soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Feb 21, 8:27 am, Louis C wrote:
> I remember his books as being pretty much the same narrative as I was
> used to when I read them, and finding them better and better as I read
> more stuff. For a good, scholarly rendering of the German perspective
> he is excellent.

Yes, Ziemke was a revelation for me too. I was also lucky enough to
read some of the late 50s US Army studies such as on Partisan and
Arctic Operations because my Dad had picked them up when he was in the
Pentagon, so got some balance in my early readings.

> I don't remember his narrative of Kursk being substantially different (snip)

Perhaps not 100 percent so in a tactical sense, but I think he
realized the operational setting and consequences better than other
authors at that time - and some since.

> Again, my understanding is that his book was based on more than that, (snip)

It was also based upon his reading in the Soviet military and
historical journals of the Cold War period, which tended to be
somewhat more critical and appraising than the published histories,
but which were still very limited in what they could say. AFAIK he was
never able to access any of the Soviet operational reports of the time
and AFAIK the documentation above front echelons is still restricted?

> I'd be really interested in reading that kind of appreciation, is any
> to be found more easily than by travelling to Moscow? Russian isn't a
> problem.

Going by memory - since I don't have immediate access to the documents
- the most revealing was the report written by 6th Guards Army. Their
outline description was roughly: our defensive outposts were
overwhelmed in the early morning before they could withdraw, then the
main defensive position began spotting random enemy movements, small
groups of men in covered positions and brief glimpses of armored cars
at extreme range, we would fire on them, usually without effect, and
they would disappear, only to reappear in a different sector,
disappearing yet again when we fired on them. Then a period of quiet,
followed by a hurricane of artillery and mortar fire on our positions,
HE intermixed with smoke, and in worst cases followed by a massive
Stuka attack, all of uncanny accuracy. At the end most of our heavy
weapons were knocked out and the barrage was closely followed by the
appearance of tanks firing directly into our positions and infantry
assaulting from covered areas close to our strongpoints.

Our something like that.

(snip)
> Grossdeutschland includes 51 & 52 panzer detachments.

Er, GD was XXXXVIII Pz.-K. and nowhere near Prokhorovka?

>
> 11 July 1943
>
> LSSAH: 4 Pz II, 5 Pz III, 47 Pz IV, 4 Pz VI, 7 Command, 10 Assault
> Guns

Close enough, only 47 Pz-IV were operational, also 2 Pz-I, and there
is a serious undercount of Pz-III and Befehlspanzer, there were 20 of
those in total.

> DR: 34 Pz III, 18 Pz IV, 1 Pz VI, 6 T-34, 7 Command, 27 Assault Guns

Actually 50 Pz-III and Befehlspanzer, oh, and 8 T-34. :)

> T: 54 Pz III, 26 Pz IV (incl. 4 with short barrels), 10 Pz VI, 7
> Command, @20 Assault Guns

66 Pz-III and Befehlspanzer, 30 Pz-IV, 11 Pz-VI, 21 StuG. But then
they were on the wrong side of a river, and not engaged in the
"battle" of Prokhorovka, their battle was with 5th Guards Army,
supported by odds and ends of 6th Guards Army and 1st Tank Army.

> 3rd Pz: 6 Pz III (incl. 3s), 17 Pz IV (incl. 10s)
> 11th Pz: 30 Pz III (incl. 2s), 13 Pz IV, 5(f) Command
> GD: 30 Pz IV, 30 Pz V, 27 Assault Guns
> 911th: @10 Assault Guns

Again, they were not engaged at Prokhorovka, they were engaged in the
general Soviet counterattack of 12 July, which is a different kettle
of fish. Why not include III Panzer Korps and Korps Raus as well....or
even LII Korps?

(snip)

> It depends on what we call the Prokhorovka battle, I suppose.
> Technically, Prokhorovka was the objective of LSSAH and the starting
> point of 29th TC. These two formations clashed more or less head-on,
> the result being that 29th TC halted the SS division while practically
> disappearing in the process.

Exactly. In essence we're talking LSSAH and DR versus 18th and 29th
Tank Corps, with elements of 2 Tank and 2nd Guards TankCorps, and odds
and ends of a half-dozen infantry divisions from 6th Guards and 69th
Army.

BTW, von Ribbentrop's account of the battle is hysterical.

Also BTW, a major obstacle to the 5th Guards Tank Army advance was an
antitank ditch constructed as part of the 69th Army "2nd echelon"
defenses.....nobody had bothered to tell them it was there.

> If the Prokhorovka fighting is defined as that between 2nd SS corps
> and 5th Guards Army then Totenkopf was definitely a part of it,
> fighting 18th TC for which you provided figures (see below).

Er, it was a Soviet attack, so their operations essentially define it.
So if you want to count the uncoordinated actions by 5th Guards and
5th Guards Tank Army as an integral attack on the SS Panzer-Korps,
then so be it. But I don't buy it I'm afraid. :) And SS-T did not
fight 18th Tank Corps, except peripherally across the Psel, they were
fully engaged by 5th Guards Army that day.

> I'd consider Totenkopf as having been part of the same battle myself,
> and it was the only division to make a significant advance that day
> anyway.

Yep, on the north side of the Psel, which ultimately was a bottleneck.

> 41 by your figures, Totenkopf was part of the SS corps.

Yep, but not engaged in the battle of Prokhorovka. :)

> My remark wasn't actually about Prokhorovka, my apologies for not
> making that sufficiently clear. As it was sandwiched between remarks
> about Prokhorvka, the confusion was inevitable.
>
> I was thinking of the Soviet counterattacks against the left flank of
> 48th panzer corps which repeatedly forced the latter to divert forces
> away from its main effort along the Oboyan axis. They seemed to me an
> indication both that the local Soviets were being clever and that they
> had given up on stopping 48th panzer corps in a head-on fight for the
> time being.

Er, so then you do agree that those operations by 5th Guards, 6th
Guards, and 1st Tank Army were *not* part of the "battle" of
Prokhorovka? :)

And the Soviet "counterattacks" against the XXXXVIIII Pz.-K. had
little effect on operations. When the Germans smashed through the
thinly held front of 6th Guards Army at its junction with 40th Army,
1st Tank Army was committed from its reserve positions in an immediate
counterattack on 6-9 July that destroyed it as a fighting force, and
none of it could be described as "against the left flank". Eventually
they withdrew to a strong line along the....crap, can't remember the
name of the river that the Germans couldn't effectively get at due to
lack of bridging assets, plus of course they were supposed to be
heading north. The XXXXVIII Panzer Korps diversions during that period
that delayed their advance was typical German tactical "head-hunting",
pursuing Beute Thirty Years War-fashion (I've also described it in
terms of the American Indian habit of "counting coup"). Now to some
extent that was due to the relative lack of infantry for mopping up
operations, but that wasn't the whole story. In fact at one point...I
think it was 11 July.... elements of GD that had seized a high ground
dominating the junction between the 1st Tank/6th Guards Army
conglomerate and the newly arrived 5th Guards Army were withdrawn to
smash a Soviet remnant in the rear, only to find 10th Tank Corps
occupying the position when they returned. The massive German attacks
on the Soviet positions at Tolstoy Woods and Berezovka were much the
same, they had no operational object at all. Basically it was German
operational short-sightedness and not Soviet counterattacks that
stopped XXXXVIII Panzer Korps.

> No argument about Vatutin's decision for his heavy artillery assets.
> Also interesting that he could get away with frittering scarce
> equipment in such a way.

Yeah, and as I noted to Tero, it's not like they really needed them as
antitank guns. But what they did need was a much more rational
deployment. 6th Guards Army was too widely spread and in fulfilling
the requirement for the doctrinaire "echeloned" defense they managed
to thin things out even more. To top that off, 69th Army was
completely out of supporting distance, in the "third" defense line
that proved to be no defense at all. Add in the idiotic orders that
sent all the armored reserves into an immediate - and piecemeal -
counterattack all along the line on 6-9 July and you have the recipe
for the near disaster that Vatutin orchestrated.

> My typo, I meant "after Prokhorovka, the road to Kursk was wide open
> for the GERMANS" (obviously the Soviets could get to Kursk anytime
> they wanted since they held the place).

Nope. The SS Panzer Korps was astraddle a river, DR was attempting to
hold a 30-odd klick line along with 168. ID, XXXXVIII Panzer Korps was
partly stymied, and the routes "north" were actually either a narrow
corridor running northeast through Prokhorovka or a similar corridor
running northwest and then north to Oboyan, both of which would leave
them woth extended flanks and no prospects of either boncing the
Soviets holding them or egtting sufficiant forces up to defend them.

> Thanks for the figures. According to Glantz & House 29th Tank Corps
> (including 53rd Guards Tank Regiment and 24th Guards Tank Brigade)
> figures for 11 July were, (TO&E / On-hand):

Oh dear, I never noticed that. 53rd Guards Tank Regiment was part of
Trufanov's Group, the advance guard of 5th Guards Tank Army and was
nowhere near 29th Tank Corps? It was far to the southeast, engaged by
III Panzer Korps on 12 July. Ditto IIRC 24th Guards Tank Brigade of
5th Guards Meachnized Corps. Part of the confusion I think is that
many seem to miss that when 5th Guards Tank Army completed its massive
redeployment on the morning of 11 July they weren't at Prokhorvka -
except for Trufanov. They were some 40 klicks west of there, north of
SS T and XXXXVIII Panzer Korps. They shifted east during the 11th to
prepare for their attack on 12 July and Trufanov with other elements
of 5th Guards Mech went south into the bend of the Lipovyi Donets to
try to halt III Panzer Korps, which had finally broken through the
positions of 35th Guards Rifle Corps - in part because 2nd Guards Tank
Corps had been ordered to displace north to prepare for the 12 July
attack and so abandoned their forward positions that had been a thorn
in the German side for days.

> KV: 21 / 1
> T-34: 131 / 130
> T-70: 70 / 85
> "Praga": 0 / 1
> BA-10: 0 / 12
> BA-64: 51 / 56
> SU-76: 0 / 9
> SU-122: 0 / 12

Er, only 1 KV was available 11 July and 2 on 12 July, although a
regiment of 11 SU-152 were attached? The rest of the few KV were
elsewhere. And BA-10 and BA-64 were armored cars?

(snip)
> Of these 187 available tanks, 98 had survived by July 14th, 30
> irrecoverable losses and 21 evacuated. And yes, I know that 98 + 30 +
> 21 < 187.

Welcome to the wonders of military accounting practices. :)