Over 250,000 Soviets killed and over 600,000 incapacitated.Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army reduced from 916 panzers to under 500 within a week.100 Luftwaffe fighters and bombers shot down over the southern sector 7 July.Luftwaffe pilot Erich Hartmann shot down 7 Soviet aircraft on 7 July.Model’s Ninth Army lost 20,000 men and 200 tanks before 10 July.Tigers were adapted to carry 120 88 mm shells rather than 90.Over 2,000 Luftwaffe aircraft vs up to 3,500 Soviet aircraft.22 Soviet tanks allegedly immobilised in an hour by one SS commander.Approximately 5,000 Soviet tanks vs approx.575,000 initial reserve forces at the Steppe Front.Soviet defences were as deep as almost 200 miles in places.All other civilians within 25 miles of the front were evacuated.300,000 civilians used to construct eight lines of defences, including 9,000 km of trenches.German advance halted at 10 miles in the north and 30 miles in the south.Salient was 150 miles across and 100 miles deep into German-held territory.The battle was fought between 5 July to 23 August.The battle took place in July and August 1943, opening with a German offensive and culminating in a momentous Soviet victory. The Wehrmacht was outnumbered and deficient in weapons in comparison to the Red Army, thus the German attempt to retake the initiative by attacking the vulnerable salient around Kursk represented a real gamble. In a typical act of grandstanding, presumably to reassure the rest of the Axis as defeats began to mount up, Hitler announced on 15 April 1943 that victory in the Battle of Kursk would be “a beacon for the whole world”.
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