{"id":14546,"date":"2023-07-13T17:07:18","date_gmt":"2023-07-13T14:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=14546"},"modified":"2023-07-13T17:07:19","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T14:07:19","slug":"battle-of-kursk-the-epic-of-the-armoured-battle-tank-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=14546","title":{"rendered":"Battle of Kursk, The Epic of the Armoured Battle Tank Race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Battle of Kursk reaches its climax with the Soviet 5th Guards Army frontally attacking the II SS Panzer Corps. Which, despite its slow advance through the successive obstacles in the Battle of Kursk, had managed to break through the Soviet defenses and was threatening to break through the front, spearheaded by the 1st SS Panzer Division \u201cLeibstandarte Adolf Hitler\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attack was a desperate move and was recorded as the largest tank battle of all time, as 1,000 tanks and assault guns collided at close range on the narrow field of Prokhorovka.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Armoured Battle tank battle at Prokhorovka was almost Napoleonic in nature, with the Soviet side sacrificing its armored reserves in a frontal clash against the best German Wehrmacht tanks and crews. Alerted to the impending German attack since May, the Soviets had time to transform the Kursk salient into a massive anti-tank bastion, with overlapping lines of defense in depth, secretly massing their most important strategic reserves at a distance from the field, ready to intervene , when needed. The plan was to let the Germans attack and take significant attrition from the Soviet infantry until they halted their advance. And then to pound them with a pincer movement, throwing the armored Soviet reserves into the flanks of the German line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The German offensive began on 5 July and after a week of fighting the Germans had indeed encountered considerable difficulties but with proper use of reserves and Teutonic stubbornness they continued to advance.<\/p>\n\n\n

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On July 10, the German II SS Panzer Corps began spreading its units towards the village of Prokhorovka. SS Panzer Grenadier Division Totenkopf crossed the Psel River establishing a bridgehead, SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler captured Hill 241.6 and Komsomolets Farm, while SS Panzer Grenadier Division Das Reich protected the rear of the Corps from Soviet counterattacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Soviets countered by fielding strong forces, one Tank Corps and one elite Infantry Division, reinforced by anti-tank artillery regiments for each German Division. However, by the evening of 11 July the Germans had carved a deep corridor into the Soviet lines, which now threatened their entire formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 12 July, in consultation with the Soviet High Staff, General Vatutin moved reinforcements from the Steppe Front held 300 km away and after an overnight march they arrived opposite the German lines at 05:30. At 08:30, after half an hour of bombardment, the commander of the 5th Armored Corps, General Rotmistrov, gave the signal \u201cStal! Stal! Stall!\u201d (\u201csteel, steel, steel\u201d) unleashing some 500 tanks and self-propelled guns on the Germans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rothmistroff had ordered his panzers to move at maximum speed to quickly cover the distance to the enemy, thereby exposing his forces as little as possible to the powerful German long-range 88mm guns.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The ensuing battle resembled a duel between barricaded knights, with the exchanges of fire taking place at very short distances. General direction of the battle was almost impossible, turning it into a sequence of local skirmishes. Both the German accounts of the forces they faced and the Soviet counterparts were exaggerated. Naturally, support artillery and air support on both sides were minimal when the field was so confused, making Prokhorovka a classic tank battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day German losses were 43-80 tanks and assault guns (out of 290) and Soviet losses between 300-400 (out of 610). Fighting continued over the next few days, with the Germans trying to reorganize and counterattack and the Soviets engaging the German positions with smaller but fresh units. After that, the battle of Kursk began to de-escalate, as the German leadership now realized that the opportunity it had spread for a breakthrough had been lost and the continuation would simply cause more casualties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clashes continued until August but already the German General Staff had begun to withdraw forces from the Eastern Front to reinforce the new Italian front that the Allies had created, with the landing in Sicily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Battle of Kursk reaches its climax with the Soviet 5th Guards Army frontally attacking the II SS Panzer Corps. Which, despite its slow…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,7,2846],"tags":[3954,4485,3758,4431,3394],"class_list":["post-14546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-science","category-research","category-wars-battles","tag-armoured-battle-tanks","tag-battle-of-kursk","tag-nazi","tag-soviet-union","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14551,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14546\/revisions\/14551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}