XXIV Panzer Corps

Geyr's XXIV Panzer Corps led the drive on Tula from the southwest, seizing Orel on 3 October 1941 and racing for the armaments city before Soviet reserves could arrive. Checked at Mtsensk by the first Guards rifle units and T-34 brigades, it regrouped and in November swung east around Tula toward Kashira and the Oka river crossings, the deepest German penetration toward Moscow from the south. Stopped at Kashira in early December by the 50th Army and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, it was thrown back in the winter counteroffensive. At Mtsensk in early October its panzer divisions had run into Katukov's guardsmen and a T-34 brigade, the first concentrated use of the tank that outclassed everything in the German arsenal; the shock forced Guderian to demand heavier tanks, the requirement that would eventually produce the Panther. Mtsensk is remembered as the T-34's debut. The tracks recorded here are schematic headquarters-area positions, not surveyed front lines.