Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

I think that many members of the forum will be interested to know that Dr. Ben Wheatley, a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History at the University of East Anglia, has used Luftwaffe reconnaissance images to demonstrate visually the disastrous defeat of the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army at Prokhorovka on 12 July 1943, during the battle of Kursk.

The article is available online, for free:
A visual examination of the battle of Prokhorovka
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...2.2019.1606545

Dr. Wheatley's article was published in May, and now, close to the anniversary of the battle, the historical editor of the German newspaper Die Welt has drawn wide public attention to it:

Der „Sieg“ der Roten Armee, der in Wirklichkeit eine Niederlage war
Von Sven Felix Kellerhoff
Leitender Redakteur Geschichte
https://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweit...er-Panzer.html

Stalin’s claim of Prokhorovka tank victory destroyed by hoard of pictures
Oliver Moody, Berlin correspondent for The Times.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/s...ures-jl8vbk0b7

A hysterical official Russian reaction has already followed:

Germany Should Prosecute Author Of Article About Battle Of Prokhorovka - Russian Lawmaker
https://www.urdupoint.com/en/world/g...ab-666246.html

Kind regards,

Dan

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Interesting read. Recommended

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Roman Töppel, "Kursk 1943 Die größte Schlacht des Zweiten Weltkrieges" comes to a similar conclusion, albeit w/o photographic corroboration. Also an interesting read, and recommended
Richard

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

There is no doubt in my mind that statistically the German army won the Battle of Prokhorovka and did so by a significant margin.

However, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Kursk, the Red Army launched a series of offensives in the north of the salient thereby liberating Byelgorod, in the centre, liberating Orel, and perhaps most significantly in the south, liberating Kharkov (the 3rd battle of Kharkov). The scale and ferocity of the Russian offensive after such a crippling losses in the Battle of Kursk surprised even the defensive warfare expert such as Gen. Walter Model undoubtedly was.

The point, as I see it, is that the Red Army took the strategic initiative on the eastern front, while the German Army was never again able to mount an offensive of the scale of the Battle of Kursk.

If someone was to draw a parallel with a Great War, a good candidate would be a naval battle of Jutland of 1916. The Imperial Kriegsmarine won the battle statistically, but never again challenged the supremacy of the Royal Navy.

Regards,
Sinisa

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Hi Dan,

Thanks a million for bringing this stuff to our attention!

Wheatley's article is an extremely well-researched review of the true events and actual outcome of this momentous encounter, and it'll serve as a useful complement to the books by Lawrence, Töppel, Glantz, et al.

I'll be making a trip to Kursk and Stalingrad in the not-too-distant future, so this material will be an invaluable guide to the Prokhorovka battlefield.

Much obliged,
Leon Venter

p.s. The Russian response is priceless!

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Sherin is relatively small figure and he gave his personal opinion. This hardly can regard as "official reaction". Mr. Sherin belongs to populist Party LDPR.
But much indignation was caused by this phrase from Die Welt: "Eigentlich müsste dieses Denkmal sofort abgerissen werden". Monument is symbol of one big battle near Prokchorowka which lasted 12-16 July 1943, started with debacle on 12.07 and ended with German retreat on 16.07.1943.
That fact that 5 guard tank army was defeated by germans on 12.07.1943 is opened in russian historical society long time ago by very respected researcher Zamulin.

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Gentlemen, I am glad to see that you are interested.

Richard, there is in fact a body of work concerning this battle, the most important text from the Russian side being Lev Lopukhovsky's 2005 book, Prokhorovka: not classified secret. Lopukhovsky is a retired Strategic Missile Force colonel born in 1930, who lost his father in the during the destruction of the Soviet Western front at Viazma in October 1941, in the first stage of Operation Typhoon. Lopukhovsky's history of that battle has been translated into English:

The Viazma Catastrophe, 1941. The Red Army's Disastrous Stand against Operation Typhoon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Viazma-Cata...dp/1908916508/

There is also an English translation of another important work by Lopukhovsky, which highlights that contemporary official Russian figures of Soviet losses during the Second World War are very suspect:

The Price of Victory: The Red Army's Casualties in the Great Patriotic War
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Price-Victo...dp/1473899648/

The first major German work on Kursk combining German and Soviet sources was Karl-Heinz Frieser's chapter in the 2008 volume of the German official history of the war - Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg - Band 8. Die Ostfront 1943/44: Der Krieg im Osten und an den Nebenfronten
https://www.randomhouse.de/Buch/Das-...ch/e227084.rhd

The battle has also been the subject of an exceptionally thorough study by Chrstopher A. Lawrence, head of The Dupuy Institute, who compiled a database of German and Soviet primary source information over the course of many years. His 2015 book, Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka, is one of the longest books ever published.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kursk-Battl...dp/0971385254/

Sinisa, it is true that the Red Army went over to the offensive after Kursk, but this simple statement of fact misses the reasons for this turn of events. The majority of Germany's military resources in the second half of 1943 was absorbed by the effort involved in holding the Italian mainland following the collapse of Mussolini's regime, as well as defending against the massive Allied offensive in the air. I briefly discussed some of these issues to set the context of events in July 1943 for my article about the loss of a Fw 190 now flown by the Flying Heritage Collection - https://www.afhistory.org/wp-content...-Issue_All.pdf

You are very welcome, Leon. I hope you will enjoy your trip and also get to understand a little bit of what modern Russia is like. I imagine you will travel through Moscow, there will be quite a contrast between the capital and the provincial towns.

The Russian response is not just a cause for ridicule, or the loose talk of a minor official. Alexander Nikolaevich Sherin is the First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma (Parliament) Committee on Defence since October 2016. He is also a retired Airborne Captain, who was wounded in the Second Chechen War. It is a matter of concern that a senior member of Russia's Parliament feels himself free to issue threats as a rejoinder to an academic article.

Kind regards,

Dan

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Igor,

Any journalistic sensationalism that Kellerhof may have engaged in does not in the least excuse the completely inadmissible behaviour by Sherin.

The German retreat from Prokhorovka was occasioned by the collapse of the Axis defences in Sicily and by the Soviet offensive on the northern flank of the Orel Bulge held by Heeresgruppe Mitte, not by Soviet actions around Prokhorovka itself. Manstein was even asking Hitler for permission to conduct further offensive action, something which illustrates the magnitude of Soviet problems in this specific geographical area.

Zamulin has indeed followed up Lopukhovsky's pioneering study from 2005, but he has written very little about the operations around Orel, or indeed the wider strategic context of operations on other fronts.

The problems in the approach taken by many modern Russian historians are on display in the article "An Undoubted victory of the Red Army on the fields at Prokhorovka", written by the popular historian Alexei Isaev on the website of the Russian Society of Military History, as a direct response to Wheatley. Isaev states that the surprise arrival of fresh Soviet reserves, namely the 5th Guards Tank Army, marked the failure of the offensive by Heeresgruppe Süd, because the German forces were unprepared for this eventuality. This is a nonsensical argument, since the surprise counter-attack on 12 July was defeated with very heavy losses. It is not at all clear why some contemporary Russian historians and officials feel the urge to react with such rhetoric to a rather straightforward review of the Germany imagery of this battlefield.

Kind regards,

Dan

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

I would suggest to close this very provocative thread. Or I oversee any connection to Luftwaffe? Dan History can count the number of destroyed soviet tanks further and celebrate german victory but may be on on this board?

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Did the Luftwaffe participate in this battle: air superiority, ground attack, ISTAR?

"Low clouds in the morning and thunderstorms in the afternoon inhibited air operations over Prokhorovka for both sides.[138] Over the Prokhorovka battlefield the Luftwaffe gained control of the air. Formations of Stukas, including a small number of the G-2 variants, experimentally equipped with twin 3.7-centimetre (1.5 in) Bordkanone BK 3,7 cannon in gun pods, that were commanded by Staffelkapitän Hans-Ulrich Rudel, attacked the Soviet formations. They were joined by Fw 190 single engine fighter-bombers and Hs 129 twin-engined ground-attack aircraft, both equipped with 3-centimetre (1.2 in) anti-tank cannon.[120]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle...vka#Air_combat

Bronc

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Inadmissible in what? He didn't say that germans must kill Kellerhof. Only to investigate his appeals to destroying of monument. This is normal reaction for barbariс words. Kellerhof already say that he was misunderstood and didn't wish to destroy smtg in reality.

And you can proove this with documents, not with Manstein's memoirs?

Reality is vice versa, first Zamulin's work about Prokchorowka dated 2002, and he started to gather archive materials as early as 1997. Also he is professional historian and not amateur as Lopukhovsky


This is article made by anonymous using some Isaev's these. Real article is here - https://warhead.su/2019/07/10/prohor...zabyt-die-welt. It has completely another title

Isaev didn't say that surprising arrival of 5 gv.TA was main reason of german defeat in all Zitadelle. He gave german unawareness just like one example how bad was situation on german side. There was 5 tank corps arrived plus one more army. Germans even can't capture huge army stocks near Prokhorowka. Advance was stopped, almost stay still to 16 July. You consider this as German victory?

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Bronc,

It is not a good idea to refer to Wikipedia as a source, in most cases. In this instance, the source cited is Christer Bergström's short book on the battle of Kursk published in 2007, which provides a good summary of German operations, though of course it suffers from the fact that only fragments of documents from the Russian side are available to researchers, even now. Christer made a minor error in the quoted extract, the Fw 190s did not have 30 mm cannon at this time, of course. The Hs 129s did have such cannon, and the newer MK 103 cannon was first used during the battle of Kursk.

One would have to conduct a detailed survey of the available German and Soviet primary sources to understand the course of air operations over Prokhorovka on 12 July. What is readily available is the general summary of Luftwaffe sorties on that day, on Pawel Burchard's excellent website, see http://www.yogysoft.de/pawel/_kursk/tagesmld/120743.htm

Note that many more strike sorties were flown in the northern sector of the Kursk salient, by Luftflotte 6, than in the southern. This was because of the Soviet offensive against the northern flank of the Orel bulge, which I have mentioned above.

Kind regards,

Dan

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Inadmissible because it is a gross violation of the basic principle of free speech. Furthermore, this manufactured scandal is based on a gross misrepresentation of a single line in Kellerhof's article. What he actually wrote was 'Eigentlich müsste dieses Denkmal sofort abgerissen werden.' Translated into English, this would read, 'As a matter of fact, this monument would have to be demolished immediately.' This does not in any sense constitute a call to action or 'barbaric words'. Kellerhof simply drew attention to the hypocritical nature of this specific monument, something that he was perfectly entitled to do.

Russia's state television has turned this into an occasion for some ridiculous propaganda:

"German Revisionists Want to Dismantle WWII Memorial Commemorating Tank Battle of Prokhorovka!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-HQjMNF1EI

It would be much more interesting and substantive to discuss Luftwaffe operations on this day. It is interesting that while Luftflotte 4 reported several losses of Hs 129s and Fw 190s to anti-aircraft fire, not a single loss to enemy aircraft was reported on this day. One might suggest that German reports are not necessarily authoritative, but it is an interesting contrast that Lutflotte 6 did report losses in air combat on 12 July.

Regards,

Dan

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Does this mean that the Russians are now not entitled to have a monument commemorating a major battle of the Second World War erected on their own land?

There is nothing hypocritical about thousands of soldiers who laid their lives in defence of their homeland. The monument acknowledges that fact.

The so-called basic principle of free speech went too far this time. No country in the world would tolerate such article, and I do not see why should Russia.

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Thank you, Dan. But your reply is exactly why I did it. Sometimes, quoting Wikipedia is the only way to get the experts talking! ;-)

You would hope that most countires in the world could find someone able to recognise a German subjunctive when they saw it. The conditional statement Dan cites, "would have to be pulled down", is a very different from "must be pulled down".

And sometimes it just winds people up for no good reason. If you want the views of "the experts" it's usually simpler just to ask.

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

It's even ended up on the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48963295

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Thank you, Nick, I entirely agree with your sentiments.

Thank you for mentioning this, Steve. Ben Wheatley and Sven Kellerhof have helped this topic to come alive a little bit! Unfortunately, there is still more heat than light. The Times has followed up with a short note from its Moscow correspondent:

Russia takes aim at Battle of Kursk ‘failure’
Tom Parfitt, Moscow
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/r...lure-kzw3trfqz

"Vladimir Medinsky, the culture minister, likened Ben Wheatley’s assertion to those of Nazi generals trying to twist facts about the war in their memoirs."

"Mr Medinsky said that it was an attempt to rewrite history by “political propagandists in the West”."

Kind regards,

Dan

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

And Nick, when did, "Did the Luftwaffe participate in this battle: air superiority, ground attack, ISTAR?" stop being a question?

And if quoting the information in Wikipedia, "winds people up" THAT ALONE is reason enough to do it. Right?

And also, I was just being polite.

Bronc

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

I’m all for the uncomplicated approach, e.g. “How accurate is this Wikipedia assessment?”

Might not a better reason be to get information so you could go in and improve the relevant Wiki pages?

Excellent. Not everyone manages that.

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Didn't you think all russian knows Deutsch very well?

[Moderator’s mistake: when replying, I tried to copy a sentence here and somehow removed it. Igor wrote that Kellerhof had stated that he was indeed calling for the monument to be pulled down. NB]

But i show you some magic now.

If you use Google to translate "Eigentlich müsste dieses Denkmal sofort abgerissen werden" in russian, and then translate russian words in english, you became.... "In fact, this monument must be demolished immediately". You can try it. Knowing of russian is not nessecery.

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

I have no doubt that some Russians understand German to a sufficient standard but politicians carelessly mistranslating for the sake of confected outrage would, I suggest, be another matter entirely. [And yes that was an intentional subjunctive]

Kellerhof is one man with an opinion, so nothing a self-confident nation ought to get worked up about, surely?

If you are willing to accept the current state of machine translation over human linguistic skill then anomalous results will surely follow, I fear.

Now, can we please return to discussing the article on the merits or otherwise of the evidence presented?

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Here I would disagree. Kellerhof is a historical editor of one of the most prominent/important German magazines, Die Welt, and his views, apparently sanctioned and disseminated by the said magazine, likely influenced thousands readers. That is no longer a personal opinion.

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

The two parts of my sentence should be taken together. Overall, the USSR defeated the Zitadellle offensive whatever happened in individual engagements. But, I repeat, may we now return to a discussion of the evidence presented regarding the one battle in question?

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

We may. Now, not long ago I was watching the more recent Russian documentary entitled Soviet Storm: WW2 In the East, giving an unprecedented Russian perspective on the war’s most decisive and bloody theatre of war.

As expected, there was an entire episode dedicated to the Zitadelle offensive. There the authors paid particular attention to the battle of Prokhorovka. Although they stopped short of saying that the 2nd SS Panzer Corps destroyed the entire 5th Guards Army, they did acknowledge that the Germans fought well and that they inflicted terrible losses on the Russian armour through potent mix of new tactics (der Keil - the Wedge formation), and new Panther, and especially, Tiger tanks, as well as the expert use of their 88's quickly deployed there.

However, in spite of von Manstein's impression that he could see cracks in the Russian defence, the 2nd SS Panzer Corps was facing the entire Steppe front (an inexact equivalent of German Army Group (Heeresgruppe)) left as a strategic reserve, and now rushing to contain the German breakthrough, and more importantly, the Corps could not make contact with Walter Model's 9. Armee (north pincer - failed to advance more than 20 km) and was consequently obliged to withdraw, and thus leave the battlefield to the Red Army.

To some extent similarly to the last great victory of the British Army at El Alamein, the carefully planned offensive, such as Zitadelle was, degenerated into desperate shoot-out between German and Russian tanks, and... admittedly, the German side won the contest, but was unable to exploit it further, and thus the offensive failed.

The assertion that the German main defensive effort suddenly had to refocus on the island of Sicily and the 150 km stretch across the Apennines, is incorrect. It is true that the Germans initially withdrew the entire 2nd SS Panzer Corps and intended to send it to Italy. However, because of the danger that Belgorod-Kharkov offensive posed to the entire German front, in the end only the 1st SS Panzer Division LSAH was extracted from the Corps and sent to Italy.

In short, the evidence presented in Die Welt is likely correct, many more Russian tanks were destroyed in the battle of Prokhorovka, but they could always send some more, while the Germans could not.

Hope that I did not overdo this.

Re: Article using Luftwaffe wartime reconnaisance imagery of battle of Kursk drives media attention
 

Here is a link to the animated documentary that you were watching, in Russian. It comes with relatively, but not entirely, accurate subtitles:

The Great War. Episode 9. The Kursk Bulge.
Великая Война. 9 Серия. Курская Дуга. StarMedia. Babich-Design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvdK7EMIQDs&t=29m11s

The discussion of the battle of Prokhorovka and related events lasts some nine minutes, from the 29 to the 38 minute mark of the video. The video contains some fairly crude misleading elements, for example regarding losses of Panther tanks and the wildly exaggerated effectiveness of the Soviet PTAB anti-tank bomblet.

Concerning the Panther, most of these tanks were not destroyed, but only damaged. Many of these incidents were caused by the low reliability of the early Panther tank, rather than Soviet action.

From the book Panther by Thomas Anderson, https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1472827031/, pages 141-142:
"On the evening of 10 July 1943 there were:
Fighting the enemy 10 Panthers
Totally destroyed 25 Panthers (23 hit by enemy fire and burnt out, two caught fire during the advance.)
Work with repairs units and workshop 100 Panthers of which:
(56) with shell or mine damage
(44) with mechanical damage
(Note: some 60 percent are light repairs.)
Repaired and advancing to open area c.40 Panthers
Remainder c.25 Panthers not yet reached by repairs service.
On the evening of 11 July 1943 there were:
On active service 38 Panthers
Written off 37 Panthers
Under repair 131 Panthers
gradual rise in the fighting strength is expected."

In common with other tanks, Panther losses increased once Manstein's Heeresgruppe Süd had to retreat under Soviet pressure. Page 159 of the same book as above:

"Report by the battalion engineer dated, 19 July 1943:
As a result of the sudden order to retreat, any remaining immobilized Panthers must be abandoned.
The following vehicles are to be blown-up:
Rgt squadron Three Panthers
Abt 51 29 Panthers; perhaps nine are suitable for repair
Abt 52 24 Panthers
Total: 56 Panthers including those 40 reported as write-offs"

This specific combination of fact and opinion that I have quoted just above is the crux of the problem with the debate not just concerning the battle of Prokhorovka, but the Second World War taken as a whole.

It is a fact that the Eastern front was the theatre in which the Wehrmacht suffered the majority of its casualties. The Soviet and now Russian view is that this somehow constitutes evidence that the Eastern front was the decisive theatre of the entire war. To sustain that view, one would have to demonstrate that military manpower in crude terms was the lynchpin of the German military machine, and other factors were of secondary importance. It is not a surprise that a great many authors, I among them, find this argument to be grossly misleading. The counter-argument is that sophisticated equipment, especially but not exclusively aircraft, and the personnel needed to operate them, were the essential components of the military forces of all the participants in the Second World War. In Germany's case, the majority of such equipment was sent into battle and destroyed in the West and the Mediterranean, hence these taken together were the decisive theatres of the war.

Why does modern Russia find this such a sensitive issue many decades after VE-Day in May 1945? The answer is simple. For the modern Russian state, the Soviet Union's alleged "decisive role in ridding Europe from the scourge of fascism" is at the centre of demands for Russia to be recognised and respected both as a major power and a moral authority.

The reason that the Soviet Union had far greater resources of military equipment on the Eastern front than Germany were two-fold: First, Germany was fighting on three fronts, and the technological challenge from the Western Allies was much greater than that from the USSR. Second, the Soviet Union received essential Allied support in the form of Lend-Lease supplies of raw materials, machine tools and finished military equipment. The vast supplies of trucks and other vehicles are now commonly known, but they formed just the tip of the iceberg.

The interesting thing about the battle of Prokhorovka is that in many senses it was a routine event. When Rotmistrov's Tank Army blundered into a prepared German defence and suffered great losses, this was no different from a great number of other instances throughout the war on the Eastern front. Here is a description of a similar event on a smaller scale, which happened the very next day on the northern flank of the Kursk bulge. This comes from page 79 of Robert Forczyk's Kursk 1943: The Northern Front https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kursk-1943-...dp/1782008195/ :

"Gorbatov’s 3rd Army and Kolpachki’s 63rd Army attacked again and committed their supporting tank regiments and brigades in order to create a breakthrough. However, Rendulic had positioned his best anti-tank units, including a company of the new Hornisse tank destroyers equipped with 8.8 cm guns, in their path. Three regiments of KV-1S tanks attempted to break through the left flank of 262. Infanterie-Division. However, they ran into uncleared minefields and were shot to pieces by German panzerjägers; this battle proved to be the swan song for the KV-1 heavy tank. Rudenko’s 16th Air Army transferred some of its Pe-2 bombers to support Popov’s front, but the Soviet ground attacks failed to achieve a breakthrough."

The one thing that has distinguished Prokhorovka throughout the years since 1943 is Rotmistrov's elaborate dissembling, both at the time and in his post-war memoirs. In order to explain away the loss of his army, he decided to create a story that a great and victorious tank battle was fought on "the field of Prokhorovka". The primary source of the controversy that continues about this action is the decision by Soviet and now Russian propaganda to give Rotmistrov's account credence, rather than seeing it for what it was - a successful attempt by an incompetent commander to retain his position through misdirection.

Kind regards,

Dan