured another thirty undamaged, loaded trains.
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Unfortunately for the Germans, the Luftwaffe bombers had neither the numbers nor the range to disrupt rail traffic east of the Dnieper. Because Germany had no strategic air force, Soviet engineers were able to hastily dismantle every possible piece of industrial machinery and send it east, where it would be reassembled in the Urals or beyond. Although badly hurt, the industrial potential of the Soviet Union had not been destroyed. If the blitzkrieg failed to conquer Russia before the onset of winter, the war machine of the Soviet Union—with almost three times the population of Germany—would be able to recover.

Meanwhile, the Soviet armies made a stand at the Stalin line, the heavily fortified pre-1939 frontier of Soviet Russia. Attacking gun emplacements, bunkers, artillery positions, troop concentrations, and strongpoints, the combat units of the 4th Air Fleet paved the way for the breaching of the fortified line in the second week of July. The Soviet retreat continued towards the Dnieper.

General von Greim attempted to cut off the Soviet retreat by destroying the six Dnieper bridges at Cherkassy, Kanex, Kiev, and Gornostaypol. He was not successful, partially because he used bombs that were too light, but mainly because the Russians were demonstrating great ingenuity. Despite forty-two hits on the bridges, the Soviet engineers repaired them all almost instantly. Using in some cases 1,000 workers per bridge, they were able to fix even the heaviest damage within thirty-six hours.
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Not all of the Soviet forces escaped across the Dnieper, because Kleist was too quick for them. Leaving weak forces to screen his northern flank, the Prussian panzer group commander advanced rapidly to the southeast and then due south, enveloping a large Soviet force at Uman, in front of the seventeenth Army. Greim’s air corps quickly established aerial supremacy over the pocket, shooting down at least 157 Soviet aircraft in the process. It then turned its attention to the pocket itself, frustrating Soviet breakout attempts and destroying 58 enemy tanks, 420 motor vehicles, and knocking out 22 batteries in the process. When the Uman Pocket was finally wiped out on August 9, 103,000 Soviet troops, 317 tanks, and 1,100 guns had been captured.
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Soviet power west of the Dnieper had been broken.

Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler was engaged in a great strategic debate with Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch, the commander-in-chief of the army. Brauchitsch saw Moscow as the primary strategic objective of the campaign and wanted to drive straight for it with Army Group Center and all of the air power of the 2nd Air Fleet. The Fuehrer saw things differently. He commanded that the right wing of Army Group Center (Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group, supported by Weichs’s Second Army) attack south, behind Kiev. Meanwhile, Kleist was to drive north to link up with Guderian and pinch off the huge salient forming around Kiev, the third-largest city in Russia and the key to the Ukraine, the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, he detached 3rd Panzer Group (Col. Gen. Hermann Hoth) from Army Group Center and transferred it to Army Group North, for an attack on Leningrad. Richthofen’s VIII Air Corps was assigned to 1st Air Fleet for the Leningrad attack, while Loerzer’s II Air Corps was given the task of supporting Guderian. Army Group Center thus lost all but one of its panzer corps and was virtually denuded of air cover at a time when the road to Moscow was held only by weak Soviet forces that had been mauled in the battles of encirclement at Bialystok, Minsk, and Smolensk. The capital of the Soviet Union was his for the taking, but Hitler let the opportunity pass. He had made a great strategic mistake, but it led to the greatest tactical victory of the war.

The Battle of Kiev began on August 25, 1941, when 2nd Panzer Group launched its drive to the south. Marshal Budenny, the Soviet commander, saw that he was facing envelopment, but Stalin denied him permission to retreat; he therefore tried to concentrate against Guderian’s spearheads. The fighting was bitter, but Budenny’s plans were disrupted time and time again. While Fiebig directed dive-bomber and ground attack units against Soviet resistance at the front, Loerzer employed his bombers en masse against the Russian railroads and troop concentrations, disrupting troop movements and resupply efforts and causing widespread confusion and disorganization. The 3rd and 53rd Bomber Wings were specifically commended by OKL. Between June 22 and September 9, for example, KG 3 alone destroyed 471 Soviet planes (450 of them on the ground), 30 tanks, 488 other vehicles, and 355 railroad trains; interrupted rail traffic 332 times; flew 290 sorties against troop concentrations, columns, and barracks; and attacked 21 supply depots. In a similar period, the 210th Ground Attack Wing of the 2nd Close Air Support Command shot down 96 Soviet aircraft; destroyed 741 aircraft on the ground; destroyed 148 tanks, 3,280 other vehicles, 166 artillery pieces, and 50 trains; cut railroad lines repeatedly; and carried out numerous successful attacks against troop concentrations, strongpoints, and other positions.
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