The Bloody Triangle

by Victor Kamenir

  During the late morning, Sherstyuk’s headquarters received unconfirmed rumors of a German mechanized attack in the area southwest of Shatsk. Sherstyuk immediately cobbled together a makeshift task force and rushed it to block the perceived threat. Comprised of an armored car company from the 45th Rifle Division’s reconnaissance battalion, one artillery battery, one mortar battery, and one infantry company mounted on trucks, this task force easily blocked the German scout detachments from probing closer to Kovel.

  While insignificant tactically, this minor German probe proved very important in other ways. Soviet command could not ignore possibility of German outflanking thrust to Lutsk via Kovel, and for the following several days, strong elements from the Soviet XV Rifle Corps remained in static defense guarding against such eventuality.

  A more intense battle was developing to the south, along the road from Chelm to Kovel, near the town of Lyuboml. Around 0800 hours, a regiment from the Soviet 45th Rifle Division under Col. G. S. Antonov ran head-on into the advance elements of the German 56th Infantry Division. A stubborn fight ensued, with the Red Army regiment tenaciously holding its own against stronger enemy forces. Additional help came from the already mentioned 41st Motorized Rifle Regiment belonging to the XXII Mechanized Corps.

  The second division from Fedyuninskiy’s corps, the 62nd Rifle commanded by Col. M. P. Timoshenko and deployed south of the Chelm-Lutsk railroad, found itself in an extremely difficult situation.13 One of its regiments, the 104th, was detached as the corps’ reserves. Another, the 306th Rifle Regiment, had only its 1st Battalion available for defending the border, with another employed on construction works over ten miles away and the third serving as garrison of Lutsk. The third regiment, the full three-battalion 123rd, reinforced with both divisional artillery regiments, was positioned to guard the approaches to Vladimir-Volynskiy from the northwest, south of Mosyr village.14 And, naturally, this strong three-regiment group sat idle as fierce fighting raged to its north and south, practically within rifle shot.

  From the opening shots of the invasion, the lone battalion of the 306th Rifle Regiment was fighting for the area immediately south of the railroad. Outnumbered and outgunned, it was being cut to shreds and pushed southeast from the road. Only the timely arrival of the 41st Motorized Rifle Regiment temporarily shored up the situation along the railroad and reestablished contact with Colonel Sherstyuk’s division.

  As the day wore on, the 62nd Rifle Division became completely fractured. The survivors of the 1st Battalion/306th Rifle Regiment, along with the left flank of the 41st Motorized Rifle Regiment, were pushed east. This created a twelve-mile gap between it and the group south of Mosyr, the 123rd Rifle and two artillery regiments. Furthermore, as Vladimir-Volynskiy was lost in the evening of June 22, the Mosyr group became surrounded on three sides. Being out of communications and instructions from the 62nd Rifle Division, the two artillery regiments of the Mosyr group sat silent throughout the day, without providing desperately needed fire support, neither north nor south of them.

  While XV and XXVII Rifle corps were fighting for their lives, command staffs of their parent Fifth Army and the Kiev Special Military District were scrambling for information about events at the border. From the very start, these senior command echelons operated in a virtual information vacuum.

  In the last hour of the last day of peace, June 21, Marshal S. K. Timoshenko, the People’s Commissar for Defense (Defense Minister), and Gen. Georgiy K. Zhukov, Chief of General Staff, finally managed to convince Josef Stalin of the necessity of immediate actions. This was a difficult task, relentlessly carried out in low key by the two most senior Soviet commanders over a period of two weeks. It was not that Stalin was blind to the looming German danger. Desperately realizing his military’s unpreparedness for a difficult and protracted campaign with such dangerous foe as Germany, Stalin was playing for time.

  Despite numerous indications otherwise, Stalin believed that there still was a cushion of time remaining before full mobilization would be needed. During previous instigated conflicts, Adolf Hitler demonstrated his modus operandi of getting his way by following a process over time of applying political pressures and demands, backed up by show of force. Stalin was quite possibly interpreting the massing of German troops as just such saber-rattling. In keeping with Hitler’s past pattern of behavior, it appeared that the Soviet Union still should have had several weeks before the guns would sound. Therefore, Stalin was pursuing a policy of appeasing Hitler for as long as possible.

  In line with the above thinking, the Soviet military leadership developed series of plans based on assumption that there would be approximately four weeks of increased political tension, eventually leading to full mobilization. Each military border district, army, corps, and division had their own prepared plans, tailored to their particular theater of operations, outlining specific steps that would be taken once mobilization was announced.

  Kiev Special Military District had its own version of such plan, code-named KOVO-41 (KOVO is the Russian acronym for Kievskiy Osobiy Voyenniy Okrug, meaning Kiev Special Military District). Under this mobilization plan, the forward Soviet units would be brought up to full alert and deployed in a prepared, or, in most cases, partially prepared network of fortified regions. Forces of the second echelon would be positioned to contain possible enemy breakthroughs and to take the fight into enemy territory. Reservists would be called up and units brought up to full strength. Vital equipment, especially tractors and prime movers for artillery units and communication equipment, would be received from civilian economy, and number of specialist support and service units would be unfolded.

  However, even with the eleventh hour approaching, the Soviet dictator still resisted full mobilization and consented only to bringing the armed forces to alert status. Shortly after midnight, a terse directive was transmitted from Moscow to all the Soviet military districts lying along the western border:

  21st June 1941

  Directive to the Military Councils of Leningrad Military District, Baltic Military District, Western Special Military District, Kiev Special Military District, Odessa Military District

  Copy to: People’s Commissar of the Navy of the USSR

  1. During 22nd–23rd of June, 1941, a sudden German attack is possible along the fronts of Leningrad Military District, Baltic Military District, Western Special Military District, Kiev Special Military District, and Odessa Military District. The attack may be preceded by provocations.

  2. Mission of our forces—not to fall for any provocations, possibly leading to serious consequences. At the same time, forces of Leningrad, Baltic, Western, Kiev, and Odessa military districts are to be at full combat readiness to meet the possible sudden attack by Germany or its allies.

  3. I order:

  • During the night of June 22, 1941, to secretly occupy the firing positions of fortified regions along the state border.

  • Before dawn on June 22, 1941, to disperse and thorough camouflage all aircraft along the field airfields, including army-level aviation.

  • All units to be brought up to full readiness. The forces are to be kept dispersed and concealed.

  • Air defense is to be brought up to full readiness without calling up additional round-out personnel. Prepare all measures for blackout of cities and important objects.

  • Do not take any other measures without specific instructions.

  Signed,

  Timoshenko, Zhukov

  On the crucial night when the above directive was transmitted to Kiev Special Military District, both the district headquarters and headquarters of the Fifth Army were on the move. An earlier directive, received on June 19, ordered these higher headquarters to relocate their operations to their respective field command posts.

  The command element of the Fifth Army departed its headquarters in Lutsk after 0100 hours on June 22, headed by its chief of staff, Maj. Gen. D. S. Pisarevskiy. A skeleton crew stayed behind with the army commander Maj. Gen. Mikhail I. Pota
pov to continue operations until the alternate post came on line in the woods surrounding Byten collective farm, roughly forty miles northeast of Lutsk. When the alert directive was received in Lutsk around 0230 hours, the convoy bearing Pisarevskiy and the rest of headquarters personnel was just reaching their destination near Byten and was out of touch with Lutsk. With the war being an hour away, General Potapov had no means to reach his command element.

  Potapov personally made calls to headquarters of the four corps comprising his Fifth Army, while a duty officer was tasked with calling the army-level support units. The already mentioned XV and XXVII Rifle Corps were deployed directly along the border. Their subordinate units were located anywhere from five to forty miles east of it on roughly north-south axis. The two mechanized corps of the Fifth Army, the 9th and 22nd, were spread out over a significant distance along the west-east axis to the border. The XXII Mechanized Corps was the closest, with its 41st Tank Division being just six miles from the border in Vladimir-Volynskiy. The rest of the corps was over ninety miles east in Rovno. The other mechanized corps, the IX, was farther east, centered on the town of Novograd-Volynskiy, over 150 miles from the border.

  Potapov’s direct superior, Col. Gen. M. P. Kirponos, was in a similar situation, moving his command post forward from Kiev to Tarnopol. Almost a month earlier, on May 27, 1941, the Soviet General Staff issued orders to all western border districts’ headquarters to begin building field command posts with all haste.15 Despite these instructions, when Timoshenko’s orders arrived on June 19 to move Kiev Special Military District’s command element to Tarnopol, no such command post was yet prepared. Until Kirponos and his entourage descended on Tarnopol on June 21, the small garrison where his new command post was to be set up was occupied by some minor Soviet rear-echelon unit. It was unceremoniously moved on, and feverish work began bringing the command post to a working condition.

  Kirponos and his staff moved in two elements. The first element, carrying the district commander and senior personnel, plus some communications equipment, moved by train in the morning of June 21. They were followed by the rest of headquarters personnel and more equipment in the evening of the same day, moving in a truck and bus convoy commanded by the chief of operations section, Col. Ivan Kh. Bagramyan.

  In the early morning of June 22, Kirponos’ new command post was not yet fully functional. Thus, commander of the strongest Soviet military district was limited to several telephone lines, routed through the civilian telephone exchanges, and a teletype machine. There were several radio stations set up around Tarnopol, belonging to units garrisoned there, but the use of radio was expressly forbidden until the start of combat operations.16

  A small staff of several cipher clerks and communications officers was left behind in Kiev to handle all communications traffic until the command post in Tarnopol was set up by the end of June 22. This skeleton crew received Moscow’s directive around 0100 hours. After being deciphered, it was then encoded again and forwarded to Tarnopol, were it had to be decoded once more. After Kirponos; his chief of staff, Major General Purkayev; and district’s commissar, Nikolay N. Vashugin; evaluated the orders, they were encoded yet again and forwarded down to armies.

  This constant conversion of instructions in and out of code resulted in loss of precious time. Notification of first-echelon armies was uneven at best. The Fifth Army received this directive by 0230. However, the Twelfth and Twenty-Sixth armies were notified only around 0400 hrs, when it was already too late. The Sixth Army was not informed of the above directive at all; its commander, Lt. Gen. I. N. Muzychenko sounding an alert based on reports from his own forward troops and border guard outposts. This interim alert order did not filter down to a majority of individual corps and divisions, which had to go directly from peacetime to wartime footing without even a minimal notification period by their commanders.

  A major factor in the breakdown of Soviet military communications were pinpoint strikes directed specifically at communication facilities. Up to a week prior to the invasion, small units of German commandos and activated cells of anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalist OUN organization had been infiltrating the Soviet territory. Now these units struck at vital and vulnerable Soviet installations, adding chaos and confusion behind the Red Army lines. Paramount among these targets were Soviet communications centers. Pending mobilization orders, the Soviet military communications were routed through the civilian telephone and telegraph installations. Now, the German commandos and Ukrainian saboteurs struck at these virtually unguarded soft vital targets, almost instantly blacking out Soviet communications at the main thrust of German invasion. Since the use of military radios were expressly forbidden until the official mobilization orders, and these orders came too late, the loss of regular telephone and telegraph lines left a significant portion of the forward Red Army commands deaf and mute.

  As the field-gray masses of German Wehrmacht surged across the Soviet border, over four hundred attack aircraft from Luftflotte 4 darted towards the Soviet side overhead. In the period of two hours, the first wave of German aircraft hit twenty-four airfields belonging to Kiev Special Military District.

  Even though the total aircraft count of Luftflotte 4 barely reached eight hundred machines, they qualitatively outclassed the 1,939 aircraft in Kirponos’ command. The seventeen Soviet fighter regiments numbered 1,296 planes, including 243 new ones. These new models were mainly grouped in the 45th Fighter Division, while the other units had just one or two new aircraft for training. While most of the pilots assigned to the new aircraft had around four hours of flight time on their new machines, a majority of Soviet pilots were well trained on the older I-16 and I-153 fighters.

  Bomber aviation of Kiev Special Military District was composed of eleven short-range bomber regiments totaling 349 planes, including 50 new ones. There were also two regiments of ground attack aircraft of older I-153 and I-15 planes. In the reserve of Kiev Special Military District’s commander were two fighter regiments, four short range bomber regiments, and two reconnaissance regiments. An additional thirteen combat squadrons and one medical evacuation squadron were assigned directly to covering armies, but most of them were extremely under strength and underequipped and not combat ready.17

  Even though commander of the air force of Kiev Special Military District, Lt. Gen. E. S. Ptukhin, was more diligent than his counterparts in the other districts about dispersing and camouflaging aircraft, losses were significant. A majority of forward airfields in Kiev Special Military District were dirt strips, often rendered inoperable after rains. There were not enough of reserve airfields. In the spring of 1941, construction battalions began working on improving the existing airfields. However, by the time the war started, not a single airfield had finished its upgrades. Moreover, many of them, due to construction in progress, were rendered even less operable. This caused the aircraft to be bunched up on their airfields without adequate air defense artillery.18

  Along with orders on June 19 about building field command posts, western border districts received instructions about dispersing and camouflaging aircraft. In addition to this directive, General Ptukhin demanded that aircraft shelters be built at every airfield. However, he neither allotted funds nor resources for this endeavor. And, anyway, there was no time.

  Since there weren’t sufficient airfields on which to disperse the aircraft, a majority of commanders limited their efforts to spreading the aircraft around the perimeter of their existing airfields, often in squadron formations. On many airfields, the Soviet aircraft lined up almost wingtip-to-wingtip, presenting mouth-watering targets for German fliers. During the first day of war, air force units of Kiev Special Military District lost 301 aircraft.19 According to various sources, between 174 and 277 of them were destroyed or damaged on the ground. Total losses amounted to roughly 16 percent of available aircraft, a serious but not fatal blow.20 Success achieved by the German Air Force over its Soviet counterpart resulted not in one devastating opening blow, but in the systema
tic reduction of Soviet airfields and assets.

  Lack of adequate housing near the airfields resulted in majority of Soviet pilots leaving on Saturdays to spend the weekends with their families in bigger towns and cities. Therefore, by attacking in the early Sunday morning, the Germans ensured that the overwhelming majority of Soviet pilots would be away from their aircraft. By the time Soviet aviators began trickling in to their units on June 22, their airfields were already undergoing second, third, or fourth attacks, and significant numbers of their aircraft were destroyed.

  On the fateful morning of June 22, the 17th Fighter Regiment from 14th Mixed Air Division was based at Velitsk airfield, near Kovel. Twenty-year-old Lt. Fedor Arkhipenko was the duty officer at the airfield the night of the 21st–22nd. As was normal practice, a majority of married officers from the 17th Fighter Regiment was away from the airfield for the weekend with their families in Kovel. Only one pilot was on flight duty that night—Arkhipenko’s section leader, Senior Lieutenant Ibragimov with his I-153 plane. The previous evening was quiet, and Arkhipenko stopped by the officer’s club at the edge of the airfield to arrange a date with his girlfriend, a Polish girl named Yadviga, for the next day, Sunday, June 22.

  Around 0325 hours, Arkhipenko was contemplating getting off duty shortly and catching up on his sleep. Shattering explosions brought him to a harsh reality as multiple German aircraft descended upon his airfield. Years later, Arkhipenko still remembered that German planes flew so low that he could see one gunner, whom he mistook for a woman because the German’s long hair was sticking out from under his helmet.21 The bombing was heavy. Before there even was a chance to evaluate the damages from the first strike, the second arrived.

  Arkhipenko’s unit could not oppose the German bombers: a majority of pilots were gone, and there was no air defense artillery at the airfield. As the flight and technical personnel began dribbling in, they began individual sorties by Soviet pilots. Before noon, the air base was bombed four times.