Kursk anniversary: 68 years

[Karl Heidenreich]

lwd:

Your statement does not look well founded based on the above. Referring to allied operations in Western Europe as a "Strategic Diversion" is both inaccurate and insulting.

Sorry: I know that you americans have your historical reference from Hogan Heroes, Unglorious Bastards, Pearl Harbor or U Whatever but, according to real History it were the russians those that fought for almost five years the bulk of the German Army, which Glantz have disclosed with exact numbers in comparison to the mild campaign of the western allies against a what the germans could scrap from the East. I will not proceed further in this because has been broadly refered in previous threads and I am begining to suspect that your arguments only purpose are for us to bring the numbers and evidence back so that Jose Rico will ban us for "reiteration". In this topic there is no room for more reiteration.

Bye!

[alecsandros]

And Zitadelle and Kursk are used essentially as synonyms.

NO THEY ARE NOT. Zitadelle was the German offensive. Battle of Kursk refers to both the German offensive and the (also failed) soviet counter-attack.
Read Karl's post above.

Sounds an awful lot like a Soviet strategic victory to me.

That is because you have no idea what you are talking about.

[lwd]

It is good that you admit how the US forces had numerical superiority over the Germans. 3 million: good!

That's a rather strange comment. I don't think anyone has disputed that the allies on either front had a numerical edge over the Germans. On the otherhand the 3 million was the total troops invovled i.e. axis and allies.

... Anyway: in the first post I wrote this:

On July 12th the famous combat at Prochokova will be 68 years old. The grestest tank battle ever!

Indeed you did and did I contest it? As an asside I do think I have seen it contested but it comes down to a matter of semantics and it's certainly one of the two largest tank battles.

[alecsandros]

certainly one of the two largest tank battles.

What is the other that you have in mind ?

[boredatwork]

Lee, you are away with the fairies.

The battle of Prochorowka is different from operation zitadelle, which is different from the battle of Kursk.

This is why I stop posting on these boards - the engaging discussion is frequently drowned out by people arguing over pointless semantics without even reading what others are posting before flaming.

If Prokhorovka is different from Kursk why did Karl title this thread KURSK and then confusingly limit the talk exclusively to Prokhorovka? Wouldn't Prokhorovka: 68 years be more apropriate according to your logic?

Given that ambiguity it's obvious that Lee didn't read the first 2 post closely and misread Alex's response as refering to the battle as a whole. I'm not surprised, I initially made the same mistake too.

The Germans exagerated thier kills as well. As for victory at Kursk it was a very clear Soviet victory all but a costly one. The Germans failed to achieve their objectives and effectivly lost their operational reserve insuring the Soviet attacks that took place elsewhere would succeed.

I guess you should read more about the battle ?

Given Lee's reply where he references KURSK, instead of Prokhorovka, if Karl and Alex had taken the time to read HIS response I would have thought a simple clarification - "No I was responding specifically to Karl;'s comment about Prokhorovka, not the Kursk campaign as a whole" - would have clarified Alex's original response and encouraged more polite discussion instead of a snide comment amount lack of knowledge.

Instead the thread devolved into standard online forum 2 sides slinging insults arguing a point that neither likely would have disputed if they understood what the other was trying to say.



/back to my self imposed exile.

[lwd]

Your statement does not look well founded based on the above. Referring to allied operations in Western Europe as a "Strategic Diversion" is both inaccurate and insulting.

Sorry: I know that you americans have your historical reference from Hogan Heroes, Unglorious Bastards, Pearl Harbor or U Whatever

I'm sorry you "know" that too as it is just another rather insulting fallacy.

but, according to real History it were the russians those that fought for almost five years the bulk of the German Army,

So you consider less than 4 years to be "almost five years"?

which Glantz have disclosed with exact numbers

No body has "exact numbers" but no one has disputed that the German army suffered most of it's casualties fighting the Soviets. So that's a bit of a red herring.

in comparison to the mild campaign of the western allies against a what the germans could scrap from the East.

The campaign in the west was hardly a "mild" one nor were the German forces their simiply what they could "scrap from the East". So again inaccurate and insutling.

[lwd]

certainly one of the two largest tank battles.

What is the other that you have in mind ?

I was thinking of the battle of "Chinese Farm" if I remember correctly but then ran across this today:
http://www.ww2f.com/eastern-europe/5237 ... rsary.html

if one would look at "the tank battle of Hannut (may 1940),one would see that the number of committed and lost tanks was much greater than at Prochorova .

Now I don't know much about this one but here's the wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hannut
And here's the wiki page on Chinese Farm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Chinese_Farm
The problem I think in these is just how one defines the extent of the battle and whose records one believes. Indeed if you take a broad enough defintion of what constitutes a battle then the combination of 73 Eastings and Norfolk might qualify especially if the criteria is armored vehicles rather than just tanks. Detailed OB however are not a field I'm all that well versed in so I'll leave the debate in that regard to others. My point was simply that it is not completely uncontested in this regard.

[alecsandros]

It is indeed difficult to rank greatest tank battles.

My personal preference is Prochorowka, because it had a good balance of forces, and either side had the means to win the battle. The total number of engaged tanks and destroyed tanks is still debatable, but the best research that I've read comes from David Glantz (who studied the soviet archives until 2007 when his visa was abruptly terminated, IIRC).
He mentions about 420-450 German tanks operational on the eve of the battle and about 800 soviet tanks operational. In adition, the soviets also had a strong tank reserve of at least 300 operational tanks. He is also not sure about the total losses, but the most probable numbers are about: 30-50 German tanks destroyed, 100 damaged. 200-300 soviet tanks destroyed, 300-400 damaged.

[The soviets lost a good deal of tanks because of the Ju-87 Stukas with AT guns and because many tanks fell into their own anti-tank ditches and could not be retrieved. After that, they were easy targets for German gunners. I don't know how many were destroyed in open combat by Mark IVs and Tigers]

Why I say it is was a balanced battle ? Because the Lutfwaffe had regional superiority, there were about 40 Tigers present (and the soviets did not have an effective counter in that area IIRC) and the T-34/76 and T-70 (the bulk of soviet forces) were less capable than the Mark IV-G.

=======
Another huge tank battle was that of operation Goodwood, in which 1200-1400 British and Canadian tanks were amassed against ~ 350 German tanks and SP guns, all combined on a relatively narrow strecth of land (15-20 miles ? I'm not sure). So the grand total of armored vehicles was at least 1550, but the forces were extremely unbalanced (the allies had air cover, complete artillery domination, and swarms of reserves)

[Karl Heidenreich]

Byron is right, I made generated a confusion with the thead name and overestimating lwd reading capabililites. And Byron is right that is unbereable this "semantics" and rethorical tricks from lwd. As I said, this time will not be lured in the trap to get banned.

[lwd]

... My personal preference is Prochorowka, ...

I tend to agree. Another point in its favor is that it was part of an even larger battle that involved a lot of armor so if you increase the scope either in time or area you are likely to get even more armored forces where I'm not sure it's true of the others. I also don't think I've seen any one present a conclusive argument against it and some or the participants were very familiar with the various battles. However there's enough debate that I would be reluctant to state it was the biggest without some wording to indicate that there is some debate on the topic.

[alecsandros]

Yes, exactly; if we are to consider the "battle of Kursk" as one giant battle, there would be over 5500 tanks there...

What perplexes me is the amount of casualties the soviets suffered, allthough they had the densest defense perimeter ever built in history. No wonder their counter-offensive was stopped dead in its tracks...

Can you imagine the soviets attacking a German defense of similar depth of that assembled at Kursk... And causing 5 : 1 losses or more... ?