From beyond the shallow rise about 150-200 metres in front of me appeared 15, then 30, then 40 tanks. A number of Russian tanks were left burning… I looked around as was my habit. Rudolf von Ribbentrop, the son of the German foreign minister, commanded a company of tanks in the battle, and he later described the scene: “We halted on the slope and opened fire, hitting several of the enemy.
BATTLE GROUP KURSK CODE
This, they believed, was their only chance to get in close where their own guns would be more effective.Īs the German tanks emerged from the forest and moved into open ground, General Rotmistrov, Commander of the Russian 5th Guards Tank Army gave the code word “Stal, Stal, Stal” (‘Steel, Steel, Steel’), and 600 Russian tanks charged towards the Germans. They believed that if they fought at a distance they would simply be picked off by the German tanks’ superior guns. That this was the case was down to the Russians. In fact, other battles had involved more tanks, but never before or since have so many armoured vehicles – more than 800 in all – clashed at pointblank range. The following day, the two sides clashed in what has often been described as the largest tank battle in history. The Russians were planning a counterattack of their own. That night, as the German forces rested in a forest before attacking Prokhorovka, they heard an ominous sound – the rumble of hundreds of tank engines. (Photo by Corbis via Getty Images)Įven so, they pushed on and, by 11 July, the armoured divisions of the elite II SS Panzer Corps had reached the outskirts of the small town of Prokhorovka, 50 miles south east of Kursk. Read more | 5 tanks that changed the course of the First World Warįield Marshal Erich von Manstein.But the Soviets rapidly deployed reinforcements, and the German advance slowed once again. On 7 July, it briefly looked as though von Manstein’s troops might break through the main Russian defence zone. After advancing a mere eight miles, the German attack ground to a halt.įield Marshal Erich von Manstein’s forces in the south ran into the same difficulties but, after a slow start, the pace of their advance began to pick up. To make matters worse, the Germans were now coming under fire from ground-attack aircraft. He had survived arrest, torture and imprisonment during Stalin’s purge of army officers in 1937. Soviet Commander of the northern sector of the Kursk salient. He was mortally wounded in an attack by Ukrainian nationalists in February 1944. Soviet Commander of the southern sector of the Kursk salient. He committed suicide at the end of the war. Nicknamed the Führer’s Fireman, Hitler considered Model one of his best generals.
He had been key in the defeat of France in 1940 and, earlier in 1943, had stabilised the front after German failure at Stalingrad.Ĭommander of the northern German pincer. More than 200 million were handed out during the war.īetween them, these four men commanded around 2.8 million men, 8,000 tanks and 4,200 aircraft…Ĭommander of the southern German pincer.
Nicknamed Panzerschokolade or ‘tank chocolate’ by the soldiers, these highly addictive pills contained methamphetamine, helping to fight fatigue and increase self-confidence. Many debilitated Germans kept going by taking Pervitin. Inside the scorching tanks, heat exhaustion was commonplace as sweating crewmen struggled to load the tank guns with their heavy shells. The weather during the battle alternated between blazing heat and pouring rain, coating the combatants in dust on one day, bogging them down in mud the next. Listen: James Holland tells the story of the Sherwood Rangers, a British tank regiment which was in the thick of the action from the Allied assault on Normandy on D-Day until the final defeat of Nazi Germany Rain or shine Lacking a hull-mounted machine gun, the Ferdinands fared particularly badly, as they were unable to repel these primitive-but-effective infantry attacks. Another threat came from the Soviet soldiers, who ran forward with spare mines to place in the attacker’s path, or to throw grenades, Molotov cocktails and satchels of explosives at the advancing German tanks. While it was true that the heavy German tanks often proved impervious to the Soviet antitank guns – one Russian soldier described how 45mm shells bounced off the Tiger tanks like peas – their tracks remained vulnerable to the anti-tank mines. A massive Soviet counter-bombardment began shortly before the attack was due to start, confirming the Germans had achieved no surprise whatsoever, and the extensive field defences in their path ensured progress was painfully slow. The German attacks began in earnest early on 5 July and, almost immediately, it became clear they had underestimated their Russian adversaries. (Photo by Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Red Army soldiers with an anti-tank gun repelling a tank attack during the battle of kursk, 1943.
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