Disaster at Stalingrad

CHAPTER 4 Race to the Don

Hitler was in the best of moods at the conference with his generals. Within a few weeks they had given him two great victories at Kerch and on the Donets that had netted over 400,000 prisoners and huge amounts of booty. He eagerly greeted his senior commanders in Army Group South: army group commander Fedor von Bock, Paulus (6th Army), Colonel General Ewald von Kleist (1st Panzer Army), Colonel General Hermann Hoth (4th Panzer Army), Manstein (11 th Army), and Colonel General Richard Ruoff (17th Army).

In all of their discussions, he kept the focus on the objective of the Caucasus and its vital oilfields. The city of Stalingrad was hardly mentioned at all. Paulus’s and Hoth’s armies plus the allied contingents were to drive from the Don to the Volga. It would be on these wide open steppes that the great battles of encirclement would be conducted as they had been in 1941, destroying the last of the Stavka reserves. Despite this intended crushing of Soviet armies, the operation’s essential mission was to guard the flank of the 1st Panzer and 17th Armies before they plunged into the Caucasus. These operations were to be consecutive rather than concurrent. Hitler spoke of bringing Manstein’s 11th Army north as soon as it captured Sevastopol. The start date for Operation Blue was set for 28 June.

At that point Manstein thought it the right time to make a suggestion:

Hitler had been so pleased with Manstein’s victory at Kerch that he waved his approval. He was in such a good frame of mind that he went on to share his vision with Manstein.

Manstein was not the sort to suffer fools gladly, but he was disciplined enough to know when to hold his tongue. India, indeed. In his mind he ran over the logistics required. If Hitler ever got the German Army to India it would be only in midst of an opiate dream.²

As his aircraft was preparing to return him to Berlin, Dönitz kept thinking how impressed he had been with Admiral Otto Schniewind’s argument. The acting commander of the 1st Battlegroup, Tirpitz and Hipper, had put before the head of the Kriegsmarine a daring and aggressive plan on his visit to Trondheim two days ago.

Dönitz was more than a little surprised. Schniewind’s superiors had been far more hesitant to commit to such a major action. It took courage to go against them as well as urging a fleet action on the chief of the Kriegsmarine, a submariner to the core. However, as devoted to the U-boat mission as he was, Dönitz was anything but parochial. In fact, Schniewind and he were not far apart.

‘Schniewind, hear me out. I have been working along just such lines.’ It was Schniewind’s turn to be surprised.

With that he struck the table with his fist:

A sour rumour was running through the U-boat crews in the eight U-boat flotillas based in French ports that half of them would be transferred to Norway to join the three already there.³ The crews were not happy. It was harrowing enough to serve in a U-boat without having to look forward to returning to a frozen, unfriendly Norwegian port. Every man had a French girlfriend or was a welcomed patron at the local brothels now that there was no other traffic moving through the ports. The U-boat men did a collective shudder as the rumour swept through their boats.

Order followed on rumour, and for once the two said much the same thing. It was Norway alright for the 1st, 7th, and 10th Flotillas. The boats in port were to move immediately; those at sea were to move shortly after they returned to port and the men had had their well-deserved RƐtR. They were urged to make the most of it.

In the early morning hours of the 10th assault boats carrying elements of 6th Army’s 297th Infantry Division crossed the 60 yards of the Donets and secured the east bank. Pioneers quickly threw over a pontoon bridge. Upriver an intact bridge was seized by coup de main from its surprised Soviet guards. By morning 6th Army was pouring across the river to its start line for the coming offensive. Hitler had been concerned about 6th Army’s bridgeheads over the Donets all day, and his level of anxiety had been only barely relieved by reports of their success.

Hitler was happy to have his short break at his mountain retreat interrupted by Dönitz. He was eager to see how he had fashioned his noose. The admiral reported to him in the great hall with its massive plate-glass windows that gave the Führer an appropriate Wagnerian background. He was unsettled to see Goring there as well:

Hitler cordially extended his hand to the admiral. He was comfortable with Dönitz who, unlike the stiff and traditional Raeder, was a true National Socialist. Goring was equally cordial, though Dönitz realized what duplicity could lurk behind dicke Hermann’s eyes.⁵

Dönitz deftly laid out the plans for Operation Rösselsprung (Knight’s Move). The full strength of the Kriegsmarine — surface ships and submarines — supported by the Luftwaffe, would strike at Convoy PQ-17 and utterly destroy it.

The operation would begin by the deployment of several submarine flotillas to locate, shadow and harry the convoy. The chosen battleground would be east of Bear Island. As soon as air reconnaissance had located the convoy, Naval Group North in Kiel would issue the order for the surface battlegroups to put to sea. They would steam at maximum speed and converge about 100 miles northwest of North Cape about halfway to Bear Island. Luftflotte 5 was to conduct simultaneous reconnaissance sweeps 200 miles out to sea in a wide arc as well as fly fighter escort for the battle groups. Once contact was made with the convoy, the battle groups would destroy its cruiser escort. Thereafter, the merchant ships would be at their mercy either to be sunk or escorted back to Norwegian ports as German prizes. Tankers were high on the list of ships to be captured.

Dönitz emphasized that contact with a surface force of equal or superior size was to be completely avoided. The fleet would rely on the Luftwaffe to give warning of the approach of any such force. U-boats would deploy to attack any such force.⁶

Göring was the first to speak, almost eagerly. ‘I shall guarantee you that Luftflotte 5 will conduct reconnaissance to 500 kilometres [approx. 300 miles].’ Hitler nodded his approval. Dönitz glanced between them and caught the subtle body language. So the Führer did have his little talk with Goring. Heydrich had told him how much the Reichsmarschall had been embarrassed by the revelation that the British had been reading the Luftwaffe’s mail. Well, it was to the Kriegsmarine’s advantage that he now wanted to overcompensate. ⁷

Now Hitler spoke:

Dönitz was prepared for this:

The message from the British naval attaché in Stockholm, Henry Denham, hit the Admiralty like a bombshell. He warned that the Germans were preparing a major fleet action to destroy PQ-17. All seven major German ships, two light cruisers, three destroyers, several E-boat squadrons, six U-boat flotillas and a strongly reinforced Luftwaffe contingent would take part. It was clearly an all-out effort.

What made the report so convincing was that Denham classified it A3, one of the highest grades, which meant the source was absolutely reliable and the information most probably true. That source was an officer in the Royal Swedish Navy who had given the same reliable information when Bismarck sortied in 1941. What Denham did not know was that the Swedes had tapped the landlines that the Germans ran to Norway.¹⁰

This information forced a reappraisal of the defence of the convoy. Admiral Pound believed the risk to the convoy too great to proceed. Churchill at a conference with his senior naval commanders demanded that the convoy proceed despite the risk. ‘Risk’, he said, ‘is in the blood of the Royal Navy. What better way to finish off the Germans than with a decisive battle. Their fleet in being keeps far too many ships in home waters, ships that could better be used elsewhere, especially in the Mediterranean and Pacific.’

Churchill was not aware of the tension between Pound and Tovey. They had been discussing the tactics to be used in defending the convoy. Tovey put the proverbial skunk up on the table.

‘If the Tirpitz catches up with it under favourable conditions, the convoy is sure to be destroyed. I want permission to turn the convoy around if Tirpitz makes a show of it so that the Home Fleet can protect it.’ He had in mind also that the Home Fleet, except in emergency, was forbidden to get within range of the Luftwaffe. Nor was it able to escort the convoy all the way to Russia.

‘No, absolutely not,’ Pound said. ‘I intend, instead, to scatter the convoy should the Tirpitz be on the prowl.’

Tovey was aghast. ‘But that would be sheer, bloody murder.’ But the First Sea Lord was adamant.

At the conference Pound was clearly not happy at the Prime Minister’s insistence on a decisive battle. But Churchill looked at Tovey, whose command of the Home Fleet would be tested. Churchill could sense that he had a fighting man there. ‘Bring me a clean kill. Not another Jutland. Put them all on the bottom.’¹¹

‘But, Prime Minister,’ Pound said, ‘it is our policy that our capital ships should not approach within range of the enemy’s aircraft.’

Churchill flicked the ash off his cigar, glared at Pound, and said, ‘We have an aircraft carrier that can protect the Home Fleet. How does the First Sea Lord contemplate coming to grips with the German Navy otherwise?’

Pound attempted to argue that the risk was too great. He pointed out that HMS Victorious was the only aircraft carrier left to the Home Fleet and that at least two would be needed in any case. He then threw down his trump card: the naval Ultra was still blind. If anything would have given Churchill pause it was that, but clearly he had had enough. ‘Nelson would not have weighed and measured risk like a Levantine merchant haggling over six ounces of cinnamon. The policy is changed. The Home Fleet will engage and destroy the enemy.’ Pound’s days were numbered.

The figurative bomb that had exploded in the Admiralty sent splinters all the way to the USS Wasp which had just arrived on the West Coast. Immediately after the conference, Churchill had called President Roosevelt to beg for the return of the USS Wasp. That aircraft carrier had originally accompanied the USS Washington to Britain and then did vital service in defending the convoys to Malta. He had been much taken with the gallant action of that ship, and its escort of a second convoy, so that he had radioed its captain to say, ‘Many thanks to you all for the timely help. Who said a Wasp couldn’t sting twice?’

Admiral King’s reaction was hurricane force. The battles of the Coral Sea and Midway had reduced the US Navy to only three carriers in the Pacific. The President had to take the full power of King’s wrath and threat to resign. Even FDR’s fabled charm wilted in the face of the admiral’s fury. Yet Roosevelt was a war president little short of Lincoln’s ability. The strategic scales were finely balanced. On the one hand King was absolutely correct that the Navy desperately needed the Wasp in the Pacific. On the other there was the urgent appeal of America’s hardpressed cousin to ensure the safety of the convoy that would keep Russia in the war.

Roosevelt knew the risk the Navy took. He had loved the service ever since his days as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the First World War. Certainly more than the Army, the Navy had the affection of his heart. Chief of Staff of the Army General George C. Marshall on one occasion had to appeal to the President not to use the term ‘we’ when referring to the Navy and ‘them’ when referring to the Army. Yes, he loved the Navy. He also knew the Navy and he knew its valour was more adamant than the armour plate of its battleships. He finally made the decision. The Wasp would return to the Atlantic.

King’s revenge was petty. Wasp was about to exchange its old Vought SB2U Vindicator dive-bombers for new Douglas SBD-3 Dauntlesses and replace its torpedo-bombers with Grumman TBF-1 Avengers. He decided that if he could not keep the carrier in the Pacific, he could at least keep the newer aircraft. He ordered the Wasp to proceed directly to Britain with its original compliment of Vindicators.¹²

Upon reflection, King thought that there was some slight satisfaction to be found in seeing Wasp snatched back by the Royal Navy. Wasp had been designed simply because the United States had another 15,000 tons authorized for building aircraft carriers after the Enterprise and Yorktown were built, by the Washington Treaty of 1922 on limiting the size and number of warships in the major navies. It had only three-quarters the tonnage of those two carriers and half that of HMS Victorious. It was underpowered and had almost no armour or protection from torpedoes. And, like all American carriers, it had a wooden teak deck, unlike British carriers which had armoured decks.

At least, King thought, Roosevelt had not been hornswoggled by Churchill into giving up one of the bigger carriers. If that had happened, his troubles would have been over, for the following towering rage would have stroked him out.

Major Joachim Reichel, Operations Officer of 23rd Panzer Division, was headed for XVII Corps forward command post to look over the division’s march area. He was not aware that the pilot of his Storch light observation plane had wandered over the front lines until a rifle bullet punched through the plane’s fuel tank. The plane landed near the Russian lines. They had barely landed and got out of the plane when an enemy patrol arrived. Reichel and the pilot were shot on the spot. The patrol leader was then horrified to find that Reichel’s uniform bore the red trouser stripes of a General Staff officer. He realized that he had just killed the most prized of all prisoners; strict orders had been issued to all Soviet units that such prisoners were to be kept alive and well treated. To hide the evidence of his blunder, the patrol leader had the men stripped of their uniforms and hastily buried.

He had the good sense though to retrieve the map board and documents that Reichel had been carrying. When they were read by Timoshenko at his Southwest Front headquarters, he immediately had them flown directly to Moscow by special courier aircraft. They were the initial plans for Operation Blue. That night they were in Stalin’s hands. He dismissed them immediately as a deception. He pounded the table at his generals and insisted that Moscow was the target.

Hitler, on the other hand, took the loss far more seriously. He became incoherent with rage and ordered the court-martial of the major’s division and corps commanders. The offensive of 68 German and 30 allied divisions had been profoundly endangered. At the urging of Bock and Paulus, he agreed to maintain the schedule for the offensive. It was simply too late to change. On the 22nd 6th Army had seized another bridgehead over the Donets at Kupyansk. Things were now going to happen automatically.

Convoy PQ-17 departed the Icelandic port with 37 ships for the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangelsk. The holds of its ships were stuffed with 156,000 tons of cargo designed to keep the Soviets fighting — almost 600 tanks, 300 bombers, and 5,000 trucks, in addition to general cargo that included specialized vehicles, radar sets, steel plate, ammunition, and foodstuffs. A Soviet tanker was filled with linseed oil. The military equipment alone was enough to equip several fronts and an air army. It was the largest convoy yet. Twenty ships were American, twelve British, two Soviet, one Dutch, one Norwegian, and one Panamanian.¹³

Sailing with the convoy was its close escort of six destroyers, four corvettes, three minesweepers, two antiaircraft ships, and four trawlers under the command of Commander J. E. Broome, RN, to provide antisubmarine and anti-air protection. Two submarines shadowed the convoy should it be threatened by German surface ships.

The 1st Cruiser Covering Force was also ordered to rendezvous with the convoy on 2 July and remain with it until the 4th or ‘as circumstances dictate’.¹⁴ Four cruisers, HMS Norfolk and London and USS Wichita and Tuscaloosa, and three destroyers were commanded by Rear Admiral L. H. K. Hamilton, RN. The admiral was more than pleased to have the two American cruisers with his covering force. Each had nine 8-inch guns compared to eight for his two Royal Navy cruisers. Also, the American ships were newer, with much thicker armour on belt, turret and deck. He knew how thin-skinned his own ships were in comparison. He was worried about HMS London in which he carried his flag. The ship had already been repaired once for significant stress damage that had led to hull cracks and popped rivets.

A third layer of defence was added by the distant covering force of the battleships HMS Duke of York and King George V and USS Washington, heavy cruisers HMS Cumberland, Kent, and Nigeria, aircraft carriers HMS Victorious and USS Wasp, and fourteen destroyers. The American ships had been redesignated TF.99, commanded by Rear Admiral R. C. Giffen, USN, who had his flag aboard Washington. Tovey was prepared to sortie with the only two Royal Navy battleships left in the Home Fleet. The only other battleship was HMS Nelson which had just completed repairs in May but was scheduled to return to the Mediterranean as a vital escort to the Malta convoys.

The fact that the United States had been in the war barely six months presented another problem with the crews of some of its merchant ships. Suddenly confronted with a global naval war and its supply demands, America’s pool of experienced seamen was inadequate and had to be filled out with what were perhaps unkindly referred to as ‘mercenaries and an international mob of cutthroat nomads’. Thus it was fortuitous that each merchant ship was also provided with naval guncrews to man its antiaircraft defences. One ship in particular was a problem child. The SS Troubadour, a 22-year-old, British-built, 5,808-ton steamer that now flew the Panamanian flag. As soon as America entered the war, ‘its seventeen-nation crew of ex-convicts and the rakings of the US deportation camps’, promptly scuttled it. One month before at New York its ammunition magazine had been deliberately flooded.¹⁵

The British had their own problems despite the hard school of the first two years of the war. The rule was that a seaman’s wages were stopped when his ship was sunk, a morale builder if there ever was one. Qualified seamen were in such short supply that the government began conscripting men for the Merchant Navy. Retired men in their seventies were called back, and teenagers too young for the Royal Navy found work at sea. At one point, the British would become so desperate as to recruit inmates from Glasgow’s notorious Barlinnie Prison to act as firemen for a £100 bonus. ‘The men broached a consignment of rum intended for the Russian-based minesweeper flotilla and [the report continued with typical British understatement] a disturbance ensued.’ Clearly the convoy would have more to worry about than the Germans and the Arctic.¹⁶

This large city, only 280 miles south of Moscow, was both a major armaments centre and the junction linking vital north-south rail lines that ran between Moscow and the Volga basin and the river routes that linked Moscow with the Black and Caspian Seas. At the confluence of the Voronezh and Don rivers, Voronezh commanded numerous river crossings over the Don as well. Stalin fully expected 4th Panzer and 2nd Armies to attack from the area of Kursk north towards Orel and Moscow. On the morning of the 28th, those two German armies instead attacked towards Voronezh, 120 miles distant.

Stalin still clung to the notion of Moscow as the German objective; only now he believed the attack would be from the direction of Voronezh! However much the Germans worried that Major Reichel’s misfortune had let the cat out of the bag, they could not have asked for a more dangerously misleading appreciation of their intentions. For the Germans, however, possession of Voronezh was to guard the northern flank of Army Group South’s offensive. After it was quickly taken, 4th Panzer Army would rush down the west bank of the Don cutting off Timoshenko’s Southwest Front. It would be another great encirclement as in 1941, but this one would break the back of the Red Army.

The spear tip of the German attack was the new 24th Panzer Division created from the conversion of German cavalry units. It struck like a thunderbolt with the VIII Fliegerkorps providing direct support. The panzers overran several Soviet rifle divisions then bounced the first barrier, the Tim River, driving over the bridges as men tore away the burning demolition fuzes. Almost the first man over the bridge was the division commander, ahead even of his panzer regiment. That evening the panzers raced into the village of Yefrosinovka. The German commander could only exclaim, ‘What’s going on here?’ He saw ‘a forest of signs at the entrance of the village, radio trucks, staff horses, trucks’. They had found by chance the headquarters of the Soviet 40th Army. Most of the headquarters personnel barely escaped, but they had lost their equipment, and now 40th Army was leaderless.¹⁷

As 4th Panzer Army reached the halfway point to Voronezh, 6th Army launched its attack northeast from Volchansk with General der Panzertruppen Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg’s XL Panzer Corps, the other arm of the great encirclement of a great part of Timoshenko’s Southwest Front that Hitler had been so confident of. His orders were to link up with 4th Panzer Army’s XLVIII Panzerkorps under General Kempf. Everyone expected that another huge haul of prisoners would result, as it had time and time again since the Germans first crossed the Soviet border on 22 June 1941.

Over 2,000 trucks had rolled out of the American-built truck assembly plant at Andimeshk that month and crossed the Persian border by rail into Soviet Azerbaijan where they were reloaded into Soviet boxcars. Three more assembly plants were under construction. Some 120 A-20 Havoc bombers had been flown in and transferred to Soviet aircrews. Overall, 92,000 tons of Allied cargoes had been sent to the Soviets that month by this route. That was 47 per cent of all aid. In contrast, the deliveries to the Soviet Far East across the Pacific amounted to only 15.6 per cent of all aid. If anything happened to the Arctic route, it seemed that the Persian Corridor could more than pick up the slack. Clearly, the OKM staff had been prescient in its predictions of the danger presented by the Persian Corridor.¹⁸

Goring had been as good as his word. He had heavily reinforced Colonel General Hans Stumpff’s Luftflotte 5, which already had concentrated 264 aircraft in northern Norway. Barely a week ago 115 Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters of Jagdgeschwader 26 (JG 26 — Fighter Group 26) arrived from France only days behind the hurried arrival of their ground crews. The airfields around Bardufoss and Banak were fully able to accommodate them.

The Fw 190 outclassed even the latest British Spitfires and added a fighter element that was directly meant to counter Hitler’s fear of the enemy’s aircraft carriers. Goring had focused on the Führer’s anxiety in this matter and gave him his word that the Luftwaffe would take care of the aircraft carriers. In addition to the Fw 190s, Stumpff’s force included 74 reconnaissance aircraft, mostly from KG 40 based in Trondheim, 103 Junkers Ju 88 bombers, 30 Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive-bombers of Stukageschwader 30 (StG 30), and 42 Heinkel He 111 torpedo-bombers of KG 26. The Navy had another 15 Heinkel He 115 torpedo-bombers on floats, almost the only combat aircraft Goring had allowed it to possess. The only aircraft that probably could not be used to strike at the convoy at distances of 150 miles or more was the Stuka with its limited range of 310 miles. The other bomber aircraft all had ranges exceeding 1,200 miles.

With JG 26 came General der Jagdflieger Adolf Galland. Goring had sent him to coordinate Luftwaffe operations. It was a shrewd choice. The 26th had been the command in which he had so distinguished himself that Goring had appointed him as inspector-general of all the Luftwaffe’s fighters, essentially a staff job since the Jagdgeschwadern were not under his operational command. He had led the pilots of the 26th in the Battles of France and Britain, achieving ninety-six kills in air-to-air combat. For that and his leadership of JG 26 he was awarded the Diamonds to his Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.¹⁹

Rösselsprung would not be the first time he had worked with the Kriegsmarine. Shortly after his promotion he had prepared and executed the German air superiority plan (Operation Donnerkeil) for the Kriegsmarine’s Operation Cerberus, from his headquarters at Jever. The Navy had been very appreciative; not a single ship suffered damage from air attack, and Luftflotte 3 shot down forty-three British planes.²⁰ Galland’s presence would do much to facilitate cooperation between the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe in the coming operation.