The Panzers of Prokhorovka: The Myth of Hitler’s Greatest Armoured Defeat

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Formations of Junkers Ju 87 Stukas, including a small number of the G-2 variants, experimentally equipped with twin 3. To the south of Leibstandarte, the 2nd Guards Tank Corps and the 48th Rifle Corps' 183rd Rifle Division opposed the advance of Das Reich. This formation included Lieutenant General Aleksey Zhadov's 5th Guards Army and Lieutenant General Pavel Rotmistrov's 5th Guards Tank Army.

The Panzers of Prokhorovka by Ben Wheatley | Waterstones

The black dashed line is the railway running from Prokhorovka southwest through the Psel corridor (the strip of land between the Psel River and a tributary of the Northern Donets River).An estimated total of 60–80 tanks and assault guns of the II SS-Panzer Corps were damaged or destroyed in combat on 12 July.

The Panzers of Prokhorovka, by Ben Wheatley The Panzers of Prokhorovka, by Ben Wheatley

Comparing Soviet and German archives, the total number of tanks and other heavy armoured fighting vehicles such as assault guns and self-propelled guns deployed by the 5th Guards Tank Army and the II SS-Panzer Corps around Prokhorovka during the battle numbered only about 910. The 29th Tank Corps responded with a counterattack and penetrated German lines, reaching Komsomolets State Farm before being beaten back by direct fire from German artillery.Bordkanone BK 3,7 cannon in gun pods, that were commanded by Staffelkapitän Hans-Ulrich Rudel, attacked the Soviet formations. The 7th Panzer Division of the III Panzer Corps made contact with Das Reich, but Trufanov, commanding the Soviet forces in the gap, was aware of the threat and conducted a fighting withdrawal. The Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and some senior Soviet officers wanted to seize the initiative first and attack the German forces inside the Soviet Union, but they were convinced by a number of key commanders, including the Deputy Supreme Commander Georgy Zhukov, to assume a defensive posture instead. 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. Any level of success for Operation Citadel now depended on a breakthrough being achieved by the 4th Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf on the southern side of the Kursk salient.