On the night of July 12, offensive actions near Prokhorovka virtually ceased. The parties began to gain a foothold on the achieved lines. After so many years, there are many versions about the victory or defeat of our troops in this battle. For such an assessment, not all documents were timely opened and not everyone was satisfied with the truth about those events.
No matter how bitter the truth, it is better to know it, the more significant will be the victory achieved in that terrible war. In spite of everything, we persevered and defeated a serious and experienced opponent. Not all victories were easy, one of these was under Prokhorovka.
Much has already been written about that battle, I may be mistaken, but this is most fully and objectively set forth in the book by Valery Zamulin, which I indicated at the beginning of a series of articles. In this voluminous and serious study with hundreds of references to archival documents and the memories of participants in the fighting from both sides, the picture of everything that happened in those days is unbiasedly revealed.
This book must be read more than one day and more than one week with a pencil in hand, in order to appreciate and understand the whole drama of the unfolding battle. In my article, I only briefly outlined the essence of this work, without adding anything from myself. Such a serious research should be known to a wide reader interested in an objective history Great Patriotic War.
The Prokhorov battle is one of the iconic pages of that war, which not everyone appreciates equally. When making such conclusions, it is first of all necessary to assess how well the tasks that the parties set for themselves were realized and what results they achieved.
In the course of the battle, none of the opposing sides managed to achieve their goals. The Soviet command failed to break through the front of the enemy, defeat the enemy grouping and ensure access to the Oboyan highway. The German command was unable to break through the third rear line of the Soviet defense and go to the operating room. In this case, the German offensive was stopped, and the Soviet troops suffered serious losses in equipment and people and were limited in their offensive capabilities.
Formally, as if a draw, but a few days after the counterblow, the enemy was forced to curtail “Operation Citadel” and retreat. So in this sense, the battlefield is left for us, in the end we won. Implementing the goals set when the counterattack was applied to the Soviet command was not allowed by a number of objective and subjective factors that have been repeatedly described, the main ones being the following.
Voronezh Front Command misused tank an army of uniform composition, which was created as a means of developing success after breaking the enemy’s defense. Instead of entering into a breakthrough and developing success, the army was thrown to break its own way in the enemy’s line of battle prepared for anti-tank defense without reconnaissance and the necessary support of artillery and aviation.
The bridgehead for the deployment of groups and the application of a counterattack on the eve was captured by the enemy. The front command did not dare to change the decision approved by the Stavka and struck a blow and brought the tank wedge into battle far from the best place. In this area, bounded by river and railway embankment, as well as saturated with deep ravines and spurs, it was impossible to deploy the battle formations of tank corps and provide them with a jerk to the front edge of the enemy. As a result, the shock "wedge" was deprived of the possibility of maneuver and its striking power; tank corps could not use their numerical advantage.
The command plan to stop a frontal blow to the head of a strong and attacking enemy did not correspond to the changed operational situation. The Soviet command did not establish that by the time of the attack, the enemy had stopped the offensive, organized a stable anti-tank defense and was able to repel a massive attack of tanks.
The underestimation of the enemy forces and its capabilities to effectively counter the attack of Soviet tanks led to catastrophic losses in equipment and people. Tactical successes in certain areas have got such a high price that they cannot be called anything other than Pyrrhic victory.
The blunders of command in the organization of the counterblow allowed the enemy to destroy most of the tanks that took part on the edge of the tank wedge. The losses of Rotmistrov’s tank army were not only very large, they spoke of the drama of her position after the battle. In all units of the army, the enemy hit and burned 340 tanks and 17 self-propelled guns.
And the 194 tank burned, and 146 were hit or out of order on the battlefield and could still be restored. However, a significant part of such combat vehicles was in the territory controlled by the enemy, and he simply blew them up. Thus, the army lost 53% of tanks and self-propelled guns that took part in a counterattack, or 42,7% of all units in service on that day.
The situation was especially terrifying in the two tank corps involved in the main direction of the counterstrike. Archival documents show that during the battle of 348 tanks and 19 SAU, which were available in 29 and 18 tank corps before the battle, they lost 237 tanks and 17 SAU, or slightly more than 69%.
More than two-thirds of the 29 body lost the destroyed and burnt 153 tank and the 17 SAU, which was 77% of the attackers! The 18 tank, or 84% of those involved in the attack, was slightly less damaged than the 56 corps, destroyed and burned. Only in the battles of the state farm "October" and the height of 252.2 was 114 – 116 tanks and 11 SAU destroyed and burned.
There is not much reliable data on the enemy’s losses, but even they speak about incomparable losses in this battle. In the German tank corps, which opposed 12 in July to our two corps, was the 273 tank and assault guns, as well as the 43 anti-tank SAU.
A number of researchers who deal with this problem agree that this corps lost roughly the 154 tank and the 273 assault guns available at the start of the battle, or 56,4%. Nevertheless, the corps retained its combat capability, since there were not so many burned tanks, only a few dozen. The enemy was able to restore most of the wounded combat vehicles, since almost all of them were in the territory left behind by the enemy.
Thus, the real loss of armored vehicles in the Soviet tank corps compared with the enemy is difficult to even compare. Naturally, the loss in manpower was just as significant. The battlefield, about 4,5 km wide, was plowed through with thousands of shells and bombs. Among the heaps destroyed in previous battles and added on the day of the battle, several thousand dead were scattered from both sides. Many participants of those events testified that they had never seen a more horrific picture in life. For an unsuccessful attempt to "break through" the defense of the enemy had to pay a high price.
According to incomplete data, in the tank and combined arms guards armies involved in the counterstrike, the losses amounted to 7019 fighters and commanders. Discovered documents indicate that a total of 3139 people lost tank corps during the battles, of which almost half (1448) died and went missing. The main losses fell on motorized rifle brigades. The 53 group of the motorized rifle brigade had the most difficulty; it lost more than 37% of all personnel.
In this regard, the appropriate question of the loss of the enemy. According to incomplete archival data, the losses of the SS tank corps, which was opposed to our tank crews on the day, were several times smaller — the 842 man, of whom 182 were killed and missing. The loss ratio is just deadly.
Behind these numbers are the losses of the fate of thousands of our tankers, who gave their lives in the name of victory. That's how they described this fight.
“There was such a roar that the membrane pressed, blood flowed from the ears. The continuous roar of engines, the clanking of metal, the roar, the explosions of shells, the wild gnash of exploding iron ... From the shots at close range, the turret collapsed, the guns twisted, armor burst, tanks exploded.
From the explosions, five-ton towers broke off and flew to the side on 15 – 20 and m. Slapping hatches, they tumbled in the air and fell. Often, from strong explosions, the entire tank was falling apart, at the moment turning into a pile of metal. Our tankers, who got out of their wrecked vehicles, looked for enemy crews on the field, who were also left without equipment, and beat them with pistols and grabbed hand to hand.
From the explosions, five-ton towers broke off and flew to the side on 15 – 20 and m. Slapping hatches, they tumbled in the air and fell. Often, from strong explosions, the entire tank was falling apart, at the moment turning into a pile of metal. Our tankers, who got out of their wrecked vehicles, looked for enemy crews on the field, who were also left without equipment, and beat them with pistols and grabbed hand to hand.
Traveling for dozens of years past the “thirty-four” pedestal, standing under Yakovlevo, I always say the same words “Eternal glory!” To all who stood to death at this turn and did not let the enemy through.
The Soviet command in the person of Vasilevsky and Rotmistrov after the cessation of strikes against the enemy was well aware that at least two corps of the tank army in a few hours of battle completely lost their combat capability. It was not possible to implement the goals set during the counterattack. The positions of the Soviet troops, with the exception of moving several kilometers in separate sectors, remained on the same lines.
Stalin, having learned about the dramatic events near Prokhorovka, was extremely dissatisfied with the actions of the command. The Voronezh Front, having received from the reserve enormous forces, tank and combined army armies and two separate tank corps, a total of almost 120 thousand people and more 800 tanks, could not achieve serious success in confronting the enemy.
He recalled Vasilevsky, as he was mainly blamed for the unsuccessful counterstrike, sent Zhukov there and appointed a commission headed by Malenkov to find out who made mistakes and what mistakes were made when planning a frontline counterattack. In addition to operational and tactical issues, an impressive group of specialists had to find out the reasons for the high losses of armored vehicles in order to avoid this in the future.
According to the results of the commission’s work, a report was prepared on the reasons for the failure of the counterattack. No organizational conclusions on the report were made, because after a few days the Germans stopped the implementation of Operation Citadel and began to withdraw their troops. The battle of Prokhorovka was interpreted as a serious victory, which led to the defeat of a large German tank group under the leadership of the Soviet command. Based on the results of the work of the technical commission, measures were developed for the effective use of tank groups and introduced into the troops.
The German leadership at all levels highly appreciated the actions of their troops in the battles of Prokhorovka, but this did not affect the decision to curtail Operation Citadel. There are many versions of the termination of the German offensive on the Kursk Bulge; probably, a combination of factors played a role in making this decision. The main ones were the successes of our troops on the northern front near Orel, which made the Germans offensive from the south senseless, the possibility of a Soviet frontal offensive in the Donbas, the Allied landing in Italy and, of course, the German offensive near Prokhorovka. In fact, on this day the fate of the operation “Citadel” was decided.
Taken together, all these factors and the results of the July 12 hostilities in the southern and northern face of the Kursk Bulge forced the German command at the July 13 meeting at Hitler’s Headquarters to decide to curtail this operation. The commander of army groups at the Kursk Bulge, it was announced that because of the impossibility of quickly achieving the objectives of the operation "Citadel" it stops.
After eight days of intense fighting, the grand battle on the Kursk Bulge was nearing completion. The plan of Hitler’s command to seize the lost initiative on the Eastern Front after Stalingrad collapsed.
From that moment on, the enemy command was only concerned with the issue of securing a withdrawal. Offensive operations were still being carried out, but their goal was not to defeat the Soviet troops, but to create conditions for the successful withdrawal of their troops from the bulge that rested against Prokhorovka, beyond which the enemy could not pass.
July 16 Day was the final in the Prokhorovsky battle. In parts and compounds of the enemy were preparations for the withdrawal. Rearguard groups were formed, ambushes were made of heavy tanks, and the sappers prepared to mine roads and tank hazardous terrain immediately after the departure to ensure a quiet departure of the main forces.
On the night of July 17, the enemy began to withdraw armored units, as well as rear support units in the direction of Belgorod and Tomarovka. In the morning, under the cover of strong rearguards, the withdrawal of the main forces of the German group began. With the termination of the operation "Citadel", the Prokhorovskoye battle was completed. The Soviet troops 18 July went on the offensive and 23 July reached the line that they held before the offensive of the enemy.