NEW: Prokhorovka 5: The Historical Battle

[Crossroads]

Download archive now with an updated Design Notes from Alan. Here's some additional background information on the topics he's addressing:

I am also sending you a corrected file for East Front. It is my article for the units involved in the battle of Prokhorovka. To be specific, the correction has to the do with the artillery regiments for Das Reich and Totenkopf. For year I have been saying that the self-propelled artillery battalions in those regiments had some odd arrangements, Das Reich having three Wespe batteries and Totenkopf having two Hummel and one Wespe batteries. Well as it turns out it was not always that way. At the start of the Kursk campaign each SS division had a self-propelled artillery battalion of two Wespe batteries and one Hummel battery. At some point before the battle of Prokhorovka Das Reich and Totenkopf traded batteries, one Hummel for Totenkopf for one Wespe for Das Reich. This was a temporary trade and I believe it was for Totenkopf's attack north of the Psel River on 12 July. The reason for this was because Totenkopf want maximum artillery support for their attack as it was the main one for the day. The LAH division's artillery regiment was close enough to support, at least the eastern half of Totenkopf's intended area of operations, but Das Reich's artillery was too far away and was not going to give up any of its artillery.  So a trade was arranged through II SS Corps headquarters as Totenkopf was seeking heavier firepower. Both divisions eventually got their original batteries back after Prokhorovka. So what I have written is essentially true for the battle of Prokhorovka, it was not necessarily true for before and after the battle. It also explains how Das Reich lost a Hummel to air attacks on 12 July when it had three Wespe batteries, it lost it why it was serving under Totenkopf.

This brings up another point. In my article I said that Das Reich and Totenkopf had self-propelled artillery pieces that were based on captured French tank hulls.  This was based on older sources I used years ago when I made my earlier Prohorovka scenarios. Yet Christopher Lawrence's does not address this point, it continues to address those divisions' SPAs as Wespes and Hummels. I checked into this. When the Hummel and Wespe went into production, a schedule was established on when units would get their SPA vehicles (unlike with wargamers who when a certain vehicle become available on a certain date, all units in the army are magically fully equipped with that vehicle on that certain date). The LAH division got theirs in June and the Das Reich and Totenkopf were to get theirs in July.  Obviously, Das Reich and Totenkopf didn't want to wait for them as the upcoming Kursk campaign was coming. So they used their influence to get possession of the these experimental French vehicles when they were turned in by units that had received their Wespes and Hummels.

After the conquest of France in 1940, several private German firms took to converting some of the captured French tanks into assault guns, self-propelled anti-tank guns, and self-propelled artillery pieces. Most of the vehicles stayed in France and were encountered and captured by the Western Allies in 1944. But some were sent to the Eastern Front for combat testing. Among these were the self-propelled artillery pieces as the Germans were testing out the SPA concept. These French vehicles were to be sent back to France, but the Waffen SS intervened and got them for themselves first. It is possible that some Wespes and Hummels arrived for Das Reich and Totenkopf during the Kursk campaign but I can not ascertain when they took possession of them, but certainly not during the campaign. I know that after the German battle of Kursk (as they define it) when the LAH division was transferred to Italy, Das Reich and Totenkopf received all of this departing division's vehicles, including its Wespes and Hummels.

So why did the Germans SS continue to refer to the SPA units as Wespe and Hummel batteries even though they had French vehicles. My guess is that since they were going to get those vehicles anyway, it was easier to refer them as such, considering the fact that the French SPAs were based on five or six different vehicles (which must have been a maintenance nightmare for the repair crews in the field trains).

Thanks Alan!