German
close air support made its presence felt immediately on 15 May, forcing units such as the Soviet 38th Army onto the defensive. It ranged over the front, operating dangerously close to the changing frontline.
Air interdiction and direct ground support damaged Soviet supply lines and rear areas, also inflicting large losses on their armored formations.
General Franz Halder praised the air strikes as being primarily responsible for breaking the Soviet offensive.[30] The Soviet air force could do very little to stop Pflugbeil's 4th Air Corps.
[38] It not only attacked the enemy but also carried out vital supply missions. Bombers dropped supplies to encircled German units, which could continue to hold out until a counter-offensive relieved them.
[38] The 4th Air Corps
anti-aircraft units also used their high-velocity
8.8 cm guns on the Soviet ground forces.
[39] Over the course of the 16-day battle the 4th Air Corps played a major role in the German victory, conducting 15,648 sorties (978 per day), dropping 7,700 tonnes of bombs on the Soviet forces and lifting 1,545 tonnes of material to the front.
[40]
On 14 May, the Germans continued to attack Soviet positions in the north in localized offensives and by then, the Luftwaffe had gained air superiority over the Kharkov sector, forcing
Timoshenko to move his own air assets forward to counter the bolstered
Luftflotte 4. The Luftwaffe won air superiority over their numerically superior, but technically inferior opponents.
[41] The air battles depleted the Soviet fighter strength, allowing the German
strike aircraft the chance to influence the land battle even more.
[42] Nonetheless, the Soviet forces pushed on, disengaging from several minor battles and changing the direction of their thrusts.
However, in the face of continued resistance and local counterattacks, the Soviet attack ebbed, especially when combined with the invariably heavy air raids. By the end of the day, the 28th Army could no longer conduct offensive operations against German positions.[34]
On 17 May, supported by
Fliegerkorps VI, the German army took the initiative, as Kleist's 3rd Panzer Corps
[48] and 44th Army Corps began a counterattack on the Barvenkovo bridgehead from the area of
Aleksandrovka in the south. Aided greatly by air support, Kleist was able to crush Soviet positions and advanced up to ten kilometres in the first day of the attack. Soviet troop and supply convoys were easy targets for ferocious Luftwaffe attacks, possessing few anti-aircraft guns and having left their rail-heads 100 kilometers to the rear.
[49] German reconnaissance aircraft monitored enemy movements, directed attack aircraft to Soviet positions and corrected German artillery fire.
[49] 4th Air Corps response time to calls for air strikes was excellent, only 20 minutes.
[49]
The consequences of losing the air battle were also apparent. On 18 May the
Fliegerkorps VI destroyed 130 tanks and 500
motor vehicles, while adding another 29 tanks destroyed on 19 May.
[52]
The Luftwaffe also intensified operations over the
Donets River to prevent Soviet forces escaping. Ju 87s from StG 77 destroyed five of the main bridges and damaged four more while Ju 88 bombers from
Kampfgeschwader 3 (KG 3) inflicted heavy losses on retreating motorised and armoured columns.
[52]
In broad daylight, the Luftwaffe, now enjoying complete
air supremacy and absence of Soviet anti-aircraft guns, rained down
SD2 anti-personnel
cluster bombs on the exposed Soviet infantry masses, killing them in droves.
[54]
By 26 May, the surviving Red Army soldiers were forced into crowded positions in an area of roughly fifteen square kilometers. Soviet attempts to break through the German encirclement in the east were continuously blocked by tenacious defensive manoeuvres and German
air power. Groups of Soviet tanks and infantry that attempted to escape and succeeded in breaking through German lines were caught and destroyed by Ju 87s from StG 77.
[11]
More than 200,000 Soviet troops, hundreds of tanks and thousands of trucks and horse-drawn wagons filled the narrow
dirt roadbetween Krutoiarka and Fedorovka and were under constant German artillery fire and relentless air strikes from Ju 87s, Ju 88s and He 111s. SD-2 cluster munitions killed the unprotected infantry and
SC250 bombs smashed up the Soviet vehicles and
T-34 tanks. Destroyed vehicles and thousands of dead and dying Red Army soldiers choked up the road and the nearby
ravines. General Bobkin was killed by German
machine gun fire and two more Soviet generals were killed in action on the 26th and 27th. Bock personally viewed the carnage from a hill near Lozovenka.
[55]
Hayward gives 75,000 Soviets killed and 239,000 taken prisoner.
[53] Beevor puts Soviet losses in terms of prisoners as 240,000
[10] (with the bulk of their armour), while Glantz—citing Krivosheev—gives a total of 277,190 overall Soviet casualties.
[4][9] Both tend to agree on a low German casualty count, with the most formative rounding being at 20,000 dead, wounded and missing.
[8][9][10] Regardless of the casualties, Kharkov was a major Soviet setback; it put an end to the successes of the Red Army during the winter counteroffensive.
