Kalach Bridge

The Final objective for Russia's Operation Uranus was to seal off any escape for the embattled 6th Army by taking the bridge over the Don River at Kalach. Using a handful of captured tanks, Lieutenant-Colonel Filippov drove right through cheering rear echelon German troops to the river. His armor and …

1942-11-22

HotM06

The Final objective for Russia's Operation Uranus was to seal off any escape for the embattled 6th Army by taking the bridge over the Don River at Kalach. Using a handful of captured tanks, Lieutenant-Colonel Filippov drove right through cheering rear echelon German troops to the river. His armor and infantry quickly dispatched the bridge security with the loss of but a few tanks. The Germans, scrappíng up any available men from local maintenance and transportation units, quickly conducted a counterattack to blow the bridge, but Filippov and his men were ready to hold the tenuous bridgehead at all costs. - Dale Holmstrom

Kalach, Russia

Operation Uranus (Russian: Опера́ция «Ура́н», romanised: Operatsiya "Uran") was the codename of the Soviet Red Army 19–23 November 1942 strategic operation on the Eastern Front of World War II which led to the encirclement of the German Sixth Army, the Third and Fourth Romanian armies, and portions of the German Fourth Panzer Army. The operation was executed at roughly the midpoint of the five-month long Battle of Stalingrad, and was aimed at destroying German forces in and around Stalingrad. Planning for Operation Uranus had commenced in September 1942, and was developed simultaneously with plans to envelop and destroy German Army Group Center (Operation Mars) and German forces in the Caucasus. The Red Army took advantage of the German army's poor preparation for winter, and the fact that its forces in the southern Soviet Union were overstretched near Stalingrad, using weaker Romanian troops to guard their flanks; the offensives' starting points were established along the section of the front directly opposite Romanian forces. These Axis armies lacked heavy equipment to deal with Soviet armor.

Wikipedia: Operation Uranus

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