was withdrawn into the high command reserve. (Three days later Moskalenko and his headquarters staff were assigned to command the newly formed 1st Tank Army). August 1942 to June 1943 On 3 August 1942 the 4th Reserve Army, part of the Soviet strategic reserve, was designated as the second formation of 38th Army and was assigned to Bryansk Front on a relatively quiet sector of the frontline northeast of Kastornoe facing part of the German Second Army. The commander of 38th Army was Lieutenant-General Nikandr Chibisov, and its chief of staff was Colonel Anton Pilipenko. In September command responsibility for 38th Army and for 38th Army's sector of the frontline was transferred from the left flank of Bryansk Front to the right flank of the more southerly Voronezh Front. On 13 January 1943 Voronezh Front launched a major offensive against Axis forces on the middle Don in the Rossosh area, employing forces on its left flank and centre. Within days this offensive had proved successful, leaving Second Army in a deep salient, and Soviet high command proposed an extension of the offensive north to the Kastornoe area in an effort to encircle Second Army west of Voronezh. This operation (the Voronezh-Kastornoe Operation) would involve four Soviet armies and would include an attack on Second Army's positions by 38th Army. The operation, hurriedly prepared, commenced on 24 January. Recognising the threat to Second Army, later that day German high command authorised its withdrawal from exposed positions at Voronezh, but the bulk of the army was surrounded when Soviet forces from north and south met at Kastornoe on 28 January. Over the next five days 38th Army was involved in attempts to subdue the surrounded forces of Second Army but on 2 February it was assigned to participate in a general advance of Voronezh Front to the west and southwest (towards Kursk and Kharkov respectively). Chibisov's forces took Tim on 5 February, reached Oboyan on 18 February and by early March were approaching Sumy. However German counter-attacks from south and southwest of Kharkov in the second half of February and the first half of March thwarted efforts by Voronezh Front to advance west of Sumy towards the Desna river. During the second half of March the frontline stabilised around the Kursk Salient, a rectangular salient of 15,000 square kilometres that protruded into German lines north, west and south of the city of