Battle of Târgul Frumos

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Battle of Târgul Frumos
Part of Soviet-German War, World War II

Advance of the Red Army 1943 - 1944
Date May 2-7 1944
Location Eastern Romania
Result Axis victory
Combatants
Germany,
Romania		 Soviet Union
Commanders
Ferdinand Schoerner Ivan Konev
Eastern Front
Barbarossa – Baltic Sea – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Belorussia – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans – Hungary – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague
Soviet Operations in the Balkans 1944
Târgul Frumos – Romania – Yugoslavia

The Battle of Târgul Frumos (May 2-7, 1944) was fought near Iaşi, Romania between the German Reich's Wehrmacht and its Romanian allies on one side and the Soviet Red Army. The battle started as the Soviets attempted to capture Iaşi in the final stage of their spring offensive, as part of their conquest of eastern Romania.

According to accounts by Hasso von Manteuffel, one of the two German division commanders, and Frido von Senger und Etterlin the German forces defeated a major Soviet offensive while inflicting serious casualties on the 2nd Ukrainian Front. The battle of Târgul Frumos has been used as a case study in officer tactical education in the United States Army and other armies, teaching how a mobile defense can defeat an armoured spearhead. There are however questions about the accounts by the two German officers, relating to the failure to include Romanian forces into their account, and about the real combat strength relation between attacking and defending forces.

[edit] Prelude

During April 1944 a series of attacks by the Red Army in the Iaşi sector was aiming at capturing the strategically important sector. The German-Romanian forces successfully defended throughout the month of April. The attack aiming at Târgul Frumos was the final attempt by the Red Army to achieve its goal of having a spring-board into Romania for a summer offensive.

[edit] The Battle

The battle of Târgul Frumos was a series of battles over several days during which armoured forces of German LVI Armoured Corps (Panzerkorps), in particular of the Grossdeutschland Division and 24th Panzer Division, engaged the Red Army’s 16th Tank Corps, which was attacking from the north too.

Despite initial successes of the Soviet attack, a series of counter-attacks managed to destroy the spearhead of the Soviet forces before adequate defensive measures could be taken. The battles sapped Soviet tank strength to a point where a continuation of the attack into Romania was no longer possible. In the three days of fighting, the German LVII Panzer Corps (mainly Grossdeutschland and 24th Panzer Division) and L Army Corps defeated the Soviet force and claimed the destruction of over 350 Soviet tanks, ca. 100 of these claimed by 24th Panzer Division.[1]

Soviet sources make few references to the battle. Historian David Glantz has found some mention of operations in Romania in April and May 1944 in divisional histories. The main source for him is Soviet 2d Tank Army’s history, where a direct reference to the battle could be found. It states that in late March 1944, the tank army was shifted into the sector of 27th Army with the mission of

“attacking in the direction of Fokuri and Podul-Iloaei. Subsequently, the army was to strike a blow toward the city of Iaşi and secure it.”

In the narrative on follow-on operations by the tank army it is stated that it attacked together with 27th Army’s 35th Rifle Corps. It also claims that 3d Tank Corps reached Targul-Frumos, but was thrown back by the German counterattacks. The 16th Tank Corps identified by the German officers appears not to be mentioned in the account.[2]

Despite German claims that the Soviet attack was a full-fledged offensive, it appears now that the battle of Târgul Frumos was a relatively small-scale operation in the context of 1944's fighting on the Eastern Front, even though a Soviet success would have put the Red Army into a much stronger position for its eventual attack into Romania. [3]

[edit] Aftermath

At the end of the Battle of Târgul Frumos the frontline stablised. But it was from these positions from which Soviets would launch the Battle for Romania (Iaşi-Chişinău Operation) in late August 1944

[edit] Formations Involved

[edit] Soviet

  • 2nd Ukrainian Front
    • 27th Army
      • 35th Rifle Corps
      • 89th Guards Rifle Division
      • 180th Rifle Division
    • 2nd Tank Army
      • 3rd Tank Corps
      • 16th Tank Corps (unconfirmed)

[edit] German

[edit] Romanian

  • 18th Mountain Division
  • 1st Guards Division
  • 1st Air Corps
    • 5th Bomber Group
    • 8th Assault Group (flying German Hs 129 ground attack planes)
    • 9th Fighter Group

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ During the battle, Hasso von Manteuffel, commander of the Grossdeutschland division, first encountered the new Soviet Stalin Tank: "It was at Târgul Frumos that I first met the Stalin tanks. It was a shock to find that, although my Tigers began to hit them at a range of 3,000 metres, our shells bounced off, and did not penetrate them until we had closed to half that distance. But I was able to counter the Russians' superiority by manoeuvre and mobility, in making the best use of ground cover."
  2. ^ Glantz, D. Slaughterhouse
  3. ^ Glantz, D. Slaughterhouse; Historians are thus left with the question of whether the Soviet offensive was a major effort to penetrate into Romania or simply a local assault to improve the Soviet operational posture and opportunities for a renewed offensive in the future. The Germans maintain it was the former. This author has argued that it was the latter and was also associated with deception planning for future operations in Belarus (to fix the future presence of 2d Tank Army in Romania, while it was shortly moved elsewhere). Only further release of Soviet archival materials will settle this long-standing debate.

[edit] References

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