"Panzertaktik" - Wolfgang Schneider

[danielh]

Alech,

You're right and i'm wrong, Grossdeutschland of course also had a 13th. Hvy Coy consisting of 15 Tigers at 13.5.

At 5.7.43 the TigerCoy was in combat with Panzerbrig. 10 (Panther Ds)

Btw: Voronezh-Front (Adv. of 4th PzArmy & Det. Kempf) (Vatutin) lost the following figures: (Primary Source pg. 339, Report No 01398 dated 24.7.43 of Chief of Staff of the Voronezh Front, Lt.Gen. Ivanov; Chief of Operations Dep., and Maj.Gen. Teteshkin): In the timeframe 4.-16.7.

Cas. Men: 90'249

KIA Men: 18'097

(Interesting KIA, WIA, MIA are in line with the ratio to expect betw. KIA : WIA & MIA of roughly 1 : 4-5 whereas later official numbers often have near 1:1 ratios betw. Killed and so called "medical" as in Krivosheev for example which is odd, maybe reararea consolidated figures with high rate of death of wounded, and lightly wounded already back at fron ???)

Tanks lost: (irrevocably lost) 1233 (!!) -> comparable to german "Total loss"

Tanks damgd: 655

16.7. - 22.7 (Mentioned as Counterattack, although Rumiantsev didn't start before August, maybe local Counterattacks..??):

Cas. Men: 10683

Tanks lost: 395

German losses (unfortunately timespan not known), but (Source: Zetterling):

4th Pz. Army

Cas. Men: 13'461

Det. Kempf: 15'641

Tank losses: (pg. 275-276) around 130 Total losses and around 630 damaged

In Rumjantsev (Belgorod-Kharkov Axis starting August) Russians lost further: Cas. Men: 250'000 pg.276 accord. to Krivosheev whose figures for this time are even higher and KIA : WIA & MIA are around the expected 1:4 relation (112'000 KIA and 315'000 Medical(all causes) = ca. 420'000 Cas.) and 1864 Tanks

The Orel-Operation(starting 12.7.) in german 9th Army area cost the Russians: 430'000 Cas and 2500 Tanks lost

So in 4th PzArmy Area Russians lost roughly 3000 tanks as total loss betw. 5.7. - end of August and around half a million casualties.

One strikes the big discrepancy of "only" 90'000 cas while in Defence (5. - 16.7.) to the 400'000 in Rumjantsev while on the Attack. The Russians could afford to lose a million men in roughly two months on a frontlength of roughly 500 km !!!!!! (Surpassing twofold the accumulated US losses in the whole june 44 - May 45 timespan !!)

Really tough men !!

Sources: Glantz "The Battle of Kursk", there are some (at times BIG) contradictions about casualty figures especially on the Russian side. However the Voronezh report is a very close to source and fresh (no glossing, blurring probable).

Greets

Daniel