Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.
will check in next few days
Thanks. It is a question for my upcoming book The Battle of Tolstoye Woods.
Hi Chris,
Regarding Major Petukhov, I asked this question to Zamulin, with whom I’ve been corresponding. By the way, he sends you his regards.
He says that Major Petukhov was a General Staff representative attached to the troops, in this case probably to the 3rd Mechanized Corps, and that he wrote this report. As for the handwritten note, it appears to have been made by his superior at the General Staff, most likely the officer in charge of that particular operational sector.
Thanks. Greetings to Valerii.
My editor for my book The Battle of Tolstoye Woods was specifically asking me for his first name, which is why I was asking. Do we have his full name or initials?
Feodor Mikhailovich Petukhov.
I cannot picture from book where is shown all Officers which were sent to Voronezh Front here….
Thank you. That is very helpful.
Source?
E.L. Korshunov.
Head of the 43rd Research Department (Military History of the Central Region of the Russian Federation) at the Research Institute (Military History) of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
“Officers of the General Staff of the Red Army on the combat operations
of the 6th Guards Army during the Battle of Kursk”
https://history.ru/uploads/media/default/0001/63/177abe89a3c241eb19b1ef9f20af996f5c5706cb.pdf
A group of officers of the General Staff of the Red Army attached to the Voronezh Front — 23 people in total, including: the head of the group Colonel Mitrofan Nikitovich Kostin, Lieutenant Colonels Nikolai Yakovlevich Drozdov, Ivan Semenovich Dedov (Voronezh Front Headquarters); Lieutenant Colonel D. I. Dyba¹¹, Major Ya. I. Ostrovsky¹² (Headquarters of the 40th Army); Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Georgievich Isaev, Major Lev Nikolaevich Luzanov (Headquarters of the 38th Army); Lieutenant Colonel Stepan Semenovich Shamov, Majors Aleksandr Karpovich Kravtsov, Anatoly Pavlovich Sevryuk (Headquarters of the 6th Guards Army); Lieutenant Colonel Boris Dmitrievich Smirnov, Major Vasily Petrovich Lyukshin (Headquarters of the 7th Guards Army); Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Vasilievich Sokolov, Major Ivan Ivanovich Gorovenko (Headquarters of the 69th Army); Lieutenant Colonel Aleksandr Andreeвич Pozdnyakov, Majors V. N. Dobanov¹³, Feodor Mikhailovich Petukhov, Leonid Yakovlevich Vetrov (Headquarters of the 1st Tank Army); Majors Ivan Aleksandrovich Kuzmichev, Aleksandr Ivanovich Filippov (Headquarters of the 2nd Air Army); Lieutenant Colonel Ya. M. Penyok¹⁴ (Headquarters of the
[Footnotes]:
¹¹ No data available.
¹² Presumably — Yakov Isaakovich.
¹³ Presumably — Lobanov Vladimir Nikonorovich.
¹⁴ No data available.
35th Guards Rifle Corps); Major Anatoly Ivanovich Gribkov (Headquarters of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps); Major Anton Ivanovich Meleshchenko (Headquarters of the 5th Guards Tank Corps)¹⁵. Already during the Battle of Kursk, this group was joined by General Staff officers who had been working in the 5th Guards Army of Lieutenant General A. S. Zhadov and the 5th Guards Tank Army of Lieutenant General of Tank Forces P. A. Rotmistrov.
Thanks. Good stuff.
At one point, when reviewing the Soviet unit reports, Colonel Sverdlov commented about the (poor) quality of the writing. I think it was with the 69th Army reports. Suspect these staff officers were a needed addition.
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The low level of operational training and lack of combat and command experience among a number of commanders and senior officers, who formed the backbone of field headquarters, led not only to a lack of clarity and coordination in the work of military command structures, but also to a fear of truthfully reporting unsuccessful actions and failure to fulfil assigned tasks to the General Staff.
In the prevailing situation, a decision was taken in accordance with Resolution No. 300c of the State Defence Committee (GKO) of the USSR dated 28 July 1941 that “the General Staff of the Red Army shall have a group of General Staff officers with the status of a General Staff department, calculated as follows: two officers for each front headquarters, three officers for each army headquarters, and two officers for each division”.
The members of the group were tasked with: “… ensuring direct communication between the General Staff and the field army; verifying on the ground the implementation of orders and directives; providing assistance to headquarters and troops; and studying and summarising combat experience”.
EugE: continuing the thread here.
Yes… but I don’t think the problem with “truthful reporting” had to do with level of education. It was very much part of the Soviet system. What Sverdlov was pointing out was that some of these senior staff officers were barely literate. Sverdlov was on the staff of the 11th Guards Army during the Battle of Kursk.
The Communists were unable to come up with anything new, instead copying the style of the Russian Imperial Army. When the First World War began, graduates of the General Staff Academy were sent to the front line to coordinate operations, maintain communications and assist army commanders.
V. Zamulin has published a new book: “Operation Rumyantsev”
https://s7.planeta.ru/i/42cec0/1758883911958_renamed.jpg
I know you have something similar; I’m looking forward to your version