For decades the Battle of Kursk has been widely believed to be the largest tank battle in history. In particular the fighting at Prokhorovka on the 12th July is often reported to have involved anywhere from 1200 to 2000 tanks clashing at point blank range, resulting in the destruction of up to 1200 vehicles.
However since the end of the Cold War extensive research by historians in the Soviet and German archives have analysed records of the units that took part. As a result it’s now generally accepted that these numbers have been greatly exaggerated and that Prokhorovka wasn’t the largest tank battle.
This post gives a very brief overview of the results of this research. The numbers presented here are taken from ‘Kursk 1943: A Statistical Analysis’ by Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson and ‘Demolishing the Myth’ by Valeriy Zamulin.
Comments
Post a Comment