Wikipedia

168th Rifle Division

The 168th Rifle Division was formed as an infantry division of the Red Army in the Leningrad Military District in August - September 1939, based on the shtat (table of organization and equipment) of the latter month. It was the highest-numbered rifle division to take part in the Winter War against Finland, and attempted to advance west along the north shore of Lake Ladoga as part of 8th Army, but was encircled near Kitelä and remained in this pocket, struggling for survival, for the duration of the conflict. At the start of the Continuation War it was deployed in the same general area along the new USSR/Finland border as part of 7th Army in Northern Front. The Finnish Army crossed the border on June 25, 1941, and the 168th soon found itself again encircled on the shore of Ladoga. In the third week of August it was evacuated to Leningrad and assigned to Leningrad Front's 55th Army.

168th Rifle Division (August 1939 - January 1946)
Soldiers of the 168th in combat, Leningrad Front, 1943
Active1939–1946
Country Soviet Union
Branch Red Army
TypeInfantry
SizeDivision
EngagementsWinter War
Continuation War
Siege of Leningrad
Leningrad–Novgorod offensive
Krasnoye Selo–Ropsha offensive
Vyborg–Petrozavodsk offensive
Baltic offensive
Riga offensive (1944)
Courland Pocket
Battle honoursRiga
Commanders
Notable
commanders		Maj. Gen. Andrei Leontevich Bondarev
Maj. Gen. Pantelemon Aleksandrovich Zaitsev
Maj. Gen. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Egorov
Maj. Gen. Pyotr Ivanovich Olkhovskii

Formation

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The division first began forming in August 1939, at Cherepovets in the Leningrad Military District, based on a cadre from the 14th Rifle Division. Its order of battle (as of 1941) was as follows:

  • 260th Rifle Regiment
  • 402nd Rifle Regiment
  • 462nd Rifle Regiment
  • 453rd Artillery Regiment (until December 4, 1941, then 412th)
  • 412th Howitzer Artillery Regiment (until December 4, 1941)
  • 220th Antitank Battalion[1]
  • 351st Antiaircraft Battery (later 176th Antiaircraft Battalion, until May 15, 1943)
  • 187th Reconnaissance Company (later 187th Battalion)
  • 215th Sapper Battalion
  • 209th Signal Battalion (later 906th Signal Company)
  • 216th Medical/Sanitation Battalion
  • 157th Chemical Defense (Anti-gas) Platoon
  • 231st Motor Transport Company (later 231st Battalion)
  • 150th Field Bakery (later 299th Motorized Field Bakery)
  • 284th Divisional Veterinary Hospital
  • 93rd Divisional Artillery Workshop
  • 187th Field Postal Station
  • 200th Field Office of the State Bank

Col. Andrei Leontevich Bondarev was appointed to command on August 23. This officer had previously led the 43rd Rifle Division.

Winter War

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Advance of 8th Army. Note positions of the 168th.

The division was deployed to 8th Army, to the northeast of Lake Ladoga. The Army had six divisions under command, with the 18th and 168th on the left flank under command of 56th Rifle Corps. They were to work together to advance in the direction of Sortavala in an effort to outflank the Mannerheim Line on the Karelian Isthmus. The 168th's route followed a road along the lake shore, and this would spare it the fate of the 18th.[2]

The Army also had two tank brigades under command and faced the Finnish IV Corps. This Corps was thinly spread and the strength the Red Army was able to deploy on this sector came as a nasty surprise. A new rail line had been extended during the fall from 8th Army's main supply base at Petrozavodsk up to the border near the town of Suojärvi. The Finnish Army commander, Field Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim, had expected nothing more than reconnaissance forces in this area and quickly realized that 56th Corps could outflank the entire IV Corps from the northeast, or push west through Tolvajärvi into the interior. This presented a crisis for the Finns, and by the time it was stabilized Mannerheim had been forced to commit over 30 percent of his total available reserves; this would adversely affect his ability to reinforce the defenders of the Isthmus. He wrote on the night of December 1, the second day of the War:

2. On the north of Ladoga itself the Russian 168th Division under General [sic] Bondarev struck at Salmi. The plan called for it to advance to a line that ran from Koirinoja to Kitelä and there join forces with the Eighteenth Division... which had attacked along the Uomaa road, parallel to and about 20 miles north of the Ladoga coastal road. The plan evolved so that the Eighteenth soon received orders to turn north toward Syskyjärvi, four miles north of the Lemetti road junction and attack the Kollaa defense line from the rear at the same time it secured the flank of the 168th Division.

The sheer size and power of the Soviet attacks all along the front very nearly overwhelmed the Finns during the first days.[3]

As Mannerheim understood, during December 1 Bondarev's division passed Salmi and was moving through Pitkäranta toward Kitelä against negligible resistance. However, the greater threat was assessed as being from the 139th Rifle Division on the road to Tolvajärvi, and it was decided to take a stand there. This led to the Battle of Tolvajärvi, which climaxed on December 12 with a Finnish victory. Meanwhile, the commander of IV Corps, Maj. Gen. J. W. Hägglund, had led his soldiers back to the Kollaa line by December 7. However, he had plans for a counteroffensive in which the 168th would be encircled at Kitelä while the 18th Division and other units were driven back across the border. In the event, this led to the other units, after being broken apart, digging in in encirclement, in what became known as mottis. While "motti tactics" were heralded as a tactical innovation, Hägglund later wrote that he only planned to trap the 168th, and the other 11 mottis "just happened." While they represented a tactical victory they were also, more often than not, strategic failures, as the Finns did not have the resources to destroy them.[4]

The Great Motti

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As the situation of IV Corps stabilized, Hägglund began to put his original plan into action on December 12. Leading into the right flank of 56th Corps some 12km behind the front line was a north-south secondary route called the Siira road, which offered an excellent approach route to the Uomaa road. Eight Finnish battalions were assembled near Kotajärvi, but the approach march was badly managed. The terrain was difficult even by Finnish standards, and the infantry soon became tired; heavier equipment and extra ammunition was left for follow-up troops to bring forward. Only three battalions managed to make any headway at the road junction against heavy Soviet shellfire, and 18th Division was soon organizing counterattacks from both east and west that included the 34th Tank Brigade. The next evening the worn-out Finns broke contact and fell back up the Siira road, unable even to hold their minimal gains. Units of the 18th set out in pursuit, but not beyond the range of their artillery. The attack should have served to alert the Red Army command that a counteroffensive was in the works, but their forces failed to take any countermeasures.[5]

Hägglund made a second attempt on December 17, this time in a conventional frontal assault against the main line of 8th Army between Ruokojärvi and Syskyjärvi, but this made little progress in the face of superior Soviet firepower. As Finnish casualties mounted the operation was called off, although it may have served as a feint to distract from Hägglund's real objective against 56th Corps. Mannerheim, meanwhile, was losing patience and sent orders to speed things along. By now a victory had been won at Tolvajärvi and the Kollaa line was holding; as well the weather had turned in favor of the Finns with heavy snowfalls making it difficult to keep Soviet supply routes open. Hägglund's plan was, first, to attack at Uomaa village to cut 18th Division's communications and establish a roadblock facing east to prevent the arrival of reinforcements. The main assault would be made by two Task Forces, "A" (Autti), and "H" (Hannukselka), named for their commanders. These would hit the 18th's line on a 15km-wide stretch of the Uomaa road, break through at several points, and then drive south the Ladoga shore, cutting off the 168th. At this point Hägglund was confident that the two divisions would either launch local counterattacks, which he was confident his troops could hold against, or withdraw entirely from the Ladoga shore back to Soviet territory. This latter would free a Finnish division to reinforce the Isthmus front.[6]

The operation began on December 26 with a feint attack near Syskyjärvi. The next day a raid in force struck Uomaa village; the defenders of 18th Division put up a stiff defense, falling back on fortified buildings in the village center. The Finns detached a screen of troops to keep the garrison surrounded before moving east to set up the roadblock. Meanwhile, Colonel Autti avoided the mistake of moving his force through the woods, and instead formed them up astride the Siira road just beyond line-of-sight from the Soviet positions, and after an artillery preparation sent them in a flat-out charge down the road. The charge hit the line and broke through. By twilight (nearly all this fighting took place in semi- or full-darkness) they were able to bring the Uomaa road under small arms fire, and the next morning they took the road junction. By January 3, 1940, the defenders had been pushed into a figure-eight-shaped motti west of the junction. Colonel Hannukselka's force was similarly successful and by the end of the first week of January the 18th had been broken up unto multiple mottis along the Uomaa road, while on January 11 the 168th was confined to what became known as the "Great Motti" south and east of Kitelä. In this position the division still had access to Lake Ladoga.[7]

In common with the smaller mottis, starvation was not an immediate concern due to the large number of draft horses available. Air resupply was also used, despite considerable interference from Finnish antiaircraft fire. The "Great Motti" was some 52km2 in area and it became a point of pride that it would not fall. It was a naturally strong position; the lake shore was practically lined with granite headlands and outcroppings while the inland perimeter ran along a series of wooded ridges where Bondarev had dug in the division's tanks. The two artillery regiments were concentrated in the center to provide all-round fire support. A tenuous line of supply was established along the shore from the new front line at Pitkäranta to the southeast sector of the "Motti" at Koirinoja. As Ladoga froze solid, in a foreshadowing of the siege of Leningrad, the shore route was replaced by an ice road. Hägglund's forces were barely adequate to maintain the siege of this and the other mottis and was unable to interfere except with small ski detachments which emplaced themselves on several small islets along the route, which led to savage nighttime battles with the strongly escorted supply columns. In early March, not long before the end of the war, the Soviets launched an offensive against these islets with massive air and artillery bombardments and waves of infantry. Only a handful of the Finns survived this attack. The fighting ended on March 13 with the 168th still in place. The 18th Division was less fortunate. It lost its divisional banner in one of the motti battles, suffered heavy casualties, and was disbanded.[8] While the War had not been the disaster for the 168th that it had been for some other rifle divisions it still suffered some 7,000 casualties, roughly half its strength, in 3 1/2 months.

Postwar

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On May 20, two men of the division were made Heroes of the Soviet Union. Sen. Lt. Pavel Ivanovich Ivanovskii was the commander of the reconnaissance company of the 462nd Rifle Regiment. He distinguished himself on December 29, 1939, by leading his scouts in defeating several Finnish attacks at the cost of his own life. He would be buried in Sortavala.[9] Jr. Lt. Vasilii Mikhailovich Yuzhakov commanded the cavalry platoon of the 402nd Rifle Regiment; on December 3 he led a small group of his troopers to defeat a Finnish detachment that had penetrated into the regiment's rear. On January 14, 1940, he led his platoon to defeat a group of Finns trying to capture an important height in the Lemetti crossroads area. After the Winter War he furthered his military education and eventually rose to command of a rifle regiment. He died on September 18, 1966, and was buried at Vologda.[10]

Continuation War

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Bondarev was sent to the Frunze Military Academy in November to further his military education and was replaced by Col. Andrei Fyodorovich Mashoshin until March 14, 1941, when Bondarev returned. Mashoshin would be in command of the 177th Rifle Division at the time of the German invasion, and would lead several other divisions until mid-1944. Bondarev would be promoted to the rank of major general on October 7. On June 22 the 168th was part of 7th Army in Leningrad Military District, which was soon renamed Northern Front.[11] Much of West Karelia had been transferred to the USSR in the peace treaty, including the north shore of Lake Ladoga, and the division was deployed in the same general area where it had fought in the Winter War, northwest of Sortavala. In planning done by the staff of Lt. Gen. M. M. Popov, commander of Leningrad District, less than a month before the invasion, 7th Army constituted Covering Region No. 2 of the District, responsible for the sector along the Finnish border from Lake Onega to Lake Ladoga with four rifle divisions and one fortified region.[12] At this time Col. Aleksandr Ignatevich Korolev was serving as the division's chief of staff.

 
Finnish advance in Karelia. Note red diamond showing encircled 168th.

Finland declared war on the USSR on June 25, and by July 4 the 168th was defending against advancing elements of Hägglund's VII Corps. On July 16 Finnish forces broke through the defenses of 7th Army, liberated Impilahti and Pitkäranta, and cut off the division in much the same positions it had held in the "Great Motti". By the beginning of August it was administratively assigned to 19th Rifle Corps in Northern Front's 23rd Army.[13] At this time of year no ice road was possible and it was desperately needed for the defense of Leningrad, so on August 21 it was evacuated by the Ladoga Flotilla to the area of the city. By the end of the month it had been assigned to 55th Army and took up positions south of the city.[14]

Siege of Leningrad

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On August 25th the German XXXIX Motorized Corps and XXVIII Army Corps of 18th Army broke through the defenses of 48th Army and seized Lyuban. Popov's left flank was now in tatters with only the Krasnogvardeisk Fortified Zone remaining to defend the city. With the approval of the STAVKA he designated the western half of this as 55th Army, which was defending the Slutsk–Kolpinskii line with the newly arrived 168th plus four other divisions, although two of them were badly depleted. Between August 30 and September 8 the XXVIII Corps, supported by 12th Panzer Division, repeatedly struck the Army's defenses west of Tosno, southeast of Krasnogvardeisk, and the Neva River, slowly driving it back until reaching the Izhora River, where resistance stiffened and fighting continued for several days.[15]

On the latter date the 20th Motorized Division reached Shlisselburg on Lake Ladoga and completed the encirclement of the city. 55th Army was now defending Slutsk–Kolpino Fortified District from Pustoshka to the Neva with the 90th, 70th, 168th, and 4th Leningrad Opolchenie Divisions deployed on the expected German axis of attack. Stalin, reacting with anger to the completion of the encirclement, appointed Army Gen. G. K. Zhukov to command of Leningrad Front on September 9. On September 12 the 168th brought the advance of XXVIII Corps on Slutsk and Fedorovskoye to a halt after only minimal gains. Through most of the rest of the month 18th Army focused on driving north to the coast of the Baltic Sea west of Leningrad which would put its forces in its southern outskirts. By the end of the month the division had fallen back to positions south of Kolpino.[16]

First Sinyavino Offensive

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On September 30, Army Group North ended its effort to take Leningrad directly, in part because its panzer divisions had been shifted south for Operation Typhoon. Zhukov was already directing an operation to break the blockade through a converging attack toward Sinyavino and Mga from inside by the Neva Operational Group and outside by 54th Army. 54th Army had begun its attack on September 10 but only gained 6-10km toward Sinyavino during 16 days of on-again, off-again fighting. Eventually the XXXIX Corps forced the Army back from even these modest gains. On October 12 and again on the 14th the STAVKA ordered Leningrad Front to renew the offensive. 55th Army was reorganized as the Eastern Sector Operational Group (ESOG) to attack across the Neva, advance on Sinyavino and link up with 54th Army along with the Neva Operational Group. Once this was achieved the three forces were to advance north to Shlisselburg and restore land communications.[17]

The 168th was not originally part of ESOG, but instead was involved in battles of local importance during October 1-24 in the area of Putrolovo and the Pushinskii Sovkhoz.[18] The Neva Group had already established a bridgehead on September 18 with the 115th Rifle Division and 4th Naval Infantry Division, and this would serve as the springboard for the offensive. The ESOG had nine rifle divisions, one rifle brigade, and four tank brigades, for a total of 71,270 men, 97 tanks (including 59 KV types), and 475 guns. It faced some 54,000 German troops in well-fortified positions flanked by swampy terrain and backed by 450 guns. At 2010 hours on October 19 two regiments of the 86th Rifle Division crossed into the so-called "Nevsky Pyatachok", some 2km in width and 500m-600m deep. These went over to the attack at 1000 on October 20 and despite heavy fire wedged into the defenses and entered hand-to-hand combat, expanding the bridgehead marginally. Beyond this the offensive made little progress on any front over the next three days.[19]

Bondarev received orders on October 24 to lead his division into the bridgehead two days later. As with the 86th Division the 168th had to cross at night, as the entire bridgehead was under direct and indirect fire. It was concentrated in the village of Eksolovo, but the 412th Howitzer Artillery Regiment was delayed due to lack of fuel for its tractors. The first notable snow fell on October 27 as reconnaissance began for the coming breakout effort, and replacements were received on October 30 as training continued. On November 2 the 168th returned to the 8th Army. In the planning for the breakout the division was to initially capture strongholds in the Figurnaya grove and sand quarries. It would then advance in the direction of the Sinyavino Heights.[20]

References

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Citations

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  1. ^ Charles C. Sharp, "Red Legions", Soviet Rifle Divisions Formed Before June 1941, Soviet Order of Battle World War II, Vol. VIII, Nafziger, 1996, p. 83
  2. ^ John R. Elting, Battles For Scandinavia, Time-Life Books, Inc., Alexandria, VA, 1981, pp. 28-29
  3. ^ William R. Trotter. A Frozen Hell, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, NY, 2000, pp. 39, 52-53, 93
  4. ^ Trotter. A Frozen Hell, pp. 94-95, 109-17, 131-33. Motti translates as "a pile of logs to be chopped into firewood."
  5. ^ Trotter. A Frozen Hell, p. 134
  6. ^ Trotter. A Frozen Hell, p. 135
  7. ^ Trotter. A Frozen Hell, pp. 135-36
  8. ^ Trotter. A Frozen Hell, pp. 137-39
  9. ^ https://warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=5717. In Russian, English translation available. Retrieved August 5, 2024.
  10. ^ https://warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp?Hero_id=5360. In Russian, English translation available. Retrieved August 5, 2024.
  11. ^ Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1941, p. 7
  12. ^ David M. Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941 - 1944, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2002, p. 19
  13. ^ Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1941, p. 30
  14. ^ Sharp, "Red Legions", p. 83
  15. ^ Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941 - 1944, pp. 64-65
  16. ^ Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941 - 1944, pp. 66, 71, 74-77
  17. ^ Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941 - 1944, pp. 82-83, 92
  18. ^ https://centralsector.narod.ru/arch/168_5_1.htm. In Russian.
  19. ^ Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941 - 1944, pp. 92-94. Note that on p. 93 the 168th is misnumbered as the 169th Rifle Division.
  20. ^ https://centralsector.narod.ru/arch/168_5_1.htm. In Russian.

Bibliography

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