Details of the largest tank battle in history revealed

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Battle of Kursk, also called the Battle of the Kursk Bulge, was fought from July 5 to August 23, 1943. In terms of its scale, forces and means, tension, and most importantly, the military-political consequences, this battle became one of the key ones in the course of the Great Patriotic War. It is enough to cite only one fact: more than 2.2 million people, more than six thousand tanks and about five thousand aircraft took part in it.

The tank battle became the most important part of the strategic plan for the 1943 summer-autumn campaign. And the radical change in the course of the Great Patriotic War, begun near Moscow and Stalingrad, was completed during the Battle of Kursk. After her, the strategic initiative finally went over to the side of the Red Army. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the day of August 23, when the Nazi troops were defeated, is the Day of Military Glory for Russia.

But then there was another day - July 12, which became the culmination of the great battle at Prokhorovka. It was then, exactly 74 years ago, in the vicinity of the Prokhorovka railway station and the village of Aleksandrovskoye, that the same tank battle took place, in which more than a thousand units of military equipment participated. By the end of the day on July 12, the battle was over.

The counterstrike of the Voronezh Front with the forces of two Guards armies did not achieve the main goal: the enemy was not defeated. But, the further advance of the formations of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps near Prokhorovka was stopped. Having advanced only 35 kilometers in eight days, Manstein's troops, having trampled on the attained lines for three days in vain attempts to break into the Soviet defense, were forced to start withdrawing troops from the captured "bridgehead". After that, a turning point came. The Soviet troops, which went on the offensive on July 17, threw the fascists back to their original positions by July 23.

The days of the battles are very well remembered by the retired colonel-general, participant of the Battle of Kursk, Boris Pavlovich Utkin, to whom the Zvezda website asked to tell about those events.

The veteran recalls that such a creative flight of thought of commanders, such inspiration among officers and the highest morale among personnel, as during the Battle of Kursk, was very little in the entire history of the army. This is what helped not only to defend with dignity, but also to go on the offensive. Utkin himself, who entered the first battle as a senior lieutenant and being the commander of an artillery battery, emerged from the last battle as a captain.

He continues that during the battle near Kursk, all the military formations of our army accumulated such a victorious potential, which was enough until the end of the war. It became clear to everyone, including the enemy, that the whole country was reorganized in a victorious manner. It was near Kursk that our army proved that it had learned how to fight well.

Speaking about those days, the combat general recalls how, thanks to the local magnetic anomaly, all devices refused to work with them, and they had to navigate by the stars during night marches and when conducting artillery fire. At the same time, in battle, you always had to overcome something new or previously unknown. Often I had to learn and relearn on the fly.