Barbarossa Day2 Army Group North.- Defective Russian tank type KV-2 at
the roadside is being investigated by German soldiers; No doubt one
the first sighting of one of these monsters.
War correspondent Arthur Grimm rode with the 11th Panzer Division,
part of Army Group South, toward the first major tank battle in the
eastern campaign within 24 hours of the invasion.
Columns of half-track SdKfz251 armored personnel carriers festooned
with infantry churned up dust as they lurched along heavily
radioed that some 120 Soviet tanks had moved up in front of the
silhouettes floating across the surface of a sea of corn. They
On the other side of the dispersed village houses Grimm observed the
dark tell-tale dots that were Soviet tanks moving about. At 05.20
hours the German assault drove into the left flank of these
indistinguishable dots and, with a flash, a tall globule of black
smoke rose slowly into the air and began to form into a dark
ominous mushroom shape. The boom of the report carried across the
intervening distance as the first Soviet tank erupted with a shot that
were B-26 variants.
Grimm, following closely behind the German tank advance, took
photographs of scenes of blazing destruction around him. Dirty columns
of smoke began to hang lazily in the air as tank after tank was hit.
commented Grimm captioning a photograph which he took passing a
blazing T-34 tank. Its gun was traversed rearward, to enable the
magazine, glossed over the desperate nature of the engagement as
German tank gunners realized they were up against surprisingly heavy
and unknown tank types
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