The actual number was 978 tanks in total - 306 German and 672 Soviet, according to Zamulin. So, how many tanks were at Prokhorovka? To be sure, not the common popular figures which range as high as 1,500 tanks in total, according to the 2011 book Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943 by Valeriy Zamulin, a Russian military historian and former staff member at the Prokhorovka State Battlefield Museum. This particular engagement was a tactical defeat for the Soviets, but the charge inflicted enough damage to help stall - and eventually halt - the German army’s Citadel offensive.ĭemolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative
On July 12, 1943, counter-attacking Soviet tanks charged across open terrain, taking heavy losses to German tank fire, including from heavily-armored Tiger Is with 88-millimeter guns. Prokhorovka was the centerpiece of Citadel, the last German strategic offensive on the Eastern Front. In fact, there’s a strong case that history’s largest tank battle actually took place two years prior and is largely unknown. Prokhorovka was certainly an important clash and one of the largest tank battles ever, but it might be time to retire its description as the biggest - a claim which has been seriously questioned in recent years by historians with access to Soviet archives opened since the end of the Cold War. Near the city of Kursk on the Eastern Front, hundreds of Soviet tanks slammed into the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in an enormous conflagration of flesh and metal. Photo via Wikimedia The Battle of Brody in 1941 was bigger, and is largely unknownĪ thousand coffee table books and countless hours of popular history programs have described the Battle of Prokhorovka, part of the Third Reich’s 1943 Operation Citadel, as the largest tank battle in history. Destroyed Soviet tanks on Jin western Ukraine.
0 kommentar(er)
