Battle of Kursk

irishcrusader95 · Feb 26, 2012

sylla1 said:
The numbers for Prokhorovka of Frieser & Glantz are fundamentally incompatible; IMHO those of Col Glantz are more coherent; anyhow, the issue is again not that relevant, as the gloal figures for Kursk are not affected.

The Panthers were minority at Prokhorovka, most of the tanks of the II & III SS Panzer Corps were Mark IV, with some Tigers; the Soviet 1st Tank Army & 5th Guards Tank Corps have mostly T-34 & T70 (2:1 respectively) interestingly with some 35 British vehicles (Churchill III).

there were not actually any panthers at prokhorovka. the 200 panthers were with the Grossdeutschland division which was with army group Kemp. as for tigers the LSSAH had 4 operational tigers on the 12th, Totenkopf 10 and Das Reich 1. the rest being mk IIIs, mkIVs and the StuG's and other SPG's

A critical factor mostly ignored here was the intensive recycling and cannibalization of the destroyed vehicles from both sides; e.g. the Germans had returned over 600 damaged tanks back into the fight over the period of July 5 to 18, while many of the Soviet tanks were rebuilt up to four times to keep them in the fight; ergo, the possession of the battlefield (highly contested but eventually retained by the Soviets) where so many damaged vehicles were abandoned, was decisive for this battle; just from this advantage the Soviets were able to double their available tank strength at the end of this battle.

so far as i know i think that number of the destroyed tanks at the battle were latter recovered and repaired by the soviets. the germans all through the offensive were recovering there own broken down tanks and had a highly effective recover team. its worth pointing out that it was with the following soviet counter offensive of operation Kutuzov and Rumyantsev that the germans lost much more tanks then during the offensive phase as they were unable to recover them.

In hindisght, the presumption of the "lost" or "almost" victory should IMHO be considered mostly German opportunistic revisionism, because the general trend of the war couldn't have been any more eloquent; from Kursk onwards, never again did the Wehrmacht recover the initiative in any other campaign.

i have no doubt about it that even if the germans did succeed the results would not have been much. this is shown perfectly when in a conversation hitler had with his generals prior to the offensive Guderian had asked why we were even attacking at all at kursk. someone replied that we had to attack for political reasons. that was the whole under pinning of the operation. it was not a military solution to a military problem but a military solution to a political problem. a german victory here would restore the prestige of the ostheer and reaffirm the axis countries of final german victory as many were now looking to make terms. what was supposed to at first just be a quick offensive launched as soon as possible to effect the soviets offensive capabilities soon grew to include large amounts of scarse military resources against a goal that would not have effected the military solution much. what they were really looking for with the offensive was breathing space, time so that they could divert forces to meet the expected allied invasion and then turn back to russia.

sylla1 · Feb 26, 2012

irishcrusader95 said:
there were not actually any panthers at prokhorovka. the 200 panthers were with the Grossdeutschland division which was with army group Kemp. as for tigers the LSSAH had 4 operational tigers on the 12th, Totenkopf 10 and Das Reich 1. the rest being mk IIIs, mkIVs and the StuG's and other SPG's

so far as i know i think that number of the destroyed tanks at the battle were latter recovered and repaired by the soviets. the germans all through the offensive were recovering there own broken down tanks and had a highly effective recover team. its worth pointing out that it was with the following soviet counter offensive of operation Kutuzov and Rumyantsev that the germans lost much more tanks then during the offensive phase as they were unable to recover them.

i have no doubt about it that even if the germans did succeed the results would not have been much. this is shown perfectly when in a conversation hitler had with his generals prior to the offensive Guderian had asked why we were even attacking at all at kursk. someone replied that we had to attack for political reasons. that was the whole under pinning of the operation. it was not a military solution to a military problem but a military solution to a political problem. a german victory here would restore the prestige of the ostheer and reaffirm the axis countries of final german victory as many were now looking to make terms. what was supposed to at first just be a quick offensive launched as soon as possible to effect the soviets offensive capabilities soon grew to include large amounts of scarse military resources against a goal that would not have effected the military solution much. what they were really looking for with the offensive was breathing space, time so that they could divert forces to meet the expected allied invasion and then turn back to russia.

The explicit report of Panther tanks in Prokhorovka comes from David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, The Battle of Kursk, p. 151-152.

The point of the recovered tanks was critical because after Prokhorovka the Soviet remained permanently in the field with literally hundreds of abandoned damaged but recyclable tanks from both sides, naturally available for them and not for the Germans.

From Stalingrad onwards, Germany & co. were already lost; Kursk was another major turning point mainly because it now determined that Germany was goint to be truly badly defeated (again, in the opinion of Col. Glantz, naturally shared by yours truly).

steelers708 · Feb 26, 2012

sylla1 said:
The Panthers were minority at Prokhorovka, most of the tanks of the II & III SS Panzer Corps were Mark IV, with some Tigers; the Soviet 1st Tank Army & 5th Guards Tank Corps have mostly T-34 & T70 (2:1 respectively) interestingly with some 35 British vehicles (Churchill III).

If you're talking of Operation Zitadelle and not just the battle of Prokhorovka, then, regarding the South the three Korps of Heeresgruppe Sud(XLVIII, II SS & III PzKorps) had the following tanks:

Type

Pzkpfw II

steelers708 · Feb 26, 2012

sylla1 said:
The Panthers were minority at Prokhorovka, most of the tanks of the II & III SS Panzer Corps were Mark IV, with some Tigers; the Soviet 1st Tank Army & 5th Guards Tank Corps have mostly T-34 & T70 (2:1 respectively) interestingly with some 35 British vehicles (Churchill III).

If you're talking Zitadelle itself and not just the battle at Prokhorovka then Heeresgruppe Sud had the following tanks available in it's three PzKorps i.e. XLVIII, II SS & III PzKorps.

Type Total available % of total

Pzkpfw II - 31 - 2.7%
Pzkpfw III - 346 - 30.6%
Pzkpfw IV - 376 - 33.2%
Panther - 194 - 17.1%
Tiger I - 92 - 8.1%
T34 - 18 - 1.6%
Flamm.Pz - 29 - 2.6%
Bef.Pz - 46 - 4.1%

So whilst there were more Pzkpfw IV's than any other single type, they were not in the 'most' category.

Please ignore my ....-up above this post.

steelers708 · Feb 26, 2012

GD, with attached Panthers, was actually in von Knobelsdorff's XLVIII PzKorps and not in Kempf's III PzKorps.

irishcrusader95 · Feb 26, 2012

steelers708 said:
GD, with attached Panthers, was actually in von Knobelsdorff's XLVIII PzKorps and not in Kempf's III PzKorps.

thanks for the correction. yes and which was part of 4th panzer army under Hoth and advanced on the left of the II SS corps advance. they consisted of 196 panthers and 4 Bergepanther recover vehicles. the first panthers to be used in SS service was the 1st and 2nd Abteilung SS panzer regiments which were used by Das reich during late august as they arrived just as the soviets were launching there offensive around Kharkov. a measure of the problems that were still facing these machines even then is that the crews were changing final final drives on some of the panthers while they were in transit to russia on rail flatbeds.

the panthers with GD at kursk were concentrated in the 51st and 52nd pz. Abteilungen of the 39th panzer regiment in GD

Gudarian's problem child

Mangas Coloradas · Feb 26, 2012

The point of the recovered tanks was critical because after Prokhorovka the Soviet remained permanently in the field with literally hundreds of abandoned damaged but recyclable tanks from both sides, naturally available for them and not for the Germans.

I wonder how many of those MK IIIs and MK IVs the Germans lost. They did surrender the field of battle and in many places later that fall they were very hard pressed for tanks. One example was the Dneiper crossings the Russians made. If the Germans had more tanks available to squash them before they became too strong they might have gotten a better result.

Winning the field is a big factor in war.

Darth Roach · Feb 26, 2012

In modern war - yes. Before the advent of artillery and armored vehicles - not so much.

Inflames · Feb 26, 2012

sylla1 said:
Can you elaborate a bit? Exactly how many German forces were derived from the Kursk battle to Italy?

The Germans had 95 thousand troops in Italy, 300 - 400 tanks and 300 - 400 field guns. This is circa the time around the fall of Rome, and the setting up of defences there. The Germans could not have taken more than 400 tanks away from the Eastern front at this time.

sylla1 · Feb 27, 2012

Inflames said:
The Germans had 95 thousand troops in Italy, 300 - 400 tanks and 300 - 400 field guns. This is circa the time around the fall of Rome, and the setting up of defences there. The Germans could not have taken more than 400 tanks away from the Eastern front at this time.

But the fall of Rome to the US Fifth army was in June 1944, almost at the time of Normandy and Bagration, ten months after Kursk.

As stated above, only one Panzer division without its armor and equipment, the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (of a reported total of seventeen panzer & panzergrenadier divisions) was retired from Kursk due to Husky.

Search

Search

Battle of Kursk

irishcrusader95

sylla1

steelers708

steelers708

steelers708

irishcrusader95

Mangas Coloradas

Darth Roach

Inflames

sylla1

More History Discussions

Recent History Discussions

Trending History Discussions