38th Army (Soviet Union)
| 38th Army | |
|---|---|
| Active | August 1941 - July 1942 (merged with 21st Army) August 1942 - May 1946 ? - 1991 |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Branch | Red Army, Soviet Army |
| Part of | Carpathian Military District |
| Garrison/HQ | Ivano-Frankivsk |
| Engagements |
Battle of Kiev (1941) First Battle of Kharkov Battle of Voronezh (1942) Operation Dunai others |
| Commanders | |
| Notable commanders |
Viktor Tsyganov Kirill Moskalenko Nikandr Chibisov |
The 38th Red Banner Army was a field army of the Soviet Union that existed between 1941 and 1991.
The 38th Army was formed on 4 August 1941 after a large Soviet force had been surrounded by Axis forces in the area of Uman in the western Ukraine. Under the command of Lieutenant-General Dmitrii Riabyshev, 38th Army was based on the forces and headquarters of the 8th Mechanised Corps and incorporated other Soviet units then in the Cherkassy area. The army was subordinated to the Soviet Southwestern Front command, and Riabyshev's task was to defend the line of the Dnepr upriver from Kremenchuk, a task that became more urgent after the Soviet forces at Uman surrendered on 12 August and German forces began to close up to the Dnepr.
On 30 August Riabyshev was assigned to command Soviet forces further south and Major-General Nikolai Feklenko was appointed to the command of 38th Army. By then 38th Army (based on seven rifle divisions, four cavalry divisions and two tank battalions) had been made responsible for an additional stretch of the Dnepr southeast of Kremenchuk to the river's confluence with the Vorskla. It was along this section of the Dnepr that the German Seventeenth Army forced a crossing on 31 August. German high command intended to develop this crossing into a bridgehead that would form the southern arm of an encirclement of much of Southwestern Front east of the Dnepr. (The northern arm of this encirclement had already crossed the river Desna 200 kilometres northeast of Kiev).
Feklenko was ordered to eliminate Seventeenth Army's bridgehead as soon as possible, but he was unable to do so. German reinforcements were fed into the lodgement including panzer divisions from the German First Panzer Group, and the Germans were able to enlarge their bridgehead. On 12 September German armoured forces broke through 38th Army's lines and struck north, first to Lubny and then to Lokhavytsa where, on 16 September, they made contact with German armoured forces moving south from Romny. Most of Southwestern Front, including much of 38th Army, was caught in the trap, and few of the encircled Soviet forces escaped.
Maj. Gen. Viktor Tsyganov was appointed to replace Feklenko (Tsyganov's chief of staff was Maj. Gen. Aleksei Maslov), but there was little that Tsyganov could do, despite the Soviet reserves being rushed to the eastern Ukraine, to prevent the remnants of his army being pushed back towards Poltava. By the beginning of October 38th Army included six rifle divisions and tank division, but during October, under constant pressure from the German Sixth Army, it was forced to withdraw to the east on the Poltava - Kharkov axis towards the Donets. Since the German mechanized forces in the region had been directed towards Moscow and Rostov, 38th Army easily avoided encirclement by the slow-moving infantry divisions of Sixth Army. Tsyganov’s forces abandoned Kharkov on 24 October, and by early November the frontline had begun to stabilize east of the Donets in the Kupyansk area. In December, with Tsyganov's departure from 38th Army, Maslov was appointed to the Army's command and Lieutenant-Colonel Semyon Ivanov became the army's chief of staff.
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