БУКРИНСКИЙ ПЛАЦДАРМ 1943. ПОЧЕМУ СВОИ ЖЕ ПАРТИЗАНЫ ОСТАВИЛИ АРМИЮ БЕЗ ЛОДОК?

The 3rd Guards Tank Army had been given Stavka's trump card—five hundred and seventy-four tanks, straight from the reserves near Tula. The objective was simple: a dash to the Dnieper and capture the crossings before the retreating Germans. The pontoon fleet was stuck in Kursk. The boats they had been counting on were burned by their own partisans—to prevent them from falling into German hands. They crossed on planks, barrels, and rubber pontoons designed for infantry. One such boat even managed to tow a self-propelled gun across the Dnieper. The third T-34 tank simply sank it. Vatutin's idea was beautiful on paper: a bridgehead, conveniently shaped for flanking defense. On the ground, it proved a curse—ravines up to sixty meters deep, heights from which the Germans could fire for kilometers around, roads that the peasants from the central part of the country called mountains, although they had never seen mountains there. On October 12, they lost one hundred and seven tanks in two days. Vatutin slightly adjusted the figures in his report to Stalin. Zhukov continued to insist: give us more shells, we'll get through. Headquarters compared him to Konev, who was coping with the same number of shells in the neighboring sector, and simply pushed through the decision to regroup. Stalin slammed his fist on the table. The army was withdrawn from Bukrin and redeployed north of Kyiv—to a place where everything would work out. But that's another story. #battleofthebackoftheday #bukrinbridgehead #rybalko #vatutin #1943 #thirdguardstank #konev #zhukov #greatpatriotic #militaryhistory #onuchkin #arkhipov #antonov #easternfront #voronezhfront #crossing #crossingthednieper #1stukrainianfront #moskalenko #october1943