what rapidly developed into a general offensive across the western Ukraine involving 25 Soviet armies. At that time 38th Army was based on eleven rifle divisions under four corps headquarters. (The tank corps had been withdrawn from 38th Army to be used as the basis of a new tank army). Having forced a gap in the lines of the defending German First Panzer Army, Moskalenko's forces, in conjunction with two tank armies advanced on Vinnitsa and Zhmerinka, taking both towns during the third week of March. On 25 March 1944 Pilipenko, who had been promoted to the rank of major-general in January 1943, was killed in a plane crash, and he was replaced as the army's chief of staff by Lieutenant-General Vasilii Vorobev. By mid-April 1944 the army had reached the river Siret near the eastern foothills of the Carpathian mountain range, and had secured several bridgeheads on the right bank of the river southwest of Chernovtsy. Here the frontline stabilised during the late spring and early summer of 1944, during which, after some regrouping of First Ukrainian Front's forces, 38th Army was positioned west of Ternopil on the Lvov axis. On 13 July Moskalenko's forces participated in a major offensive by First Ukrainian Front to advance from the Western Bug to the Vistula. In preparation for this offensive 38th Army was, during July, doubled in strength from five to ten rifle divisions. As the offensive developed the forces of First Ukrainian Front began to diverge; the bulk of its forces on the right and centre advanced west on the Lvov axis striking across the river San and towards the Vistula, while the two armies on the Front's left flank (to the left of 38th Army) advanced southwest on the Stanislav axis towards the northern Carpathians. This anomalous situation was resolved on 5 August when First Ukrainian Front's two left flank armies were assigned to Fourth Ukrainian Front, at which time 38th Army found itself once again the extreme left wing of First Ukrainian Front. Moskalenko's forces continued to advance to the west, crossing the San southwest of Przemysl and establishing a stable frontline north of the Carpathians in the Krosno area by the end of August. Early in September 38th Army was further reinforced with a tank corps, a cavalry corps and the Red Army's Czechoslovak corps. On 8 September the army launched an offensive to break into Slovakia