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By Root 1699 0

Panzer formations, the Germans were forced to adopt a Panzerkeil (armoured wedge) tactic of having the heaviest tanks, such as Tigers and Panthers, in the middle of a formation with the others, such as Mark IVs (by then the majority of Panzers), on the wings, supported by infantry, grenades and mortars behind the centre of the wedge. The Russians responded to Panzerkeil tactics with what the Germans termed Pakfront, where up to ten Russian guns welded into a single unit would concentrate all their fire on one tank before moving on to the next. ‘Neither minefields nor Pakfronts could be detected until the first tank blew up,’ recalled Mellenthin, ‘or the first anti-tank gun opened fire.’27 Red Army mortar operators were particularly feared: a skilled one could put a third bomb into the air before the first and second ones landed.

The sheer numbers involved, as well as its crucial outcome, make Kursk a remarkable battle. The Germans had around 900,000 troops, 2,700 tanks and self-propelled guns, 10,000 artillery pieces and 2,600 aircraft.28 Facing them, Rokossovsky, Vatutin and Konev had around 1.8 million men, 3,800 tanks and self-propelled guns, 20,000 artillery pieces and 2,100 aircraft.29 Kursk therefore fully justifies its popular designation as the greatest tank battle in history. Despite their two-to-one superiority in numbers of troops, it was nonetheless a terrifying sight for the Red Army when the German tanks, in Alan Clark’s words, ‘clambered out from the sunken lanes and dried-up balkas where they had been lying and moved slowly forward, hatches closed, across the billowing yellow-green corn of the upper Donets valley’. (The heat inside the tanks in Russia’s summer weather was stifling.) Hoth deployed no fewer than nine of the best Panzer divisions in the German Army – from west to east the 3rd Panzer, Gross Deutschland, 11th Panzer, SS Leibstandarte (Lifeguard) Adolf Hitler, SS Das Reich, SS Totenkopf (Death’s Head), 6th Panzer, 19th Panzer and 7th Panzer – all across a mere 30 miles of front.

‘The whole front was a girdle of flashes,’ recalled a Tiger tank radio operator Sergeant Imboden; ‘it seemed as if we were driving into a ring of flame… We thanked the Fates for the strength of our good Krupp steel.’ When German tanks were disabled by mines or by special Red Army squads hiding in slit trenches in the middle of minefields, their crews were ordered to stay inside and give covering fire for the rest of the battle. This was a virtual death sentence for them, as their becalmed tanks were almost always hit only a matter of minutes afterwards. Those Waffen-SS Panzer crewmen who did get out immediately ripped the death’s-head insignia off their uniforms, as those wearing it were almost never allowed the luxury of being taken prisoner.

Although the long, slim 76.2mm Russian anti-tank gun could knock out a Tiger’s frontal armour only at point-blank range, it was effective against the Mark IVs, and anyway there was plenty of point-blank-range fighting at Kursk. Mines accounted for many German tanks, and there was only so much the Panzergrenadiere – who fought throughout the night – could do against well-entrenched Russian anti-tank groups that no longer turned and ran as in earlier days. As Konstantin Simonov recorded in his novel Days and Nights, Red Army veterans had learnt by experience that ‘Under mortar fire it is no more dangerous to move forward than to stay where you are. They knew that tanks most often kill soldiers who are running away from them, and that German automatic rifle fire from two hundred metres away is always intended more to frighten than to kill.’30

Although Hoth broke through the first line of Soviet defence on the first day of the assault, fire from the second and strongest line had been pre-ranged and self-propelled guns had been dug in so that their hulls were pointing downwards, the best defensive positions for fire. Between 6 and 7 July, Hoth’s force was reduced in the fierce fighting from 865 operative vehicles to 621.31 Lieutenant Schütte complained to his commander after capturing