1 KV Tank vs a Panzer Division: The Raseiniai Roadblock (1941)

On 24 June 1941, two days into Operation Barbarossa, a single Soviet KV tank drove out of the woods near Raseiniai, Lithuania, shot up a column of German trucks, and stopped dead in the middle of the only road supplying a German combat group dug in across the Dubysa river. For about a day, nothing the Germans had on hand — anti-tank guns, a howitzer, engineers with explosives — could move it. This is what the records of the 6th Panzer Division and the US Army's own postwar study say actually happened, on a model of the real ground, and why one tank could hold up a part of a panzer division until the Germans brought up an 88 mm gun. 0:00 A lone KV tank blocks a road near Raseiniai, 24 June 1941 0:53 Barbarossa in the north: 6th Panzer vs. Soviet 2nd Tank Div. 2:45 The real ground: one road through forest and bog 3:41 The rule: a single road forces a fight one at a time 4:45 Night attack, then the KV drives out and shuts the road 5:58 A 50 mm battery scores eight hits; none get through 7:11 The first 88 mm gun is knocked out before it can fire 8:23 Engineers crawl out at night to charge the track and gun 9:48 Seven 88 mm hits, two penetrate: the gun points at the sky 11:13 Road reopens; the 2nd Tank Division fights on and is lost 11:53 Why it held so long: armour, terrain, and a crew that stayed 12:59 The cost, the KV-1/KV-2 myth, and the crew's unmarked grave 15:26 What if: the fuel and shells the division never had 16:25 The rule in one line, and the mirror case at Villers-Bocage Sources Maxim Kolomiets, lecture "The Raseiniai Tank Battle and the Story of the Legendary KV", Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, 26 October 2014 (transcript and photos: warspot.ru) Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 20-269, Small Unit Actions During the German Campaign in Russia (Washington, January 1953) ru.wikipedia.org, "Расейняйский КВ" en.wikipedia.org, "Battle of Raseiniai" Tank Archives (Peter Samsonov), "Battle of Raseiniai", March 2013 WarHistory.org, "The Dreadnought of Raseiniai" Stalin Line Historical and Cultural Complex, "The Heroic Stand of the KV Tank Crew near Raseiniai" Mike Bennighof, "The Tank Battle at Raseiniai", avalanchepress.com Accounts disagree on several points — the exact number of trucks and anti-tank guns destroyed, the length of the blockade, and even whether the tank was a KV-1 or a KV-2 — the video gives the ranges and says so where it matters. Positions and movements are a reconstruction from the sources above. Archive photos: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-209-0091-11 (Nägele), CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/ Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Heights: EU-DEM, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service; SRTM, NASA (via Terrain Tiles on AWS). Relief and ocean depths: Terrain Tiles on AWS (ETOPO1, NOAA; GMTED2010, USGS).