On 12 July 1943, a week into the German offensive at Kursk, the Red Army struck back: near Prokhorovka the 5th Guards Tank Army counterattacked the II SS Panzer Corps and lost far more tanks than the Germans, and north of Kursk Operation Kutuzov opened against the Orel salient. Hitler called off his offensive the next day.
Prokhorovka
Operation Citadel began on 5 July 1943: the German Ninth Army attacked from the Orel area in the north and the Fourth Panzer Army from Belgorod in the south, to cut off the Soviet salient around Kursk. In the north the attack soon stalled. In the south it went further: Earl Ziemke, writing for the US Army Center of Military History, records that by 11 July the II SS Panzer Corps had a bridgehead north of the Psel River.1
The Russian historian Valeriy Zamulin, a former curator of the Prokhorovka museum according to Bill Purdue of Military History Matters, stresses that 12 July was only one day of a longer fight. In a 2019 interview he dated the Prokhorovka battle from 10 to 16 July and described 12 July as the day the Soviet command changed its form of defense and launched a powerful counterstroke with the Voronezh Front and two armies handed over by the Supreme High Command (our translation).2
Into the antitank ditch
Ziemke writes that on 12 July Vatutin, commanding the Voronezh Front, threw the Fifth Guards Army and the Fifth Guards Tank Army into a counterattack. The tank army, under Pavel Rotmistrov, struck the II SS Panzer Corps.3
Purdue retells the account of Obersturmführer Rudolf von Ribbentrop, who took his company's seven panzers up the slope at the first warning of a Soviet attack early in the morning. Four were hit, and wave after wave of T-34s came down the hill, "an unimaginable mass of armour approaching at top speed" in Ribbentrop's words as Purdue quotes them. Then, Purdue writes, the Soviet tanks reached an antitank ditch 4.5 m deep, dug earlier by their own side: many fell into it, while others turned to cross a bridge the Germans had built for their panzers and exposed their flanks. Zamulin, as Purdue quotes him, has commented: "It is incomprehensible why our brigade and battalion commanders did not know of this barrier or the crossing".4
Ian Hudson of The Tank Museum, drawing on Niklas Zetterling, Anders Frankson and Zamulin, counts around 910 tanks on the narrowest definition, 294 German and 616 Soviet; adding the neighboring III Panzer Corps and the rest of the 5th Guards Tank Army gives 429 German and 870 Soviet, 1,299 vehicles in all.5
Counting the wrecks
Hudson writes that Soviet records suggest the 5th Guards Tank Army lost 359 tanks and assault guns on 12 July, of which 207 could not be repaired, while German records suggest 193 for the II SS and III Panzer Corps, just 20 of them completely lost. He warns that the two sides defined a loss differently.6
Purdue reports other estimates. The British historian Ben Wheatley, drawing on the work of Karl-Heinz Frieser and on Luftwaffe aerial photographs, concluded that the Soviets lost 255 tanks and the Germans four Panzer IVs and one Tiger; Zamulin concludes that the Germans lost as many as 80 tanks against some 400 Soviet.7
In men, Hudson counts 2,240 killed and 1,157 missing in the 5th Guards Tank Army between 12 and 16 July, the missing most likely killed in his view, against 503 killed and 57 missing in the II SS Panzer Corps over the same days.8
Who held the field
Purdue calls the tank battle a tactical victory for the Germans and a tactical disaster for the Red Army, while the German attempt to take the Kursk salient remained a strategic failure. Zamulin argues that the Soviet side won the battle for Prokhorovka: the SS corps had been ordered on 10 July to take Prokhorovka and did not, and on the night before 17 July the Germans began pulling back (our translation).9
The legend grew later. Hudson writes that it is now generally accepted that the old numbers were greatly exaggerated and that Prokhorovka was not the largest tank battle. He traces the old figures, 1,200 to 2,000 tanks and up to 1,200 destroyed, to Soviet propaganda and to Rotmistrov's memoirs, which put 700 to 800 tanks on each side and more than 400 German losses. Hudson points to the fighting around Brody and Dubno in 1941 as the larger tank battle.10
Operation Kutuzov, 1943: the Red Army takes the Orel bulge
12 July 1943 · 83 years ago
In the Central Russian Upland, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive against German Army Group Center as the German attack on the Kursk salient faltered in World War II. Over five weeks the Soviets took the city of Orel and eliminated the Orel bulge.
Read the full story of Operation Kutuzov, 1943: the Red Army takes the Orel bulge ›Also on this day
Battles of Negba
12 July 1948 · 78 years ago
Kibbutz Negba, guarding a key road in the south, was attacked a second time by Egyptian forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, now surrounded on all sides. The defenders again held, and Negba later served as a forward base for Israeli operations in the Negev.
1691: P. W. Joyce and Eleanor Hull both date the battle of Aughrim, in County Galway, to 12 July 1691, when Ginkel's army attacked the Irish army of James II under St Ruth on Kilcommedan hill. Both write that St Ruth fell to a cannon shot as he rode down the hill and that the Irish gave way as night fell; Joyce puts their loss at probably 5,000 men.11
1864: on 12 July, during Jubal Early's advance on Washington, his troops made a demonstration against Fort Stevens and were repulsed, according to the American Battlefield Trust. President Abraham Lincoln watched the fighting and came under fire from Confederate sharpshooters. The National Park Service calls it the only time in American history that a sitting president came under direct fire from an enemy combatant. The Trust adds that Early withdrew during the night.12
