In contrast to the Wehrmacht, the Battle of Kursk helped the Red Army to recognize that armoured warfare was not just about tanks and they learned to use their anti-tank and artillery capabilities to balance the tactical shortcomings of their tanks. Failures at Kursk taught the Red Army that launching hasty, ill-planned operations was counter-productive and as a result, the Red Army tried to fight in more methodical fashion. In time, Soviet improvements in combined arms warfare proved more decisive than German skill in tank gunnery.
Another aspect of the Battle of Kursk which is rarely considered is its indecisiveness. Neither side achieved what it hoped to accomplish in this inordinate expenditure of resources. On the Soviet side, the Red Army wanted the German armour to literally ‘impale’ itself on mines and anti-tank gun barriers, but was risk-averse to allowing the Germans to achieve any kind of breakthrough. Every time German armour threatened to break through a Soviet defensive line, the Soviet commander committed most of his available armour to counter-attack it, resulting in head-in engagements with German assault groups. However, in order for the Red Army to achieve any kind of decisive success at Kursk, Soviet tactical commanders needed to allow German spearheads to advance into the depth of the defence, creating vulnerable flanks. Given the forces available for Zitadelle, there was no way that the German pincers could have reached Kursk and held a viable front with the limited number of divisions available. Von Manstein would have required a dozen extra divisions to hold the flanks of a penetration stretching to Kursk. Yet lacking these divisions, deeper German penetrations meant longer, weaker flanks. If Stalin had granted Rokossovsky and Vatutin the flexibility to allow some loss of ground, Soviet armoured counter-attacks against the extended German salient would have increased the possibility of surrounding and destroying some of the attacking Panzer-Divisionen.
On the German side, lack of operational flexibility robbed Zitadelle of any chance of achieving decisive results even before it started. The Germans knew very well that the Soviets had identified their likely attack sectors and were deploying strong forces to block them. Without surprise or a favourable correlation of forces, Zitadelle was limited to being a frontal assault. However, the Germans could have used the obvious tactic of a double pincer attack as a deception to fix large Soviet forces in place, while shifting the actual axis of attack to the face of the Kursk salient. If both Model and von Manstein had shifted part of their armour against the relatively weak 38th and 60th Armies, while mounting strong feints against the expected attack sectors, they likely would have achieved operational surprise and an overwhelming local superiority. Soviet operational reserves were poorly deployed to respond quickly to a threat to the face of the salient, which would have delayed any response. Furthermore, the face of the Kursk salient was defended by far fewer mines and anti-tank guns, which would have increased the chance of a rapid breakthrough. By smashing in the face of the Kursk salient – which likely would have been far less costly than trying to reach Kursk through three lines of defence, von Manstein might have reduced the size of the Kursk salient and thereby shortened his front line. By ‘hitting them where they weren’t’ – a tactic favored by the Panzerwaffe in 1941–42 – the Germans might have achieved one or more nice tactical victories in the summer of 1943, as they had in the past. However, inflexibility was the downfall of Zitadelle, since rather than using manoeuvre, the German commanders opted for brute force.
Operation Kutusov, 12 July–18 August 1943
As soon as Rokossovsky noted that Model had suspended his offensive, he notified the Stavka, which ordered the Central, Bryansk and Western Fronts to prepare to begin Operation Kutusov, the pre-planned counter-offensive, as soon as possible. This operation had been planned in detail since the spring and it intended to crush the German forces in the Orel salient by means of a multi-front attack from three directions.{130} During the lull, the Stavka had deployed great resources in the Western and Bryansk fronts to support Kutusov. Both Rybalko’s 3rd Guards Tank Army (3 GTA) and Badanov’s 4th Guards Tank Army (4 GTA) were scheduled to reinforce the offensive once it got going. However, two vital prerequisites for Kutusov’s success had not been met: Model’s armoured reserves were supposed to have been ground to pulp in Pukhov’s killing fields, but they were not, and the VVS was supposed to have gained air superiority over the Orel salient, but it had not. Furthermore, all three Soviet fronts were supposed to attack simultaneously, but Rokossovsky’s battered Central Front needed several days to recover. Consequently, Operation Kutusov was conducted in an uncoordinated style that allowed Model to shift his resources around to deal with one threat, then another.
Only one day after Model suspended his offensive, reconnaissance units from both the Western and Bryansk Front began probing aggressively against 2.Panzerarmee’s (PzAOK 2) front on the northern and eastern sectors of the Orel salient. The PzAOK 2 was holding a 250km-long front with 12 infantry divisions in the XXXV, LIII and LV Armeekorps. The only mobile forces available to PzAOK 2 was the 5.Panzer-Division and the 25.Panzergrenadier-Division, both under-strength. Although PzAOK 2’s troops had held most of their positions for over a year and were well-protected by mines and entrenchments, the army had received few replacements since priority had gone to AOK 9 to build it up for Zitadelle and thus, the German front on the northern side of the Orel salient was quite brittle.
At the last moment, just before Kutusov was set to begin, the Germans saw what was coming and Model began transferring anti-tank assets to PzAOK 2, including some of the remaining Ferdinands and the new Hornisse tank destroyers. General der Infanterie Lothar Rendulic, commander of the XXXV Armeekorps, created a particularly strong anti-tank defence on the eastern side of the salient. Despite his lacklustre performance during Operation Gallop, General-polkovnik Markian M. Popov had been given command of the Bryansk Front and was designated as the main effort of Operation Kutusov. However, the level of effort he put into planning and organizing his forces for battle was characteristically deficient. At 0330 hours on 12 July, both the Bryansk and Western Fronts commenced their offensives with a massive 150-minute artillery barrage, conducted by eight artillery divisions.{131} The German front-line positions were pounded like they had never been pounded before – this was the first of a new type of Soviet offensive that dwarfed everything previously attempted by the Red Army.
As the artillery fire shifted, the Soviet assault troops advanced. Popov committed seven rifle divisions from the 3rd and 63rd Armies against two of Rendulic’s infantry divisions and succeeded in pushing 5km into the German defences before his attack ran out of steam. Soviet air cover from 15th Air Army (15 VA) over Popov’s troops evaporated when Luftflotte 6 arrived over the battlefield and shot down 50 VVS aircraft. This was repeated on the second day of Popov’s offensive, when Luftwaffe Fw-190 fighters destroyed nearly 50 Il-2 Sturmoviks from 15VA, depriving Popov of his close air support.{132} Nonplussed by this loss, Popov decided to commit his armour to create a breakthrough, sending in over 300 tanks, including three regiments of KV-1 heavy tanks. Back in 1939–40, the KV-1 had been designed as a breakthrough tank and this was the type of deliberate attack that it had been intended to shine in, but now in 1943 the KV-1 was just a large, slow target. Rendulic had created an effective killing zone near the village of Arkhangel’skoye, with nine Hornisse 8.8cm self-propelled guns from Panzerjäger-Kompanie 521 and some of the new towed 7.5cm Pak 41, which fired PzGr 41 Hartkern (hard-core) rounds with tungsten penetrators.[33] Advancing in broad daylight across open fields, the KV-1s from Podpolkovnik Yakov F. Dligach’s 114th Tank Regiment were shot to pieces long before most got near the German lines and the attack collapsed. The Battle of Kursk was the swan song for the KV-1 heavy tank and afterwards it was phased out in favour of a new heavy tank. Nevertheless, Popov committed General-major Mikhail F. Panov’s 1GTC, which was intended to be his exploitation force, to reinforce the 3rd Army’s attack and it was able to gain some ground, at great cost.
33
The Pak41 was Germany’s best towed anti-tank gun, introduced in April 1942, but only 150 were built. It used the tapered-bore principle to produce an exceptional muzzle velocity of 1,125 m/second. Using