The Battle of Kursk, 1943
Operation Citadel met a defence built in depth; fifty days later the Red Army had seized the initiative and the Wehrmacht was retreating west.
On 5 July 1943, Germany launched Operation Citadel against the Kursk salient. Model’s Ninth Army attacked from the north while Fourth Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf drove up from the south. The offensive concentrated the new Panther and Ferdinand, the Tiger I, and the veteran Panzer IV and StuG III against a Soviet defence of trenches, mines, anti-tank strongpoints and armoured reserves arranged in successive belts. The US Army’s Combat Studies Institute records about 3,300 Soviet tanks and self-propelled guns in the Central and Voronezh Fronts, with a further strategic reserve behind them; the German southern striking force alone assembled about 1,500 tanks and assault guns.
Citadel was halted in July, but the Battle of Kursk did not end with the German attack. The Soviet Operation Kutuzov began against the Orel salient on 12 July, followed by Operation Rumyantsev toward Belgorod and Kharkov on 3 August; the wider battle closed on 23 August. Armour dominated the ground fighting while thousands of aircraft contested the battlefield above it.
