NEW: Prokhorovka 5: The Historical Battle

[Crossroads]

Alan has further revised the Prokhorovka scenario, with some changes to Soviet orders of battles:

I am sending you updated files for my Prokhorovka V scenario in East Front and my Prokhorovka scenario in Kursk '43. Both contain the same corrections. The Russian 136th Guards Rifle Regiment has been moved from its old set up area in the 2nd Tank Corps to the defense line in front of the 18th Tank Corps with its sister regiment from the 42nd Guards Rifle Division. Its seems that according to recent new sources, including Christopher Lawrence's book, that the 136th Guards Rifle Regiment was not moved to the 2nd Tank Corps area until the 14th of July.  It seems that the old sources that I used when I made my first Prokhorovka scenario 15 years ago were incorrect when they said that said the 136th was with the 2nd Tank Corps on the 12th. My guess this was due to translation errors when translating Russian documents into English.

I always thought that the 2nd Tank Corps looked a little strong with the attachments of the 53rd  and 55th Guards Tank Regiments and the 136th Guards Rifle Regiment to its structure, certainly string enough to attack the 1st SS Panzergrenadier Regiment of the LAH division in the game. Yet Rotmistrov considered it too weak to attack on the 12th and only had some of its support units support the 2nd Guards Tank Corps assault on Das Reich. The 53rd and 55th Guards tank Regiments were only attached to the 2nd Tank Corps as a reserve in case the Germans attacked and broke through the 2nd Tank Corps thin front line. They were not allowed to attack. As it were they were already part of Group Trufanov and when that group finally moved south in the early afternoon of the 12th, those two tank regiments also moved out.  Any way on the 14th, Das Reich was the only division attacking and that was to the east. Both the 183rd Rifle Division and the 2nd Guards Tank Corps had to stretch their defensive lines to the south to contain Das Reich and that meant the 2nd Tank Corps had to stretch its line too. As it was still too weak, Rotmistrov decided to reinforce it with the 136th Guards Rifle Regiment which moved over during the night of 13/14 July.

I also made some corrections to the attached artillery regiments in the 5th Guards Tank Army. I finally got all the designations and compositions correct, again using the more recent sources as my guide.

Please download the scenario for the latest revision, including an updated Design Notes.