On the night of July 12, offensive operations near Prokhorovka practically ceased. The parties began to gain a foothold on the achieved lines. After so many years, many versions have been put forward about the victory or defeat of our troops in this battle. For such an assessment, not all documents were timely opened and not everyone was satisfied with the truth about those events.
No matter how bitter the truth may be, it is better to know it, the more significant will be the victory achieved in that terrible war. In spite of everything, we held out and defeated a serious and inveterate opponent. Not all victories were easy, one of them was near Prokhorovka.
Much has already been written about that battle, perhaps I am mistaken, but this is most fully and objectively set forth in the book by Valery Zamulin, which I mentioned at the beginning of the series of articles. This voluminous and serious study with hundreds of references to archival documents and memories of combatants from both sides impartially revealed the picture of everything that happened in those days.
This book should be read for more than one day and more than one week with a pencil in hand in order to appreciate and understand the whole drama of the unfolding battle. In my article, I only briefly outlined the essence of this work, without adding anything from myself. A wide reader interested in the objective history of the Great Patriotic War should know about such serious studies.
The Battle of Prokhorovka is one of the iconic pages of that war, which is not equally assessed by everyone. Making such conclusions, first of all, it is necessary to assess to what extent the tasks that the parties set for themselves have been implemented and what results they have achieved.
During the battle, none of the opposing sides managed to achieve their goals. The Soviet command failed to break through the enemy's front, defeat the enemy grouping and ensure access to the Oboyanskoye highway. The German command failed to break through the third rear line of the Soviet defense and enter the operational space. At the same time, the German offensive was stopped, and the Soviet troops suffered serious losses in equipment and people and were limited in their offensive capabilities.
Formally, it was like a draw, but a few days after the counterattack, the enemy was forced to curtail Operation Citadel and retreat. So in this sense, the battlefield remained with us, in the end we won. A number of objective and subjective factors already repeatedly described, the main of which are as follows, did not allow the Soviet command to realize the set goals when inflicting a counterattack.
The command of the Voronezh Front misused a uniform tank army, which was created as a means of developing success after breaking into the enemy's defenses. Instead of entering the breakthrough and developing success, the army was thrown into breaking through its way in the enemy's line prepared for anti-tank defense without reconnaissance and the necessary support of artillery and aviation.
The foothold for deploying the grouping and delivering a counterattack was captured by the enemy the day before. The front command did not dare to change the decision approved by the Stavka and struck a blow and brought a tank "wedge" into battle in a far from the best place. In this area, bounded by a river and a railway embankment, and also saturated with deep ravines and spurs, it was impossible to deploy the battle formations of tank corps and provide them with a dash to the enemy's front line. As a result, the strike "wedge" was deprived of the ability to maneuver and its striking power, the tank corps could not use their numerical advantage.
The command's plan to stop a frontal blow to the forehead of a strong and advancing enemy did not correspond to the changed operational situation. The Soviet command did not establish that by the time the attack was struck, the enemy had suspended the offensive, organized a stable anti-tank defense and was able to repel a massive attack of tanks.
Underestimation of the enemy's forces and his ability to effectively resist the offensive of Soviet tanks led to catastrophic losses in equipment and people. Tactical successes in some sectors came at such a high price that they cannot be called anything other than a Pyrrhic victory.
The blunders of the command in organizing the counterattack allowed the enemy to destroy most of the tanks that took part in the edge of the tank wedge. The losses of Rotmistrov's tank army were not just very large, they spoke of the drama of its position after the battle. In all formations of the army, the enemy knocked out and burned 340 tanks and 17 self-propelled guns.
Moreover, 194 tanks burned down, and 146 were knocked out or out of order on the battlefield and could still be restored. However, a significant part of such combat vehicles ended up in territory controlled by the enemy, and he simply blew them up. Thus, the army lost 53% of the tanks and self-propelled guns that took part in the counterattack, or 42.7% of those in service that day in all corps.
The situation was especially appalling in the two tank corps participating in the main direction of the counterattack. Archival documents show that during the battle, out of 348 tanks and 19 self-propelled guns that were available before the battle in the 29th and 18th tank corps, they lost 237 tanks and 17 self-propelled guns, or slightly more than 69%.
More than two thirds of the 29th corps lost 153 tanks and 17 self-propelled guns destroyed and burned out, which amounted to 77% of those participating in the attack! The 18th corps lost slightly less combat vehicles, 84 tanks were destroyed and burned, or 56% of those participating in the attack. Only in the battles near the Oktyabrsky state farm and heights 252.2 were 114-116 tanks and 11 self-propelled guns shot down and burned.
There is not much reliable data about the enemy's losses, but even they speak of incomparable losses in this battle. In the German tank corps, opposing our two corps on July 12, there were 273 tanks and assault guns, as well as 43 anti-tank self-propelled guns.
A number of researchers who are dealing with this problem agree that this corps lost about 154 tanks and assault guns out of 273 available at the beginning of the battle, or 56.4%. Nevertheless, the corps retained its combat effectiveness, since there were not so many burned-out tanks, only a few dozen. The enemy was able to recover most of the damaged combat vehicles, since almost all of them were in the territory left behind by the enemy.
Thus, the real losses of armored vehicles in Soviet tank corps in comparison with the enemy are difficult to even compare. Naturally, the losses in manpower turned out to be just as significant. The battlefield, about 4.5 km wide, was plowed by thousands of shells and bombs. Among the piles of broken equipment destroyed in previous battles and added on the day of the battle, several thousand dead were scattered on both sides. Many participants in those events testified that they had never seen a more horrifying picture in their lives. An unsuccessful attempt to "break through" the enemy's defense had to be paid dearly.
According to incomplete data, in the tank and combined arms guards armies participating in the counterattack, the losses amounted to 7,019 soldiers and commanders. Discovered documents indicate that the tank corps lost a total of 3,139 people during the fighting, of which almost half (1,448) died and went missing. The main losses fell on motorized rifle brigades. The 53rd motorized rifle brigade had the hardest time, it lost more than 37% of all personnel.
In this regard, the question of enemy losses is pertinent. According to incomplete archival data, the losses of the SS Panzer Corps, opposing our tankers on the day of the counterattack, were several times less - 842 people, of which 182 were killed and missing. The loss ratio is simply devastating.
Behind these numbers of losses are the fate of thousands of our tankers who gave their lives in the name of victory. This is how they described the fight.
“There was such a roar that the membranes were pressing, the blood was flowing from the ears. The continuous roar of engines, the clanking of metal, the roar, the explosions of shells, the wild rattle of bursting iron … From point-blank shots, towers collapsed, guns twisted, armor burst, tanks exploded.
From the explosions, five-ton towers were thrown off and flew off to the side by 15–20 m. Flapping hatches, they tumbled in the air and fell. Often, the entire tank collapsed from strong explosions, turning into a heap of metal at the moment. Our tankers, who got out of their wrecked vehicles, searched the field for enemy crews, also left without equipment, and beat them with pistols, grabbed hand-to-hand."
Driving for tens of years past the "thirty-four" standing on a high pedestal under Yakovlevo, I always say the same words "Eternal glory!" to everyone who stood to death on this frontier and did not let the enemy pass.
The Soviet command, represented by Vasilevsky and Rotmistrov, after the cessation of striking the enemy, understood perfectly well that at least two corps of the tank army had completely lost their combat effectiveness in a few hours of battle. It was not possible to realize the goals set during the counterstrike. The positions of the Soviet troops, with the exception of advancing several kilometers in certain sectors, remained at the same lines.
Stalin, having learned about the dramatic events near Prokhorovka, was extremely dissatisfied with the actions of the command. The Voronezh Front, having received from the reserve huge forces, a tank and combined arms army and two more separate tank corps, a total of almost 120 thousand people and more than 800 tanks, could not achieve serious success in the confrontation with the enemy.
He recalled Vasilevsky, since he was mainly blamed for the unsuccessful counterstrike, sent Zhukov there and appointed a commission headed by Malenkov to find out who made what mistakes when planning a front-line counterattack and how the Stavka reserves were organized into battle. In addition to operational and tactical issues, an impressive group of specialists had to find out the reasons for the high losses of armored vehicles in order to exclude this in the future.
Based on the results of the commission's work, a report was drawn up on the reasons for the failure of the counterstrike. No organizational conclusions were drawn from the report, since a few days later the Germans stopped the implementation of Operation Citadel and began to withdraw their troops. The Battle of Prokhorovka began to be interpreted as a serious victory, which led to the defeat of a large German tank group under the leadership of the Soviet command. Based on the results of the work of the technical commission, measures were developed for the effective use of tank groupings and introduced into the troops.
The German leadership at all levels highly appreciated the actions of its troops in the battles near Prokhorovka, but this did not affect the decision to curtail Operation Citadel. There are many versions of the termination of the German offensive on the Kursk Bulge, probably, a combination of factors played a role in making such a decision. The main ones were the successes of our troops on the northern face near Orel, which made senseless the German offensive from the south, the possibility of a counteroffensive by the Soviet fronts in the Donbass, the landing of the Allies in Italy and, of course, stopping the German offensive near Prokhorovka. In fact, on that day, the fate of Operation Citadel was decided.
Taken together, all these factors and the results of hostilities on July 12 on the southern and northern faces of the Kursk Bulge forced the German command at a meeting on July 13 at Hitler's Headquarters to decide to curtail this operation. It was announced to the commander of the army groups on the Kursk Bulge that due to the impossibility of quickly achieving the objectives of Operation Citadel, it was terminated.
After eight days of intense hostilities, the grand battle on the Kursk Bulge was drawing to a close. The plan of the Hitlerite command to seize the lost initiative on the Eastern Front after Stalingrad collapsed.
From that moment on, the enemy command was concerned only with the issues of ensuring the withdrawal. Offensive operations were still being carried out, but their goal was not to defeat the Soviet troops, but to create conditions for the successful withdrawal of their troops from the ledge, which rested on Prokhorovka, beyond which the enemy could not pass.
July 16 was the final day in the Prokhorov battle. The enemy units and formations were preparing to withdraw. Rearguard groups were formed, ambushes from heavy tanks were set up, sappers were preparing to mine roads and tank-hazardous areas of the terrain immediately after withdrawal to ensure a calm withdrawal of the main forces.
On the night of July 17, the enemy began to withdraw armored units, as well as rear support units in the direction of Belgorod and Tomarovka. In the morning, under the cover of strong rear guards, the withdrawal of the main forces of the German group began. With the termination of Operation Citadel, the Battle of Prokhorovka also ended. On July 18, Soviet troops went on the offensive and on July 23 reached the line they had occupied before the start of the enemy's offensive.
