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. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Modern War Studies) German warplanes bombed them incessantly, and fast-moving Panzer divisions with coordinated artillery support chopped them apart. The six Soviet corps were disorganized and lacked enough trucks and tractors to transport infantry, howitzers and supplies, and their attacks were uncoordinated. ![]() Making sense of the chaotic battle on available maps is … difficult. It’s unclear how many tanks of the 1st Panzer Group were destroyed in the battle, but the force did lose 100 of its tanks during the first two weeks of the war. 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. Mikhail Kirponos launched a counter attack into the advancing 1st Panzer Group advancing toward Kiev. Beginning on June 23 between Dubno, Lutsk and Brody in far western Ukraine, six Soviet mechanized corps under Gen. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. “This, in fact, is the biggest tank battle in World War II,” Glantz said regarding the Battle of Brody during a 2007 lecture available via the U.S. That’s also according to Zamulin and David Glantz, a historian of the Eastern Front and Soviet military. But they were not concentrated and committed in the same numbers as at the Battle of Brody, which hardly anyone has written about. Photo via WikimediaĮxpanding the number to encompass all of Operation Citadel would include many more tanks. As many as 400 Soviet and 80 German tanks were destroyed.Įxpanding the battle beyond Prokhorovka, the total number of tanks fielded by the 2nd SS Panzer Corps and the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army at and near the battle amounted to 1,299, according to a statistical analysis published in 2000 by Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson. 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. It puts viewers in the commander's seat and sends them into the heart of the action.Destroyed Soviet tanks on Jin western Ukraine. Greatest Tank Battles takes you deeper into the mechanized battlefield than ever before, revealing the delicate balance between man and machine - between victory and death. But some stories push ever farther afield to bring the viewer eyewitness accounts of pivotal tank battles in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East. ![]() These stories bring to life epic conflicts such as those on the Second World War's Eastern Front, where 100,000 tanks clashed in history's biggest war. This Series includes the First Tank Battles of WW1 with WW1 expert Andy Robertshaw in the Field explaining the Battle. Filmed on battlefields across the world, and using stunning, ultra-realistic CGI animation and eyewitness accounts, this original series puts you in the heat of the battles. Greatest Tank Battles Season 2 is an action-packed 10-part series that brings to life the most gripping and monumental tank battles ever fought.
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