battle of prokhorovka (history revisited)

[sdflyer]

Here some new historical insight in Russian.

 

Short statistic 

670 total tanks

Soviet loses : 470 tanks

German loses: 50 tanks

 

Russian historians and official army sources confirmed - Soveit victory at Prokhorovka is myth created by Soviet propaganda for obvious reason to boost moral of people during WWII

 

 

https://www.newsru.com/russia/11jul2019/prohorovka.html

[AndyJWest]

Already have a thread on this:

 

In other news, Dunkirk wasn't a great British victory, The Charge of the Light Brigade was magnificent, but no way to fight a war,  and not everything you read in Egyptian hieroglyphics regarding the outcome of battles against the dastardly Hittites is necessarily reliable. 

 

Whoever first said that truth was the first casualty of war was probably only repeating something he'd heard his grandfather say...

 

[SqueakyS]

Ben Wheatley suggests a maximum of 27 German tanks damaged or destroyed

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48963295?ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_mchannel=social&ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR02TBBHy1jBBx_CSVBurhGYDkm8w7GCcdZGFl6VV1g0OeBunELQTfJFiBc

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

Keep pushing this topic  and Stalin will put your butts in a gulag.

Repeat after me RDA, D for Democratic!

[cardboard_killer]

On 7/11/2019 at 2:12 PM, sdflyer said:

Soveit victory at Prokhorovka is myth created by Soviet propaganda for obvious reason to boost moral of people during WWII

The Battle of Kursk was a Soviet victory. The tank kill ratio doesn't really enter into that calculation. The USSR always had unfavorable kill ratios in combat with the Germans, as did all the Allied nations, including the USA and Great Britain. The Germans did not kick ass to Berlin as their generals' memoirs might lead one to believe.

Edited July 24, 2019 by cardboard_killer

[JtD]

The battle of Prokhorovka and the battle of Kursk are two different things, the former being a tiny part of the latter. The Soviet counter attack at Prokhorovka failed, it was no less than a desaster, with a loss ratio of 1:50 and no objectives met. The battle of Kursk overall of course was a strategic victory for the Soviets, also owing to the fact that Germany relocated some forces that might have changed that to Italy, where the Western Allies had landed - leaving the counter-attacks by Soviet strategic reserves with little opposition.

[cardboard_killer]

11 hours ago, JtD said:

no objectives met

 

Except that the Germans withdrew after the clash and days later withdrew from their salient. That's a loss. Again, kill ratios don't matter in war. The allies all usually had bad kill ratios, tank vs tank against the Germans, for a number of reasons. That includes all the way up to the smashing of Berlin by the Soviets. Calling it a German victory is misleading, even if you believe it wasn't a Soviet victory.

[JtD]

The Germans dug in at their positions because the flanks were exposed and poorly covered. They started doing so on July 12th, prior to the attack by the Soviet tanks, and continued to do so after it, until they withdrew due to the overall strategic situation. The attack had no noticable impact on German operational decisions, it did however noticably deplete Soviet strategic tank reserves.

 

I'm willing and able to distinguish between a German tactical victory and a strategic loss, and Prokhorovka was a tactical victory, for the Germans, if there ever was one. Typical Soviet loss ratios btw. were about 3:1 - 2:1. 50:1 is a desaster even by Soviet standards.