Over on the eastern flank, the Leibstandarte's assault gun battalion led a panzergrenadier attack northeastwards, which allowed several villages to be cleared of isolated pockets of Soviet infantry.

II Guards Tank Corps is decimated

By the evening of 8 July, the two lead Waffen-SS divisions had destroyed more than 120 tanks, but 76 of their panzers were badly in need of repairs. Many of the panzer companies were down to half strength, and time was needed to patch up the scores of battle-damaged tanks that were filling up the repair workshops.

As the battle raged on at the schwerpunkt, Hausser put in train plans to relieve the Totenkopf Division and move it up to punch a hole through the defences along the Psel. The Totenkopf Division had been holding the right flank of II SS Panzer Corps since the start of the offensive, and it spent most of the day handing over its sector to an army infantry division. The safe completion of this manoeuvre was only possible thanks to the intervention of the Luftwaffe. During the morning, three cannon-armed Hs 129 tank-hunting aircraft were patrolling to the east of the Totenkopf, when they spotted a Soviet tank brigade of 60 T-34s forming up ready to smash into the flank of the Waffen-SS corps. More aircraft were summoned and, in less than an hour, the whole brigade was destroyed by 30mm cannon fire, or forced to scatter into woods and gullies to hide from the aircraft. The attack totally disrupted the preparations of II Guards Tank Corps to pressurize the Totenkopf, allowing the Waffen-SS unit to disengage successfully from the front.

Assault on the Psel Line

The first regiment of the Totenkopf Division was in position ready to attack the Psel line early after dawn on 9 July, along with the Leibstandarte's 1st Panzergrenadier Regiment. It didn't have enough strength to punch through the heavily reinforced Soviet defence line, though. A bridge across the Psel had been blown to prevent a crossing. By mid-afternoon, the Waffen-SS attack had been called off to allow preparations to be made for a more substantial attack the following day. The Totenkopf made a night-time raid to seize a key hill above the Psel, but it was driven back. The Soviets kept up their pressure on the right flank of Hausser's corps, sending repeated human-wave attacks against the 167th Infantry Division that had just relieved the Totenkopf. Thousands of Russian infantrymen, many of them press-ganged civilians, were killed by well-aimed artillery fire that was called down within a few hundred metres of the German frontline.

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