After the fall of lstra on 27 November 1941, the remnants of the
Soviet 16th Army fell back In some disarray towards Moscow. Although
Rokossovsky was able to quickly re-establish a new defensive line
closer to the capital, the retreat left some temporary gaps. Fourth
Panzer Army dispatched a number of patrols to try and infiltrate the
threadbare Soviet lines and find a suitable crossing over the
Moskva-Volga Canal -the last major water obstacle between the Germans
and the Soviet capital. Around 1900hrs on 1 December 1941, a motorized
patrol from the German 62nd Panzer Pioneer Battalion managed to slip
unobserved through a gap In Rokossovsky's line. During the night,
temperatures rose due to a thaw, creating patches of thick ground fog
that aided the German Infiltration and not a shot was fired at the
patrol as It moved steadily closer to Moscow.
Around dawn, tho German patrol reached the train station in the
village of Khimkl, still without being fired upon. The distance from
the Khimki train station to the Kremlin was 19km. Russian civilians In
Khimkl panicked when they saw Germans riding into the town and either
hid or fled, although a few local militia members fired at the
Germans from a distance. The patrol leader realized that they had
discovered an unprotected route to the capital and realized that he
must report this vital information quickly to Fourth Panzer Army.
After a brief stay in Khimkl, the German troops drove back the way
they had come and reached the German lines. However, the Fourth Panzer
Army no longer had the combat strength left to take advantage of
this coup. The German patrol was probably built around a Motorized
Light Combat Engineer Company and supposedly had about eight
motorcycles plus a few light vehicles. This scene depicts the
reconnaissance patrol as having several BMW motorcycles with and
without sidecars (1), two 1pe 82 Kubelwagens (2) and one SdKfz
15 medium personnel carrier (3), along with about 20 troops.
Operation Barbarossa was the first campaign for the nimble
1pe 82 and its good performance on poor-quality Russian roads made it
an instant favourite. However, the SdKfz 15, which was often used as a
scout car In engineer units, suffered during Typhoon from poor
off-road capability and a weak transmission. The German lieutenant
leading the patrol looks at the poster on the wall of the train
station and realizes just how close they are to the Soviet capital.
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