Katyusha fire from the west: a clear indication that 3rd Panzer Division was still not out of the woods.
Grossdeutschland’s other panzer grenadier regiment and the reconnaissance battalion, with the rest of the division’s armor, resumed the advance on Oboyan around 6:00 A.M. The grenadiers ran into an antitank screen; the reconnaissance battalion sidestepped it and kept moving under Stuka cover. So far, so good—good enough that Grossdeutschland’s commander moved the tanks at Verkhopenye to reinforce what he considered the
The 3rd Panzer Division was another warrior for the working day. It had no claim on Tigers or Panthers. Half the eighty-odd tanks the division took into the battle were Mark IIIs with 50 mm guns. But thus far its losses in men and tanks had not been particularly crippling, especially compared with other sectors of Citadel. From Major General Franz Westhoven down to the battalions and companies, its commanders were solid. The division made a dozen tactically successful attacks during the day. The problem was that antitank guns and dug-in T-34s, supported by the mobile armor of 6th Tank Corps, kept 3rd Panzer from forming a functioning
Grossdeutschland responded to 3rd Panzer’s situation by leaving most of its panzer grenadiers to hold the Oboyan sector and turning its tanks and the reconnaissance battalion west again, to clear 3rd Panzer’s front. It may not have been too little, but it was definitely too late—at least too late in the day. Not until 10:00 P.M. did Grossdeutschland’s spearheads make contact with Soviet tanks around Verkhopenye. After fifteen hours of combat and maneuver, only one order made sense: Hold in place for the night; refuel, rearm, repair, and rest. The 11th Panzer Division, on Grossdeutschland’s right, initially either achieved a degree of tactical surprise or was drawn along in its partner’s wake, depending on the reports and narratives. Whatever the reason, it made good progress astride the Oboyan road early in the day—only to create another small salient, its forward elements ahead of Grossdeutschland on one flank and the SS on the other.
As previously stated, Hoth’s orders gave II SS Panzer Corps as many as four potential missions: Break through the Soviets in their immediate front; disrupt the looming counterattacks by the Red Army’s reserves; draw along with them the army panzers on their left; and open an alternate route to Kursk. Any one was a major assignment. Hausser’s orders, issued at 11:00 P.M. on July 8, were correspondingly ambitious. The general intention was for the corps to establish contact with the 11th Panzer Division, destroy Soviet forces south of the Psel, and throw bridgeheads across the river in preparation for a further advance on a broad front, direction northeast. Das Reich would develop its present position as a main battle line (
Leibstandarte advanced around 10:00 A.M. on July 9, its four remaining Tigers leading the way. The division had taken fifteen hundred casualties in four days, most of them in the combat regiments, but morale was high—and it improved when a company of Mark IVs scattered the counterattack of a regiment of T-34s. By noon, the SS had crossed the Solotinka River and made contact with the 11th Panzer Division’s vanguard. Elements of both divisions made it to the village of Kochetovka, Sixth Guards Army’s headquarters, before being stopped by a reorganized 10th Tank Corps that proved to have a good deal of fight left, and by heavy rocket and artillery fire.
As the day waned, Leibstandarte began turning over the corps left wing to Totenkopf. The relatively fresh Death’s-Head Division lost no time mounting a head-down frontal attack toward the Psel. Despite strong resistance from the rear guards and the survivors of the 3rd Mechanized and 31st Tank Corps and the 51st and 52nd Guards Rifle Divisions, the SS gained as much as ten miles. The division’s artillery and tank guns literally blew the Guards headquarters out of Kochetovka before the panzer grenadiers took the town by close assault. Totenkopf’s main attack then turned northwest, to high ground a mile or two outside Kochetovka that overlooked the approaches to the Psel. There for the first time Death’s-Head encountered the shield-and-sword tactics of dug-in tanks and fixed defenses fighting to the finish while mobile T-34s launched repeated counterattacks. Totenkopf was held in place; not until darkness did its pioneers and panzer grenadiers succeed in bridging the Psel and establishing a foothold on its far bank.
Das Reich also spent the day in place, blocking with Citadel-relative ease a series of attacks along the Prokhorovka road by 2nd Tank and 5th Guards Tank Corps. But by evening, II SS Panzer Corps received ground and air reconnaissance confirming major armor movements to the northeast, against the corps’s right flank, along with heavy air activity. One column with 250 trucks and as many as 80 tanks had already passed through Prokhorovka. Soviet strength was such that German forces probing in the opposite direction had been pulled back. The further introduction of armor reserves from outside Citadel’s sector was probable.
July 9 was a long day at the higher headquarters of Voronezh Front. By its end, Sixth Guards and First Tank Armies had sacrificed any but the most basic tactical maneuverability, their original formations ground down, the successive reinforcements in no better shape. Katukov could assemble a hundred AFVs, more or less, and rather less than more. Both commanders had spent much of the day requesting immediate support and asking when Fifth Guards Tank Army would arrive.
Vatutin responded during the night of July 9–10 by sorting out his front. Katukov’s sector from right to left was now held by 6th Tank Corps along the Pena River; 3rd Mechanized Corps, or what remained of it, across the Oboyan road; and 31st Mechanized Corps extending the line to the Psel. Three fresh rifle divisions were taking position in the army’s rear. More significant, Vatutin placed 10th and 5th Tank Corps under Katukov’s direct command. Those were Voronezh Front’s last blue chips. Now it depended on Katukov’s ability to hold his sector and the ability of Fifth Guards and Fifth Guards Tank Armies to arrive in time to turn the battle around. It depended as well on the front’s ability to stop a developing shift of Fourth Panzer Army’s focus in the direction of Prokhorovka. The Soviet field communications system’s redundancy had proved its value repeatedly since Citadel’s beginning. By midafternoon, reports were coming in by radio, phone, and messenger that the SS was in effect replacing Leibstandarte with Totenkopf, thereby shoving the entire corps rightward, away from the Oboyan road. There was only one direction it could go: toward Prokhorovka.
Thus far, Lieutenant General Vasily Kriuchenkin had been a virtual spectator. Now his Sixty-ninth Army was bolstered by the 2nd Tank Corps and the usual smorgasbord of independent brigades and regiments, and he had been ordered to hold Voronezh Front’s northeast shoulder and its artery, the road to Prokhorovka. Lest the point be missed, Vatutin personally phoned 2nd Tank Corps just before midnight and warned its commander to expect a major attack the next day.
Vatutin would later describe July 9 as the turning point in his sector. The front commander may have been confident by day’s end, but too many things had gone too wrong too often since June 22, 1941, to allow any complacency. Apart from the Germans to his front, Vatutin and Vasilevsky were still a step behind the Rokossovsky-Zhukov team on the salient’s northern half. Model’s offensive had come to a dead stop. Manstein’s had reached the Psel, the last prepared defense system before the open steppe. The Prokhorovka sector was as yet defended by bits and pieces. Even if a German breakout was contained and defeated by Stavka’s reserves, Stalin would remember the general who buried tanks turret-deep and exhausted reserves in a vain defense. And should the Vozhd forget, Zhukov would be there to remind him.
In making and implementing decisions for July 10, Manstein and Hoth had to take into consideration another set of statistics. The Fourth Panzer Army had received a maximum effort from VIII Air Corps. But that term meant something different after four intense days. The Luftwaffe flew over fifteen hundred sorties—twice the number managed by the Red Air Force on July 9. The Stukas, the Heinkels, and the Ju-88s hammered Russian defenses,
