Prokhorov tragedy of Soviet tankers
The significant date is July 12, 1943. 75 years ago, one of the largest tank battles of the Great Patriotic War: on the southern face of the Kursk Bulge, near Prokhorovka. In Soviet military historiography, this episode was presented as the victory of Soviet tankers in a head-on battle with the Germans, in which up to 1500 tanks participated from both sides.
Studies of archival documents conducted by historians have shown that this is far from the case. Many facts and blunders of the highest military command were simply hidden and presented in a distorted light. An attempt to objectively investigate this issue on the basis of archival Soviet and German documents, as well as the memories of the participants in this confrontation, was made by the historian Valery Zamulin in his book “Prokhorov’s Battle”.
Using the materials of this book, I would like to briefly recall the tragic pages of those days of the war, when thousands of Soviet tankers paid for their lives with ambitions or poor management of the troops. The places of these battles are symbolic for me, I was born on the Kursk Bulge in the post-war period, and my childhood toys were mines and shells that we collected on the outskirts of the city.
It was already the middle of 50's, and for some reason nobody cleared up these “toys”, there were too many of them in these places. Then they quickly disappeared, but the memories of them firmly crashed into the memory. In 43, the Germans rushed towards the city where the headquarters of the Voronezh Front was located. Under Yakovlevo, the 1-I tank army of Katukov stopped the Germans, they were forced to turn in the direction of Prokhorovka.
Having penetrated 30-35 km into the Soviet defenses and breaking through two defensive lines, the Germans approached Prokhorovka and were ready to break through the third defensive line and reach the operational area to reach Kursk from the east ..
From Stavka this direction was supervised by the Chief of General Staff Vasilevsky. He addressed Stalin with a proposal to reinforce the Voronezh Front with the 5 Guards Tank Army under the command of Rotmistrov and the 5 Guards Army under the command of Zhadov, transferring them from the backup Steppe Front.
This offer was accepted. Rotmistrov's tank crews, having successfully completed the 230-kilometer march, were concentrated in the Prokhorovka area by July 9. The two armies, along with the other units, made up an almost 100-thousandth group. The tank army of Rotmistrov had a 931 tank, including 581 T-34 (62,4%) and 314 T-70 (33,7%). The presence of a large number of light tanks T-70 significantly reduced the combat capability of the army.
On the German side, under Prokhorovka, they were opposed by two German tank corps, which included three selected SS tank divisions Leibstandart, Das Reich and Dead Head. The Germans had a 294 tank, including the 38 Tiger and even the 8 captured T-34. These forces encountered 12 July in a tank battle, the ratio in the tanks was 3: 1 in our favor.
After analyzing the current situation, Vasilevsky and the commander of the Voronezh Front, Vatutin, on 9 July, decided to launch the main counterstrike under Prokhorovka with the forces of the tank army Rotmistrov and two auxiliary on the left and right flanks. It was planned to defeat the German group and drop it to the positions at the beginning of the offensive.
It was planned to deploy the tank army into battle formations to the south and south-west of Prokhorovka, where the terrain made it possible to concentrate such a mass of tanks and, in the process of a counterattack, enter operational space in the direction of Yakovlevo. At the time of the decision on the counter attack, the German groups were at a distance of approximately 15 kilometers from Prokhorovka, and this decision was justified.
In the next two days, before the counter attack, the operational situation changed dramatically not in favor of the plans of the Soviet command. The terrain in the Prokhorovka area was characterized by the presence of deep ravines with side spurs, a marshy floodplain of the Psel river, a steep railway embankment, a grader road to Prokhorovka, and a previously dug anti-tank moat.
All of this, the Germans successfully took advantage of and 10-11 July conducted a series of tactical offensive operations, significantly improving their operational situation and jeopardizing the plans of the Soviet command to apply a counterattack.
The Prokhorov battle began on July 10 with the offensive of the Leibstnadart SS Panzer Division on a tactically important sector of the front in the area of the Ivanovsky Settlement village. It was the intersection of the grader road to Prokhorovka and the roads to Belenikhino and Sentry, here was the bend of the railway. The rapid seizure of this node allowed, to hide behind a railway embankment and a forest belt, to organize an attack on Prokhorovka.
The Germans organized this operation very well. At night, the sappers made passages in the minefields, at dawn, the sabotage group penetrated our stronghold, destroyed communication lines, damaged part of the equipment, captured the sleeping commander and returned to their positions. In the morning the German offensive began, the battalion did not open fire, seeing that the Germans were attacking mines. They did not know that the mines were no longer there, the tanks rapidly broke into a stronghold and completely destroyed it.
Developing success, the Germans immediately marched on Ivanovo Vyselok, part of the bridgehead south of Prokhorovka, from which Rotmistrov's tank army was to turn, the intersection of grader roads and cut the railway. This was the first tactical success of the Germans in the Prokhorovka battle, which allowed them to advance on 3-3,5 km and dramatically complicated the application of our tank counter-attack.
The breakthrough and advance of the Germans to Prokhorovka managed to stop and not allow them to break through the third defensive line, but attempts to restore the former position on a tactically important sector of the front, including using significant tank forces, did not lead to anything until the end of the day. After suffering heavy losses, the Soviet troops switched to defense.
On the night of July 10, defense was quickly organized in new positions. The Soviet command failed to organize a solid and solid line of defense, and the Germans did not fail to take advantage of it the next day.
For the Soviet command, it was extremely important not to allow the seizure of the Oktyabrsky state farm and the consolidation of the Germans in the vicinity of the 252.2 height, which is a key defense node in front of Prokhorovka. The seizure of this height threatened the collapse of the defense on this sector of the front and facilitated the advance of the Germans to the east. Understanding the importance of this knot of defense, the Germans launched an offensive precisely here.
Having obtained a tactical advantage with access to the railroad, the Germans took the second step - they organized an attack on this height early in the morning of July 11. Hiding behind the railroad and the forest belt, the Germans along the grader road Yakovlevo - Prokhorovka took the height by considerable forces of infantry and tanks. On the move they overcame a single tank-passable area approximately 1 km in width from the anti-tank ditch to the railway and rushed deep into our defense.
Going deeper into 8 km, the Germans reached the southern outskirts of Prokhorovka and completely captured the springboard for the deployment of Rotmistrov tank corps. The counterattacks only managed to prevent the expansion of the breakthrough, push the enemy out of the vicinity of Prokhorovka and prevent its surrender. Restore the position and regain lost positions failed. By the end of the day, a “narrow throat” hit the depths of the Soviet defense, the point of which rested against Prokhorovka, and the Germans began to strengthen it strenuously.
A few hours before the counterstrike, the Soviet command was faced with a dilemma of what to do next. For the counterstrike, a powerful armored fist was assembled and waited for the command, but the foothold from which the strike was supposed to start was captured by the enemy, there was no other suitable on this sector of the front.
It was very dangerous to start the operation in the current conditions and deploy the tank corps in front of the enemy’s front edge, the probability of the destruction of tanks that did not have time to turn into battle formations was too high.
Despite the complication of the situation, Vasilevsky and Vatutin decided to put on a counterstrike after all. The decision to reinforce the front grouping by the two armies and to deliver a counterattack on the advancing enemy forces was made on the proposal of Vasilevsky. After failures to curb the offensive of the enemy, he apparently did not dare to go to the Bet with a proposal to cancel the already planned operation.
The tank army had to solve two tasks, crack the defenses of the enemy and destroy its strike force. That is, the tank army was not thrown into the breakthrough, but to break through the enemy defenses. Rotmistrov decided to crush the enemy with a massive tank strike on a narrow sector, deciding to throw four tank brigades and a self-propelled gun regiment there with a small interval.
The preparation of the counterattack was carried out in a short time, for two days it was impossible to qualitatively prepare such a complex operation and not everything was taken into account and worked through. Moreover, the enemy has seriously complicated the task, capturing the springboard that was scheduled for deployment.
The counter-strike was inflicted by three tank corps, which had 538 tanks in service. In the first echelon there should have been 368 tanks of two tank corps, while in one there was 35,5%, and in the other 38,8% of light T-70 tanks. This tank with light armor and weak weaponry was not able to fight on equal terms with any of the German tanks. Tankers should have attacked in a narrow lane between the river Psel and the railway, and when confronted with an enemy, this inevitably should have led to the mixing of the battle formations of the corps, which is what happened.
It was impossible to create a single strike fist of two buildings on a narrow section. Moreover, at the end of this “corridor” there was a natural obstacle - a deep ravine, which narrowed the line of attack on 2 km. Immediately after its passage, the combat vehicles came under fire from the enemy, which was located in 300 – 500 from the ravine. In order to turn around in order of battle or pick up speed for a breakthrough, there was no place even for one tank brigade, not to mention the whole corps.
At night, before the counterstrike, the Germans broke through in the direction of Korocha;
Before the attack of the tanks, the infantry tried to knock out the Germans and widen the narrow throat in front of the 252.2 height for the passage of tanks, but all attempts were unsuccessful. The Germans, having captured the bridgehead, for the night seriously strengthened it with anti-tank weapons and were well prepared for the attacks of the Soviet tankmen. The high saturation with the fire weapons of the German line of defense and the skillful organization of the fire resistance system were one of the main reasons for the defeat of the Soviet tank corps.
The tankers of Rotmistrov in the morning of July 12 had to go head-on to the line of defense of the Germans saturated with tanks, artillery, assault guns, tank destroyers and heavy mortars. A total of 6,5 km in this area was concentrated to 305 guns and mortars of all types. With such a murderous defense tank corps, sandwiched on both sides of the river and the railway, went on the attack, dooming themselves to inevitable defeat.
The Soviet command did not know the operational situation that had developed at night before the counterstrike, as well as how the enemy entrenched itself on the achieved lines. The extensive reconnaissance was not conducted and the command did not have a detailed picture of the state of the enemy before the front of the tank army at the time of the start of the strike.
The ending should ...
Studies of archival documents conducted by historians have shown that this is far from the case. Many facts and blunders of the highest military command were simply hidden and presented in a distorted light. An attempt to objectively investigate this issue on the basis of archival Soviet and German documents, as well as the memories of the participants in this confrontation, was made by the historian Valery Zamulin in his book “Prokhorov’s Battle”.
Using the materials of this book, I would like to briefly recall the tragic pages of those days of the war, when thousands of Soviet tankers paid for their lives with ambitions or poor management of the troops. The places of these battles are symbolic for me, I was born on the Kursk Bulge in the post-war period, and my childhood toys were mines and shells that we collected on the outskirts of the city.
It was already the middle of 50's, and for some reason nobody cleared up these “toys”, there were too many of them in these places. Then they quickly disappeared, but the memories of them firmly crashed into the memory. In 43, the Germans rushed towards the city where the headquarters of the Voronezh Front was located. Under Yakovlevo, the 1-I tank army of Katukov stopped the Germans, they were forced to turn in the direction of Prokhorovka.
Having penetrated 30-35 km into the Soviet defenses and breaking through two defensive lines, the Germans approached Prokhorovka and were ready to break through the third defensive line and reach the operational area to reach Kursk from the east ..
From Stavka this direction was supervised by the Chief of General Staff Vasilevsky. He addressed Stalin with a proposal to reinforce the Voronezh Front with the 5 Guards Tank Army under the command of Rotmistrov and the 5 Guards Army under the command of Zhadov, transferring them from the backup Steppe Front.
This offer was accepted. Rotmistrov's tank crews, having successfully completed the 230-kilometer march, were concentrated in the Prokhorovka area by July 9. The two armies, along with the other units, made up an almost 100-thousandth group. The tank army of Rotmistrov had a 931 tank, including 581 T-34 (62,4%) and 314 T-70 (33,7%). The presence of a large number of light tanks T-70 significantly reduced the combat capability of the army.
On the German side, under Prokhorovka, they were opposed by two German tank corps, which included three selected SS tank divisions Leibstandart, Das Reich and Dead Head. The Germans had a 294 tank, including the 38 Tiger and even the 8 captured T-34. These forces encountered 12 July in a tank battle, the ratio in the tanks was 3: 1 in our favor.
After analyzing the current situation, Vasilevsky and the commander of the Voronezh Front, Vatutin, on 9 July, decided to launch the main counterstrike under Prokhorovka with the forces of the tank army Rotmistrov and two auxiliary on the left and right flanks. It was planned to defeat the German group and drop it to the positions at the beginning of the offensive.
It was planned to deploy the tank army into battle formations to the south and south-west of Prokhorovka, where the terrain made it possible to concentrate such a mass of tanks and, in the process of a counterattack, enter operational space in the direction of Yakovlevo. At the time of the decision on the counter attack, the German groups were at a distance of approximately 15 kilometers from Prokhorovka, and this decision was justified.
In the next two days, before the counter attack, the operational situation changed dramatically not in favor of the plans of the Soviet command. The terrain in the Prokhorovka area was characterized by the presence of deep ravines with side spurs, a marshy floodplain of the Psel river, a steep railway embankment, a grader road to Prokhorovka, and a previously dug anti-tank moat.
All of this, the Germans successfully took advantage of and 10-11 July conducted a series of tactical offensive operations, significantly improving their operational situation and jeopardizing the plans of the Soviet command to apply a counterattack.
The Prokhorov battle began on July 10 with the offensive of the Leibstnadart SS Panzer Division on a tactically important sector of the front in the area of the Ivanovsky Settlement village. It was the intersection of the grader road to Prokhorovka and the roads to Belenikhino and Sentry, here was the bend of the railway. The rapid seizure of this node allowed, to hide behind a railway embankment and a forest belt, to organize an attack on Prokhorovka.
The Germans organized this operation very well. At night, the sappers made passages in the minefields, at dawn, the sabotage group penetrated our stronghold, destroyed communication lines, damaged part of the equipment, captured the sleeping commander and returned to their positions. In the morning the German offensive began, the battalion did not open fire, seeing that the Germans were attacking mines. They did not know that the mines were no longer there, the tanks rapidly broke into a stronghold and completely destroyed it.
Developing success, the Germans immediately marched on Ivanovo Vyselok, part of the bridgehead south of Prokhorovka, from which Rotmistrov's tank army was to turn, the intersection of grader roads and cut the railway. This was the first tactical success of the Germans in the Prokhorovka battle, which allowed them to advance on 3-3,5 km and dramatically complicated the application of our tank counter-attack.
The breakthrough and advance of the Germans to Prokhorovka managed to stop and not allow them to break through the third defensive line, but attempts to restore the former position on a tactically important sector of the front, including using significant tank forces, did not lead to anything until the end of the day. After suffering heavy losses, the Soviet troops switched to defense.
On the night of July 10, defense was quickly organized in new positions. The Soviet command failed to organize a solid and solid line of defense, and the Germans did not fail to take advantage of it the next day.
For the Soviet command, it was extremely important not to allow the seizure of the Oktyabrsky state farm and the consolidation of the Germans in the vicinity of the 252.2 height, which is a key defense node in front of Prokhorovka. The seizure of this height threatened the collapse of the defense on this sector of the front and facilitated the advance of the Germans to the east. Understanding the importance of this knot of defense, the Germans launched an offensive precisely here.
Having obtained a tactical advantage with access to the railroad, the Germans took the second step - they organized an attack on this height early in the morning of July 11. Hiding behind the railroad and the forest belt, the Germans along the grader road Yakovlevo - Prokhorovka took the height by considerable forces of infantry and tanks. On the move they overcame a single tank-passable area approximately 1 km in width from the anti-tank ditch to the railway and rushed deep into our defense.
Going deeper into 8 km, the Germans reached the southern outskirts of Prokhorovka and completely captured the springboard for the deployment of Rotmistrov tank corps. The counterattacks only managed to prevent the expansion of the breakthrough, push the enemy out of the vicinity of Prokhorovka and prevent its surrender. Restore the position and regain lost positions failed. By the end of the day, a “narrow throat” hit the depths of the Soviet defense, the point of which rested against Prokhorovka, and the Germans began to strengthen it strenuously.
A few hours before the counterstrike, the Soviet command was faced with a dilemma of what to do next. For the counterstrike, a powerful armored fist was assembled and waited for the command, but the foothold from which the strike was supposed to start was captured by the enemy, there was no other suitable on this sector of the front.
It was very dangerous to start the operation in the current conditions and deploy the tank corps in front of the enemy’s front edge, the probability of the destruction of tanks that did not have time to turn into battle formations was too high.
Despite the complication of the situation, Vasilevsky and Vatutin decided to put on a counterstrike after all. The decision to reinforce the front grouping by the two armies and to deliver a counterattack on the advancing enemy forces was made on the proposal of Vasilevsky. After failures to curb the offensive of the enemy, he apparently did not dare to go to the Bet with a proposal to cancel the already planned operation.
The tank army had to solve two tasks, crack the defenses of the enemy and destroy its strike force. That is, the tank army was not thrown into the breakthrough, but to break through the enemy defenses. Rotmistrov decided to crush the enemy with a massive tank strike on a narrow sector, deciding to throw four tank brigades and a self-propelled gun regiment there with a small interval.
The preparation of the counterattack was carried out in a short time, for two days it was impossible to qualitatively prepare such a complex operation and not everything was taken into account and worked through. Moreover, the enemy has seriously complicated the task, capturing the springboard that was scheduled for deployment.
The counter-strike was inflicted by three tank corps, which had 538 tanks in service. In the first echelon there should have been 368 tanks of two tank corps, while in one there was 35,5%, and in the other 38,8% of light T-70 tanks. This tank with light armor and weak weaponry was not able to fight on equal terms with any of the German tanks. Tankers should have attacked in a narrow lane between the river Psel and the railway, and when confronted with an enemy, this inevitably should have led to the mixing of the battle formations of the corps, which is what happened.
It was impossible to create a single strike fist of two buildings on a narrow section. Moreover, at the end of this “corridor” there was a natural obstacle - a deep ravine, which narrowed the line of attack on 2 km. Immediately after its passage, the combat vehicles came under fire from the enemy, which was located in 300 – 500 from the ravine. In order to turn around in order of battle or pick up speed for a breakthrough, there was no place even for one tank brigade, not to mention the whole corps.
At night, before the counterstrike, the Germans broke through in the direction of Korocha;
Before the attack of the tanks, the infantry tried to knock out the Germans and widen the narrow throat in front of the 252.2 height for the passage of tanks, but all attempts were unsuccessful. The Germans, having captured the bridgehead, for the night seriously strengthened it with anti-tank weapons and were well prepared for the attacks of the Soviet tankmen. The high saturation with the fire weapons of the German line of defense and the skillful organization of the fire resistance system were one of the main reasons for the defeat of the Soviet tank corps.
The tankers of Rotmistrov in the morning of July 12 had to go head-on to the line of defense of the Germans saturated with tanks, artillery, assault guns, tank destroyers and heavy mortars. A total of 6,5 km in this area was concentrated to 305 guns and mortars of all types. With such a murderous defense tank corps, sandwiched on both sides of the river and the railway, went on the attack, dooming themselves to inevitable defeat.
The Soviet command did not know the operational situation that had developed at night before the counterstrike, as well as how the enemy entrenched itself on the achieved lines. The extensive reconnaissance was not conducted and the command did not have a detailed picture of the state of the enemy before the front of the tank army at the time of the start of the strike.
The ending should ...
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