The Panzers of Prokhorovka: The Myth of Hitler’s Greatest Armoured Defeat

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Manstein persisted, proposing that his forces should at least destroy the Soviet reserves in the southern Kursk salient before Citadel was finally terminated, so that the Soviet fighting capacity in the sector would be depleted for the rest of the summer. There were far more Soviet anti-tank guns, minefields, anti-tank ditches and overall Soviet resistance than had been anticipated, making a breakthrough more difficult to achieve. During the initial stages of the battle it was Soviet tanks that were hit and burned, obscuring the battlefield which made it difficult for Soviet commanders to develop a clear picture of the situation. The battle which developed and then concluded on June 30 was a confusing morass that swallowed 2,648 Soviet tanks out of a total force of 5,000 versus some 1,000 German tanks. Even if the definition of the battle was broadened to include the III Panzer Corps and the portion of the 5th Guards Tank Army that faced it, the total number of tanks and other heavy armoured fighting vehicles comes out at a maximum of 1,299.

The Panzers of Prokhorovka | Armorama™ Osprey - The Panzers of Prokhorovka | Armorama™

For the Soviet side, the massive armoured attack of 12 July failed to destroy the II SS-Panzer Corps, but succeeded in exhausting the Germans and eventually contributed to checking their advance. In actuality there were no Ferdinands with the 4th Panzer Army or Army Group South, [77] as they were all deployed on the northern side of the Kursk salient with the 9th Army. Rotmistrov was forced to shift the 18th and 29th Tank Corps over to defence and reinforce them with infantry. Hitler agreed to continue offensive operations in the southern salient until Manstein's goal was achieved. What’s all the more remarkable is that the Soviet corps had considerable numbers of heavier KV and T-34 tanks, tougher than the German army’s best tanks at the time.

The Battle of Prokhorovka has attained an almost holy status in Russian narratives of the war, celebrated not only as a victory but as a monumental and decisive engagement. On the morning of 13 July, the 10th Guards Mechanised and 24th Guards Tank Brigades, in cooperation with the 95th and 52nd Guards Rifle Corps, launched attacks against Totenkopf. He does this producing a very data intensive analysis of the losses of German tanks, using previously unpublished photographs of the battlefield, and access to German military archives, which show that the losses to the German armoured capability of II SS Panzer Corps were not as catastrophic as always claimed.

The Panzers of Prokhorovka, by Ben Wheatley The Panzers of Prokhorovka, by Ben Wheatley

The Soviet command, however, interpreted the change in direction to be a response to the heavy resistance the German forces had faced driving towards Oboyan, and incorrectly believed the change indicated the German panzer forces had been severely weakened. Das Reich 's 2nd SS-Panzer Regiment fought off a series of counterattacks and forced the Red Army units to withdraw eastward to a new line. On the following day, 9 July, a meeting of the commanders of the German forces on the northern side of the Kursk salient concluded that a breakthrough on the northern side of the salient was unlikely. The German forces involved in the Battle of Prokhorovka were from the three Waffen-SS divisions of the II SS-Panzer Corps: Leibstandarte, Das Reich, and Totenkopf. The 4th Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf were under Army Group South, commanded by von Manstein.The link-up failed to trap the Soviet forces, though they abandoned a substantial number of their anti-tank guns. Leibstandarte placed its lightly armed 1st SS-Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion in the 5-kilometre (3. He organised a task force under the command of his deputy, Major General Kuzma Trufanov, which consisted of the 26th Guards Tank Brigade from the 2nd Guards Tank Corps, the 11th and 12th Guards Mechanised Brigades from the 5th Guards Mechanised Corps, and the 53rd Guards Tank Regiment of the 5th Guards Tank Army. On 13 July Hitler summoned Manstein and the commander of Army Group Centre, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, to his Eastern Front headquarters, the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia. In total, about 500 tanks and self-propelled guns of the 5th Guards Tank Army attacked the positions of the II SS-Panzer Corps on 12 July, [117] doing so in two waves, with 430 tanks in the first echelon and 70 more in the second.

The Panzers of Prokhorovka - Osprey Publishing The Panzers of Prokhorovka - Osprey Publishing

Leibstandarte had advanced the most deeply towards Prokhorovka and was situated in the centre of the German position. A study by the US Army's Center for Strategy and Force Evaluation attributed six permanent tank losses, not counting Panzer I and Panzer II light tanks or German assault guns if any. Following a brief artillery barrage, the 4th SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment Der Führer of Das Reich struck out for the high ground south-west of Pravorot, evicting the remnants of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps from the village of Belenikhino following house-to-house and hand-to-hand fighting. With the end of Operation Citadel, the strategic initiative permanently swung over to the Soviet Union for the rest of the war. Peiper's surviving panzergrenadiers engaged the Soviet infantry and attacked the Soviet tanks with Hafthohlladung magnetic anti-tank grenades.Totenkopf and Leibstandarte were to anchor the western and northern flanks of Das Reich, respectively. After a week of fighting, the Soviets launched their counteroffensives: Operation Kutuzov on the northern side and a coinciding one on the southern side.