Winter Storm (17 page)

“Willie,
one more time. I was too hasty.”

Brom
was working hard, his breath fast with the exertion and adrenaline of the
moment. “Gun ready sir!”

Another
round was chambered and Knispel did not miss this second shot, a turret hit
that devastated the enemy T-34. Colonel Antonov had lost twelve tanks in his
mad rush, five of them to Knispel’s credit alone. The other eager young
Corporals, Sergeants and Lieutenants in the brigade, now only just beginning
their careers in the panzer force, would all get their turn in the hours ahead.
Some had names that would be carved in steel over the next three violent years
of war. At that very moment, Michael Whittmann was riding in the number three
tank in II Battalion. With him was Balthazar Woll, his gunner, a man who would
go on to kill over 100 tanks in the shadow of Whittmann’s 138 kills.

Karl
Mobius, another centurion who would log over 100 kills, was also in the brigade,
along with Helmut Wendorff, who was credited with 95 in Fedorov’s history
books. One platoon harbored Bobby Warmbrunn, Jurgen Brandt, and Heinz Kling,
all fifty plus killers who would earn silver medals to go along with the gold
that would be racked up by Knispel and others.

Their
sudden arrival on the scene had completely unhinged the Russian attack. Before
it was over, the ABC Brigade would lose another fifteen T-34s, five KV-1s and a
pair of T-60s. Not a single Lion was killed, though many took hits. Their
frontal armor presented an impenetrable wall of steel, with stopping power
equivalent to 120mm of armor, almost twice what the best Soviet guns in front
of them could penetrate at the ranges fought.

Now it
was the Russians who would suffer tank shock. The advantage that had allowed
them to bloody the nose of 4th Panzer Division at Mtsensk, picking off Panzer
IIIs with their better 76mm guns, was suddenly over. The tables were turned
again, and it was the German Lion which stood invincible on the field, capable
of facing, and beating, any tank the Soviets had.
The Russians fell back, retreating north to try and
reorganize everything they had left.

At
Malakhovo, what remained of the ABC Brigade had swept up
to the village like a wave on the shore, losing its strength and power on
sharp, jagged rocks. One of Knispel’s platoon tanks had taken several hits, one
damaging a track that left the tank temporarily immobile. Knispel heard the
Sergeant call for support on the radio, and in a heartbeat, he ordered his
driver to back out of the shattered shell of the old farmhouse and into the
graveled alley. The Lion turned, the heavy tracks and 55 ton weight grinding on
the gravel as the tanks moved on. When he reached the edge of the village they
felt a hard chink on the forward side armor, and Knispel knew they had finally taken
a hit. The wounded Lion was just ahead, and the Sergeant could see that three
T-34’s had been jogging west to try and get around for a side shot. To make
matters worse, he saw that white coated infantry were riding on their backs,
and knew those men would soon leap from the tanks to begin a supporting attack.

“Get us
right behind Kleber’s tank!” he shouted, and the engine gunned as they moved
forward, arriving just in time. The three T-34’s were starting to range on the
wounded Lion, a round zipping past with an evil woosh.

“See
what I mean!” Knispel laughed. “They can’t fire on the move worth shit. Left
five degrees. We’ll get the tank on that side first.”

And he
did.

The
wounded Lion also traversed to fire, and when the second tank had its turret
blown completely off, the Germans cheered and whistled. Both Knispel and Kleber
had hit it at nearly the same time.

“There’s
your lucky number seven!” said Willie, but the Sergeant shook his head.

“That’s
Kleber’s kill. I’ve got plenty of my own.”

The
third T-34 was backing away as fast as the driver could go, and Knispel had an
easy shot, but he waited, seeing Kleber’s main gun traversing to engage. The
Russians were firing, but missed again badly, their fire control on the move
being abysmal, just as Knispel had predicted.

“Take
it out, Helmut!” said Knispel over his radio, and Helmut Kleber did exactly
that, getting his second kill of the day, both tanks that Knispel could have
easily destroyed himself. The enemy armor defeated, he ordered his driver
forward to engage the infantry, emerging from the turret hatch to get on the
main machine gun. The coaxial was already spitting fire at the Russian
soldiers, who were running fitfully for the edge of the town. Knispel joined
in, gunning them down, the shell casings ejecting and clattering over the heavy
armored turret.

Malakhovo
was secure, at least at that moment, and Antonov’s battalion had been
shattered. Knispel heard commands being shouted over his headset, and looked over
his shoulder to see German infantry coming up through the rubble of the
alleyway. The brigade had a full battalion of Panzergrenadiers in its
structure, and each of the three tank battalions operated with a company of
infantry mounted in APCs.

The sounds
of battle rumbled to the east, where 1st company had been engaged near
Slobodka. Now the second battalion tanks were finally plowing through the mud
on the main road south of the town, and beginning to enter Malakhovo. The
initial enemy attack had been broken, and they would now take the lead and push
on up the road while 1st Battalion reorganized.

Knispel
saw the lead tanks and knew it was Whittmann, an enterprising young Sergeant
who had been plucked from an SS Regiment after getting six kills single handedly
with a StuG III assault gun during a hot action earlier in Barbarossa. When the
101st Heavy Panzer Brigade was formed, it saw men from both the regular army
and SS collected to receive the honor of driving Germany’s newest tanks. Every
man there had to have at least five kills, and Whittmann’s tally just made the
grade. It was the same score Knispel had brought with him, though he had just
doubled his tally to twelve kills in this single engagement.

Whittmann
would learn much from the burly Lion headed Sergeant during his time with the
101st, and walk in his shadow, eventually reaching a total of 50 kills for his
silver engagement medal two years from that moment, when Knispel was closing in
on a hundred himself. Then, in the desperate fighting of 1944, Michael
Whittmann would suddenly earn his reputation as “The Black Baron,” and rack up
another fifty kills within a three week period. Now, however, he was still
learning his trade, and Knispel gave him thumbs up as his tank lumbered by.

“Don’t
be greedy,” he heard Whittmann shout his way. “Leave a few for the rest of us!”

“Plenty
more out there,” Knispel shouted back. “They’ll be in that tree line ahead.” He
saw Whittmann clench his fist, eager to get after them.

The
tanks of the second battalion rumbled by, and Knispel was out through his hatch
and down off the Lion to help the crew of Kleber’s wounded tank fix that
damaged track. He wanted to get on up that road as much as anyone else, but he
would not leave any tank in his platoon behind. As he labored, his hands
muddied and raw from the gravel in the alley way, another man waited in the
relative silence of the woodland, just where Kurt Knispel said he would be.

Dmitri
Lavrinenko was eager for a kill that day as well, and he would not have to wait
long.

*

6th
Tank Brigade was on the Russian left, still unaware of the sharp reversal that
had been suffered by the ABC Brigade in their mad rush on Malakhovo. The three
battalion commanders here, Kamenko, Sorokin and Telenin, would make a strong
push to try and cut the main road from the east. To do so they would face off
against old Rubber Nose again, KG Eberbach of Langermann’s 4th Panzer Division.
The T-34s sloshed through the gravel bed of a small stream, growing ever more
swollen with the rain, and the tanks gleamed with wet moonlight as the 6th
Brigade pushed on ahead. They ran right into Eberbach’s II/35 Panzer Battalion.
Startled by the sudden appearance of so many enemy tanks, the German battalion
chose prudence over bravado, and quickly fell back half a kilometer to reach
the supporting infantry of KG Dorn’s Panzergrenadier Battalion. There they
reorganized a combined arms
Kampfgruppe
, and launched an immediate
counterattack just before dawn.

Even as
they did so, thunder rolled, and the skies opened with torrential rain. The
Russians had seen the German withdrawal, and came on, heedless of the danger, and
for a moment it looked like the weight of three full tank battalions was going
to be more than Eberbach could handle. His
Kampfgruppe
was still mostly
comprised of Panzer IIIs, and the 50mm guns were getting hits that often
bounced harmlessly off the frontal armor of the T-34s.

The
1941 model of the Russian T-34 had what was thought to be very solid 81mm
frontal armor. The German Panzer IIIs, even with their improved 5cm KwK 39 main
gun, could only penetrate 44mm of frontal armor at 1000 meter range. At point
blank range of 100 meters, it could only penetrate 67mm of armor, and so the
T-34 had been largely invulnerable unless caught from the side or rear with a
very good shot. But all that was over, almost before it had started.

With
the memory of Mtsensk still fresh in his mind, Eberbach realized he was in
water three times deeper here. So he got on the radio and looked for some help,
which soon arrived in the heavy Lions of II Battalion,
Schwerepanzerbrigaden
101.

Now the
Russians tankers of the 6th Brigade were about to make the acquaintance of the
Big Cats. Their supporting infantry had been out in front, and as the German
reinforcements came up, they paled before the heavy growl of the new German
armor.

Lightning
flashed at the edge of thunder, soon joined by the sharp crack of the main tank
guns. There were 24 Lions in II Battalion, supported by 12 Leopards, and just
down the road was the remainder of Westernhagen’s Heavy Panzer Brigade, yet
another full battalion of Germany’s fearsome new armored gladiators. Throwing
in KG Munzel on the left, and everything Eberbach had, the Germans would field
over 200 panzers to face the Russian attack, and a monumental tank battle would
rip through the dawn like a raging tempest.

The Germans
would be elated to see just how well their Lions could fight. The new 7.5cm KwK
main gun also had new ammo to go with it, designated PzGr 40/42 series, and it
could penetrate 149mm of armor at 1000 meters, and 100mm at twice that range,
more than enough to pierce the 81mm armor on the T-34, as Kurt Knispel’s long
shots had already proven at Malakhovo. And that is exactly what the German tank
gunners were doing.

Suddenly
the Russian tankers, just getting used to the belief that they could face down
the best of the German tanks and come off the better, had this illusion soundly
shattered. The Lions lined up like the phalanx of steel that they were, and the
sharp crack of their guns chased the lightning as the battle opened. To their
great delight, they saw the enemy tanks hit at good range, and stopped cold
with a single shot from the new gun.

3rd
Battalion of the Soviet 6th Tank Brigade was smashed in ten minutes, and the Lions
roared on. In the swirling, wild battle that followed, the Germans lost six Pz
III-Ns and three Pz IVs in Eberbach’s 1st Battalion, but not a single Lion was
put out of action in the heavy battalion, which lost only two of the lighter
Leopard tanks. For the loss of these ten tanks, they took down 25 T-34s and
another 18 T-60s. The up armored KV-1s fared better, with only one lost, but
the Russians had two of three battalions shattered in the Brigade, losing 44
tanks, a loss of 50% of its fighting power in the twenty minute action.

*

When
they reached the edge of the woodland north of Malakhovo,
the men of the ABC Brigade were relieved to see reinforcements had come at this
most opportune time. It was Mikhail Katukov’s vaunted 4th Tank Brigade, the
heroes of Mtsensk that had so bedeviled KG Eberbach some weeks ago. The 4th had
come on the scene just in time to witness the carnage of Colonel Antonov’s
folly. A platoon commander with the 4th Armored Brigade emerged from the tree
line and halted, surveying the chaos of the battlefield, seeing T-34s pointed
in all directions.

“What
are you doing?” an officer shouted. “Can’t you see where the fighting is? Get
your tanks down there and join the attack!”

“Attack?”
Lavrinenko shook his head. “That’s a nightmare, not an attack. What were you thinking?
The Germans had the town, and you cannot rush a position like that without
taking heavy losses. You must flank them!”

“You
flank them then, by God. Get moving!”

“Who
are you?”

“Antonov’s
Battalion, 5th Brigade.”

“Well,
this is 4th Brigade,” said the Sergeant. “We stay right where we are. In fact,
back us a little deeper into those trees, Yuri. The Germans will be after that
mess out there soon enough. Lieutenant—the best thing you can do now is pull
back north of Slobodka. Don’t even think of mounting another attack here.
They’ll eventually come after you, and they won’t expect us to be in a good
flanking position in these woods. Let them come out into that open field there
east of the main road. We’ll take them at a kilometer out—side shots—and see
how they like it!”

Dmitri
Lavrinenko was finally about to come face to face with Germany’s very best, and
the outcome of Guderian’s advance on Serpukhov would ride in the balance.