160th Rifle Division (1940 Formation)

The 1940 formation of the 160th Rifle Division was an infantry division of the Red Army, formed as part of the prewar buildup of forces, based on the ''shtat'' (table of organization and equipment) of September 13, 1939. The division completed its formation at Gorki in the Moscow Military District and at the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was in the same area, assigned to the 20th Rifle Corps in the Reserve of the Supreme High Command. It was moved west by rail to join the 13th Army of Western Front in the first days of July 1941 in the Mogilev area. At the end of the month the division was assigned to the reserves of Central Front before becoming part of Operations Group Akimenko in the reserves of Bryansk Front. In mid-September it was encircled and forced to break out; in the process it lost its commanding officer, much of its command staff and so many men and heavy weapons that it was briefly written off. Its number was reallocated to the 6th Moscow Militia Division and for the next 18 months there were two 160th Rifle Divisions serving concurrently. By the start of Operation Typhoon at the end of September it was in Operations Group Ermakov; while falling back to southwest of Kursk it managed to avoid encirclement but remained barely combat-effective due to its heavy losses.

The 1940 formation went into reserve at the end of November and was rebuilt to the December 1941 ''shtat''. At the end of December it returned to the fighting in 40th Army of Southwestern Front in the Voronezh area where it remained for most of 1942, after July in 6th Army of Voronezh Front. Under this command it took part in the winter counteroffensives against the Axis forces west of the Don River, eventually as part of 3rd Tank Army in Operation Star which liberated Kharkov. It was then caught up in the German counteroffensive that retook the city and was again badly mauled, but had performed with enough distinction in difficult conditions that it was redesignated as the 89th Guards Rifle Division on April 18, 1943.

Formation

The division actually started forming at Astrakhan in the North Caucasus Military District in August 1939 but was not considered complete until after it was moved to Gorki in July 1940, with the final steps completed the following month. As of June 1941 it had the following order of battle:
* 443rd Rifle Regiment
* 537th Rifle Regiment
* 636th Rifle Regiment
* 566th Light Artillery Regiment
* 290th Antitank Battalion
* 406th Antiaircraft Battery (later 459th Antiaircraft Battalion)
* 499th Machine Gun Battalion (from October 10, 1942)
* 186th Reconnaissance Battalion
* 266th Sapper Battalion
* 657th Signal Company (later 176th Signal Battalion)
* 191st Medical/Sanitation Battalion
* 262nd Chemical Defense (Anti-gas) Company
* 661st Motor Transport Company
* 149th Field Bakery (later 424th Motorized Field Bakery)
* 512th Field Postal Station
* 437th Field Office of the State Bank
Maj. Gen. Ivan Mikhailovich Skugarev was appointed to command on July 16, 1940. This officer had previously commanded the 37th Rifle Division before being arrested in September 1937 during the Great Purge. He was imprisoned for a year before being released to serve as a senior instructor at the Military Economics Academy. He was still in command at the start of Operation Barbarossa and the division was fortunate to still be in the Gorki area well to the east of the frontier. At this time it was assigned, with the 137th Rifle Division, to the 20th Rifle Corps under direct command of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command.

Battles for Mogilev and Bryansk

20th Rifle Corps, which now included the 132nd Rifle Division, was officially assigned to 13th Army on July 10. The first trains carrying the 160th began arriving and offloading at Chavusy and nearby stations east of Mogilev on July 12/13, being subjected to German air attacks in the process. By this time the 2nd Panzer Group had forced crossings of the Dniepr north and south of Mogilev and by the end of July 15 the city was encircled, albeit loosely, and largely cut off from the remainder of 13th Army. The Army commander, Lt. Gen. V. F. Gerasimenko, and his staff managed to escape eastward to begin establishing a new defense along the Sozh River. By the end of the next day the 20th Corps itself was facing the prospect of encirclement by the XXIV Panzer Corps and was falling back to the Sozh with the 160th farthest east.

In the chaos of arrival, offloading and reorganization while under attack the division was already badly scattered. General Skugarev was attempting to defend Chavusy with part of his forces while the 537th Rifle Regiment attempted to hold along the Resta River before being bypassed on both sides and ordered to retreat. After Chavusy was lost Skugarev attempted to get his men back across the Sozh at Krychaw, a task made immensely complicated by an almost total breakdown in communications. The 160th was able to hold out along this line until August 4 when it was ordered back east of Gomel to the reserves of Central Front for replenishment. In just these few weeks of fighting the 443rd Rifle Regiment had been largely destroyed, the 566th Artillery Regiment and the 290th Antitank Battalion had lost most of their guns, and the division as a whole was down to 5,000 of its initial 14,000 personnel.

After the move to the Novobelitskiy district the division came under the direct command of Central Front. The Front's mission was to protect the junction between the Western and Southwestern Fronts. While rebuilding the 868th Rifle Regiment of the 287th Rifle Division was transferred to the 160th and renumbered as the new 443rd Regiment. Bryansk Front was created on August 16 and by August 30 the division had been transferred to this Front, serving as part of Operational Group Akimenko, which was under the command of Maj. Gen. A. Z. Akimenko and also included the 127th Rifle Division and the 753rd Antitank Regiment. On that date the ''STAVKA'' ordered the Front to attack with all its forces towards Roslavl and Starodub to destroy the German forces in the Pochep area and then exploit toward Krychaw and Propoisk. While these orders were utterly unrealistic and resulted in failure, in the first days of September the 127th Division, which was positioned south of Dorogobuzh, began moving south and took part in the Yelnya offensive. Meanwhile, the 160th remained in place.

In the last days of August the bulk of the 2nd Panzer Group and the 2nd Army began moving south in a movement that would lead to the Kiev encirclement. Group Akimenko was on the south flank of Bryansk Front west of Rylsk and well out of the direct path; however, the Front commander, Lt. Gen. A. I. Yeryomenko, was under pressure from the ''STAVKA'' to divert German strength and therefore continued to order effectively suicidal attacks to the west. Yeryomenko's task was further complicated when the 17th Panzer Division captured Glukhov on September 9, shattering the communications between the armies of the Front. The 160th was caught up in this fighting and largely encircled. In the effort to break out the division took heavy casualties and on September 18 General Skugarev was taken prisoner. This officer would remain in German PoW camps for the duration of the war; after the German surrender he was briefly arrested before being released and returning to service up to his retirement in 1947.

In the chaos that had been enfolding the Red Army since the invasion the 160th was briefly understood as having been destroyed, especially given the loss of its commander and much of its command cadre. On September 26 its number was reassigned to the 6th Moscow Militia Division (Dzerzhinskii) which was in the 24th Army reserves. However, on September 20 Col. Mikhail Borisovich Anashkin was moved from the position of chief of staff of the 282nd Rifle Division to command the remnants of the 160th and as of October 1 it was rebuilding in Operational Group Ermakov, still in Bryansk Front. With the permission of the ''STAVKA'' Yeryomenko ordered the Front's forces to go over to the defense as of 1330 hours on September 28, with the indication that "within the next several days an enemy offensive toward Bryansk and toward Sevsk or L'gov must be expected." At this time Group Ermakov numbered 33,562 men and had 103 tanks and 132 guns and mortars, although it isn't clear if this includes the casualties suffered on September 27, which amounted to 4,913 men killed, wounded or missing.

Operation Typhoon

The expected offensive began on September 30 before any effective defensive measures could be taken. Group Ermakov faced the 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions of the XLVII Panzer Corps. Sevsk fell on October 1 and the panzers began exploiting along the Oryol axis. The next morning Yeryomenko was in communication with Stalin and proposed to launch an attack on the flanks of the breach with the 307th and 121st Rifle Divisions and 55th Cavalry Division from the north and from the south with the 2nd Guards (formerly 127th) and 160th Rifle Divisions in the direction of Lokot Station, Esman and Svessa. Stalin agreed with the plan and promised two tank brigades and two rifle divisions by way of Oryol. In the circumstances the 160th and 2nd Guards had insufficient strength for this task and General Ermakov was moving back to Rylsk, out of communication except by liaison aircraft. Further orders on October 3 demanded that 2nd Guards attack regardless while the 160th took over its sector and remained in place.

By October 5 the division was located west of Oryol after the 4th Panzer Division had seized the city and the XLVII Panzer Corps was driving north between there and Bryansk in the process of encircling the 13th and 3rd Armies. Two days later it fell back toward the northeast as the advance of 4th Panzer stalled along the road to Mtsensk. By the middle of the month it had retreated to the southwest of Kursk, still under command of 13th Army. Near the end of November it was reassigned to 40th Army in Southwestern Front, where it would remain through the following months as it was rebuilt to the December 1941 ''shtat''. This involved converting the 566th to a standard divisional artillery regiment, changing the 186th Reconnaissance Battalion to a company, and gathering together most of the rifle regiments' mortars to form the 532nd Mortar Battalion. During this period 40th Army was stationed in the Voronezh area.

Case Blue

During April 1942 the 40th Army was moved to the reformed Bryansk Front. The 160th was still under these commands near the end of June when the German summer offensive began. It was positioned north of Tim and when the attack began on June 28 the XLVIII Panzer Corps struck at the boundary between it and the 121st Rifle Division, driving the latter off to the north. XLVIII Panzer Corps fielded roughly 325 tanks while 40th Army had only about 250 in its entire sector. The 160th and the 212th Rifle Division to its south faced the 24th Panzer Division with the ''Großdeutschland'' Division escheloned to its left which jointly destroyed their defenses before advancing 16 km to the Tim River where the 24th Panzer seized a railroad bridge intact.

40th Army's commander, Maj. Gen. M. A. Parsegov, reported that his divisions had suffered "significant losses" but "had not lost their combat capabilities" while urgently requesting assistance from his Front commander. On June 29 the 160th dug in along the Kshen River where it soon came under attack by the 9th Panzer Division of XXIV Panzer Corps. This was already nearly 30 km behind the lines held by the Army when the offensive began and the 121st Division was currently in complete disarray. By now the 160th, along with the 212th, 45th and 62nd Rifle Divisions, had been loosely pocketed west of Stary Oskol between the XLVIII Panzer and the VIII Army Corps. Over the following days the 160th fell back from the Kshen to the Olym River with the assistance of the fresh 284th Rifle Division defending along this river north and south of Kastornoye.

By late on July 1 the situation facing 40th Army and its neighbors to the south was producing consternation within the ''STAVKA''. Overnight the Front headquarters belatedly authorized Parsegov to pull his left wing back to the Olym and Oskol Rivers but this had to be carried out "under conditions of the complete absence of control on the part of 40th Army's commander and staff, who by this time were already situated in Voronezh." Early on July 3 Parsegov was replaced by Lt. Gen. M. M. Popov who scrambled to create a defense for the city. Meanwhile, Stalin authorized the deployment of four reserve armies to the region, including the 6th Reserve which would be redesignated as the 6th Army on July 10 and was moving to positions along the Don River south of Voronezh. During July 4 the 160th made its way to this river, moving perilously between the spearheads of 9th Panzer and 3rd Motorized Divisions and two days later it formed a tentative line along the Treshchevka River to hold back the latter. During the following week its remnants managed to cross the Don north of Voronezh before making its way south of the city and joining 6th Army while taking up positions along the Voronezh River

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