Romanian armies in the Battle of Stalingrad and 635 tanks, the German 57th Panzer Corps and the Romanian Fourth Army and on 29 December, the 57th Panzer had to abandon Kotelnikovo, which sealed the fate of the Axis troops in Stalingrad. On 15 January 1943, came another devastating blow: The Hungarian 2nd Army was encircled and eventually destroyed, with 147,971 casualties. On 2 February 1943, the resistance of Axis troops in Stalingrad ceased. Out of the 91,000 prisoners taken by the Soviets, 3,000 were Romanian. These were the survivors of the 20th Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division and "Colonel Voicu" Detachment. The Romanian Army lost 158,854 men
Bombing of Stalingrad flank of the German advance to the Caucasus oilfields. Fiebig's superior's, "Generaloberst" Wolfram von Richthofen’s "Luftflotte 4" held a 1,600 kilometer eastern frontage in July and concentrated its efforts on Stalingrad, with the air support missions in the Caucasus under Kurt Pflugbeil's "Fliegerkorps IV" and at the Voronezh battle being given a lower priority. Logistics for "Fliegerkorps VIII" received the highest preference, as Richthofen saw the capture of Stalingrad as the key to German success on the entire Eastern Front. Richthofen requested additional Junkers Ju 52 transport groups from "Oberkommando der Luftwaffe" and transferred Pflugbeil's groups, as well as his