The Prochorovka myth

[Narwan]

For those not yet in the know some interesting reading:

http://www.uni.edu/~licari/citadel.htm


Narwan

[Gasbag]

For those not yet in the know some interesting reading:

http://www.uni.edu/~licari/citadel.htm


Narwan

Makes for some interesting reading. Thanks for the link...:thumbs_up:

[Bear]

One potential fallacy of this report/study is that it relies mainly on German counts of tanks lost. I.e. the "Elefant" AG was involved at Kursk yet there is no reported losses. This alone creates a gap in the credibility of the report.

As is the usual case when studying/assessing Orders of Battle and losses etc in the War in Russia. It is safe to take the numbers offered by the Germans and Russians and find the mean difference or simply average them to come to a relative conclusion.

I often use Karl Schultz aka Paul Carell's trilogy:

1. Hitler's War on Russia
   
2. Scorched Earth
   
3. DER RUSSLANDKRIEG, Fotografiert von Soldaten
   

As the most reliable source and/or cross reference.

Have a great day!

[Narwan]

One potential fallacy of this report/study is that it relies mainly on German counts of tanks lost. I.e. the "Elefant" AG was involved at Kursk yet there is no reported losses. This alone creates a gap in the credibility of the report.

As is the usual case when studying/assessing Orders of Battle and losses etc in the War in Russia. It is safe to take the numbers offered by the Germans and Russians and find the mean difference or simply average them to come to a relative conclusion.

I often use Karl Schultz aka Paul Carell's trilogy:

1. Hitler's War on Russia
   
2. Scorched Earth
   
3. DER RUSSLANDKRIEG, Fotografiert von Soldaten
   

As the most reliable source and/or cross reference.

Have a great day!

Uhhh, where do you get that these numbers reflect just german accounts??? This report is based on german strength and loss reports for the german numbers and soviet strength and loss reports for the soviet numbers. No fallacy there. These are the numbers as reported by the respective formation commanders at the time. And they are the numbers for the battle at Prochorovka (and the days before and after), not the numbers for the whole of the Kursk campaign.

Your remark on the 'Elefant' illustrates the point of the myth perfectly. There were no Ferdinands (Elefant btw was the name given to the variant of the vehicle which appeared after Kursk) at Prochorovka. Prochorovka was purely a matter of the southern german pincer and all the Ferdinands were assigned to the northern pincer. So any report which mentions Ferdinands at Prochorovka can be dismissed out of hand. Similarly there were no Panthers at Prochorovka either. While those were part of the southern pincer, they were all attached to the Gross Deutschland division which never even came close to Prochorovka. So any report which mentions Panthers at Prochorovka can likewise be dismissed out of hand.

The sources listed at the bottom of the essay are extensive studies done using primairy source material to get the real numbers (from both sides), not just repeating what others wrote about the battle. The are NOT just the german numbers for the battle.

Narwan

[Gasbag]

Alan's Kursk Page is still online. Though he hasn't updated it since 1999 it may still be a useful source of information.

[Bear]

One potential fallacy of this report/study is that it relies mainly on German counts of tanks lost. I.e. the "Elefant" AG was involved at Kursk yet there is no reported losses. This alone creates a gap in the credibility of the report.

As is the usual case when studying/assessing Orders of Battle and losses etc in the War in Russia. It is safe to take the numbers offered by the Germans and Russians and find the mean difference or simply average them to come to a relative conclusion.

I often use Karl Schultz aka Paul Carell's trilogy:

1. Hitler's War on Russia
   
2. Scorched Earth
   
3. DER RUSSLANDKRIEG, Fotografiert von Soldaten
   

As the most reliable source and/or cross reference.

Have a great day!

Uhhh, where do you get that these numbers reflect just german accounts??? This report is based on german strength and loss reports for the german numbers and soviet strength and loss reports for the soviet numbers. No fallacy there. These are the numbers as reported by the respective formation commanders at the time. And they are the numbers for the battle at Prochorovka (and the days before and after), not the numbers for the whole of the Kursk campaign.

Your remark on the 'Elefant' illustrates the point of the myth perfectly. There were no Ferdinands (Elefant btw was the name given to the variant of the vehicle which appeared after Kursk) at Prochorovka. Prochorovka was purely a matter of the southern german pincer and all the Ferdinands were assigned to the northern pincer. So any report which mentions Ferdinands at Prochorovka can be dismissed out of hand. Similarly there were no Panthers at Prochorovka either. While those were part of the southern pincer, they were all attached to the Gross Deutschland division which never even came close to Prochorovka. So any report which mentions Panthers at Prochorovka can likewise be dismissed out of hand.

The sources listed at the bottom of the essay are extensive studies done using primairy source material to get the real numbers (from both sides), not just repeating what others wrote about the battle. The are NOT just the german numbers for the battle.

Narwan

The essay is on Citadel not merely Prokorovka. The report mentioned Ferdinands, not I, yet there is no accounting for them.

[JDR Dragoon]

A little comment:

-The soviets tended to use the nomer "Ferdinand" for all german SP Guns irregardless of type. So when encountering the term in soviet sources one should not read too much into it.

The real reason why the "Elefant/Ferdinand" does not feature in the essays loss statistic table is of course, that it wasn´t used at Prochorovka. The tables only include losses suffered by 1 LSSAH and the soviet tank formations immediately opposite it during a few days, not the kursk fighting in its entirety.

[JasonC]

Actually, none of the previous comments mention the 2 largest problems with the cited article. The author ignores the rest of the I SS panzer corps and pretends the fight only involved one division, and that said single division fought all of 2 Russian tank corps single handed. That is problem one. Problem 2 is that he gives tanks ready and changes in tanks ready only for the 11th and 12th, and completely covers up the absence of any report from that division on the 13th - precisely because that is when the losses for the battle actual showed up. There is a report again later and it is lower, but the actual tanks ready change day-change from dawn of the 12th to dawn of the 13th, the Germans simply removed from their own records.

The Russians certainly suffered a tactical defeat over those couple of days in front of I SS corps as their reserve tank army counterattacked. The counterattack was too aggressive and tactically premature, and the force would have been better employed in a defensive stance or making only occasional opportunistic attacks. This was entirely typical of misuse of large armor formations by the Russians at this stage in the war, or early for that matter.

But the Germans were also seriously depleted in this fighting. They ended it with only about 125 effective AT hitters left running in the entire corps (long 75 vehicles or better). There was no prospect whatever of what amounted to the armor strength of a single panzer division defeating an entire Russian reserve front, and the last location along which the Germans enjoyed any local odds edge had thereby disappeared, so the offensive was hopeless from that point.

I seriously do not understand why historians of all stripes, from early popularizers with journalist level understanding, to later pros with a full knowledge of the facts and military relationships, continue in the same hopeless ruts on this subject, and a hundred others like it. It is as though one person having been wrong about a subject once, sets the bar so low that everyone afterward thinks themselves just peachy if they are a little less wrong, while focusing on the same nonsense.

The outcome of operations does not ride on day kill counts, nor on tactical dramatics. What malfunction prevents human beings from dropping such gladitorial canards for sober analysis?

Expecting any advantage from attacking with armor requires the possession of initiative to confer a local odds edge on the attacker, and then requires translating that through lopsided tactical fighting, into lasting dislocation of the enemy force, so that many of its subunits become useless and irrelevant to later stages of the operation. To prevent any such effects from occuring, it suffices to eliminate every local odds edge the attacker achieves by matching every attempted "hole" with a "linebacker". When every other hole has been stopped, and only one is still open, the last linebacker stopping up the last hole ends the offensive and defeats it.

What is so frickin complicated about that? Why is it so hard to explain to people? What drives men to pretend that Tiger tales or ramming T-34s or whatever the movie of the week is, matters more or instead? Do they think anyone interested enough in such a subject can't even understand the idea "plugging the last hole"?

I don't get it...