315th Rifle Division (Soviet Union)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
315th Rifle Division
Active1942–1947, 1951–1955
Country 
Crimean Offensive
DecorationsOrder of the Red Banner Order of the Red Banner
Battle honoursMelitopol
Commanders
Notable
commanders		Mikhail Knyazev
Dmity Kuropatenko
Askanaz Karapetyan

The 315th Rifle Division was a standard Red Army rifle division formed for the first time on February 12, 1942, in the Siberian Military District before being sent to the vicinity of Stalingrad, where it was engaged in the futile efforts to break through to the besieged city from the north near Kotluban. After rebuilding, it was part of the southern thrust of Operation Uranus in November, helping to encircle the German 6th Army and also to hold off its would-be rescuers. During 1943 and early 1944 the division advanced through the southern Donbas and into Ukraine, where it was honored for its role in the liberation of Melitopol, before taking part in the liberation of the Crimea in April and May 1944. The men and women of the 315th ended their war on an anticlimactic note, serving for the last year as part of the garrison of the Crimea. However, the unit, and its successors, continued to serve well into the postwar era.

Formation

The 315th began forming on February 12, 1942, at Barnaul in the Siberian Military District.[1] Maj. Gen. Mikhail Semyonovich Knyazev was assigned to command the same day and he would remain in this position for the next year. When it finished forming in the Altaisk region in May it had 12,439 officers and men assigned, 64.4 percent of whom were under 30 years of age. Its basic order of battle was as follows:

  • 362nd Rifle Regiment
  • 724th Rifle Regiment
  • 1328th Rifle Regiment
  • 1012th Artillery Regiment

By the end of May the division had moved west and was assigned to the 8th Reserve Army in the Reserve of the Supreme High Command.[2]

Stalingrad Campaign

In August the 315th was first assigned to the

4th Tank Army, on the north side of the "Volga Corridor". Two days later it was part of Group Kovalenko, along with two tank corps and two other rifle divisions, ordered to attack southwards against the corridor. The attack made little progress.[4]

On August 30, the forces of Group Kovalenko were integrated into 1st Guards Army, which had been transferred to Stalingrad Front,[5] but they had already suffered heavy losses in the fighting south and southeast of Kotluban between August 26–28; the 315th was down by about one-third of its initial strength. During a further assault by 1st Guards on September 3 the 724th Rifle Regiment penetrated the corridor and worked its way into the defense of the village of Orlovka, north-northwest of the city, coming under command of 62nd Army. As of September 11, this Army reported the 315th with a strength of 2,873 men, but as only one regiment of the division was under its command, this must refer to the 724th. By September 12, the remainder of the division, less the 724th, had been transferred to 24th Army, still north of the corridor. On the 16th, 62nd Army reported that the remnants of the 315th under its command were part of the Northern Combat Sector, and were continuing to defend their previous positions. The remaining men of the 724th were eventually incorporated into the 124th and 149th Rifle Brigades, which continued to hold their positions at Spartanovka for the duration of the battle.[6]

Meanwhile, the rump 315th was transferred briefly to the Reserve of the Supreme High Command for rebuilding, then into the rear of Stalingrad Front on September 25, along with the rebuilding 87th Rifle Division, first to Kamyshin on the Volga and ultimately to the 10th Reserve Army, positioned 70 – 80 km southwest of Kamyshin. In late October these divisions were officially subordinated to 62nd Army, but they remained on the east bank as a strategic reserve.[7] As the planning for Operation Uranus progressed, its starting date was postponed several times, in part due to delays in making these two divisions completely operational. Gen. G.K. Zhukov sent a message to the STAVKA on November 11 notifying that he was postponing the offensive until the 15th in part because:

"The two rifle divisions (the 87th and 315th) assigned to Yeryomenko... have still not entrained because they have not received transport and horses up to this time... dispatch the 87th and 315th Rifle Divisions as rapidly as possible..."[8]

In the end, rail and road transport remained inadequate and major bottlenecks existed throughout the buildup; when the offensive finally opened on November 19, the two divisions, which were supposed to be in Stalingrad by this time, were stranded at the railroad station at Borisoglebsk.[9]

When the division finally arrived near the front in the first days of December it was assigned to

Chir Rivers to counter any German offensive from the shorter western route, and the 315th was assigned to this Army. The assembly of 5th Shock went remarkably quickly, and by the end of the day on December 10 the division was taking up jumping-off positions on the east bank of the Don opposite Nizhne-Chirskaya. 5th Shock began its offensive on the 13th; the 315th cleared the enemy from the woods east of Verkhne-Chirski while 7th Tank Corps captured the vital strongpoint of Rychkovsky, which compromised the German bridgehead east of the Chir. On the following day the division seized a small bridgehead on the west bank of the Don. These actions, plus others by forces of 5th Shock, eliminated any threat of a German relief operation from the west.[10]

The relief operation from the southwest, Operation Winter Storm, had been defeated by December 19. Three days previously, the Soviet forces launched Operation Little Saturn, which smashed the Italian 8th Army and began sweeping the Axis forces out of the Caucasus. In the last days of the month the 315th took part in the Tormosin Offensive Operation against the German Corps Mieth in the region between the lower Chir and the lower Don. The town of Tormosin fell to units of 2nd Guards Army on December 31, and 5th Shock continued driving westwards to the Donbas in early 1943.[11]

Into the Donbas and Ukraine

In January 1943, the 315th, along with the rest of 5th Shock Army, was reassigned to

Mius River, at Berestovo and Russkoe, facing the German defenses that had been built along that line a year earlier. The next day enemy counterattacks forced the division's units back to the eastern edge of Berestovo. Despite repeated efforts during the rest of the month to force the German line, only small bridgeheads were won, and the fighting stalled on the Mius until July.[13]

On July 17 the commander of Southern Front, Col. Gen.

16th Panzergrenadier Division, which made no progress and lost 20 tanks. By the end of the day the Soviet bridgehead was 30 km deep and 45 km wide, but German reserves were approaching.[14]

After the Red Army offensive came to a standstill, those armored reserves launched Operation Roland at 0810 hrs. on July 30. While the

XXIV Panzer Corps against the 315th was much more successful due to neglect of the most basic defensive precautions. Most of the division was encircled by 1145 hrs. 3,000 men were lost as prisoners, and the entire left flank of the bridgehead was destabilized.[15]

In August the division went into the 54th Rifle Corps in 51st Army, still in Southern Front, which became 4th Ukrainian Front on October 20. Three days later, the 315th was granted the honorific "Melitopol" for its role in the liberation of that city:

"MELITOPOL" - ...315th Rifle Division (Major General Kuropatenko, Dmitrii Semyonovich)... The troops who participated in the liberation of Melitopol, by the order of the Supreme High Command of October 23, 1943, and a commendation in Moscow, are given a salute of 20 artillery salvoes from 224 guns."[16][17]

Crimean Campaign

54th Corps moved to 2nd Guards Army in February 1944, and the 315th took part in the liberation of the Crimea in April - May 1944. In recognition of its success in the

Perekop and Sivash operations the 315th was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on April 24.[18] In late May, after the Crimea was cleared of the enemy, the division was transferred to the Separate Coastal Army, where it remained for the duration of the war on garrison duty under the Reserve of the Supreme High Command.[19]
On November 2, Col. Askanaz Georgievich Karapetian was promoted to the rank of Major General, and he would hold this command until the end of hostilities. At the end of the war, the official title of the division was 315th Rifle, Melitopol, Order of the Red Banner Division. (Russian: 315-я стрелковая Мелитопольская Краснознамённая дивизия.)

Postwar

The division was garrisoning

32nd Army Corps
.

The division was transferred to

29th Army. The new 459th Motor Rifle Regiment replaced the 91st MRR. On 1 December 1987, the division became the 978th Territorial Training Center. On 1 July 1990, it became the 5208th Weapons and Equipment Storage Base.[22] The storage base was disbanded in 1994.[23]

References

Citations

  1. ^ Walter S. Dunn, Jr., Stalin's Keys to Victory, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 2006, p. 108, states the month was March.
  2. ^ Charles C. Sharp, "Red Swarm", Soviet Rifle Divisions Formed From 1942 to 1945, Soviet Order of Battle World War II, Vol. X, Nafziger, 1996, p. 118
  3. ^ Dunn, Jr., Stalin's Keys, p. 108
  4. ^ David M. Glantz, To the Gates of Stalingrad, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2009, pp. 339, 350
  5. ^ Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1942, p. 171
  6. ^ Glantz, Armageddon in Stalingrad, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2009, pp. 38-39, 41-42, 61, 68, 85, 102, 144
  7. ^ Glantz, Armageddon, pp. 272, 440
  8. ^ Glantz, Endgame at Stalingrad, Book One, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2014, p. 46
  9. ^ Glantz, Endgame, Book One, p. 92
  10. ^ Glantz, Endgame at Stalingrad, Book Two, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2014, pp. 26-27, 58-59, 65, 71, 79, 125
  11. ^ Glantz, Endgame, Book Two, pp. 273, 280-81
  12. ^ Sharp, "Red Swarm", p. 118
  13. ^ Glantz, After Stalingrad, Helion & Co., Ltd., Solihull, UK, 2009, pp. 207, 212, 214
  14. ^ Robert Forczyk, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1943-1945, Pen & Sword Books Ltd., Barnsley, UK, 2016, p. 150
  15. ^ Forczyk, pp. 152-53
  16. ^ "Освобождение городов". Soldat.ru. Retrieved 2016-12-23.
  17. ^ Both Commanders of Corps and Divisions in the Great Patriotic War and www.generals.dk state that Kuropatenko left command of the division to Col. Karapetian on September 15/16.
  18. ^ Affairs Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Soviet Union 1967, p. 331.
  19. ^ Sharp, "Red Swarm", p. 118
  20. ^ Feskov et al 2013, p. 148.
  21. ^ Feskov et al 2013, pp. 488–491.
  22. ^ Feskov et al 2013, pp. 571–572.
  23. ^ Holm, Michael. "52nd Motorised Rifle Division". ww2.dk. Retrieved 2016-12-24.

Bibliography

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=315th_Rifle_Division_(Soviet_Union)&oldid=1167438700"