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Posted on 03/28/2005 9:45:36 PM PST by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 The Battle of Kursk was a significant battle on the Eastern Front of World War II. It remains the largest armored engagement of all time, and included the most costly single day of aerial warfare in history. Though the Germans planned and initiated an offensive strike, the Soviet defense managed to stop their ambitions and launch a successful counteroffensive. The German Army relied on armored forces to push through enemy lines at high-speed (the famous Blitzkrieg tactic). This meant they could only assume the offensive during the summer when the Russian continental climate had dried out the ground enough to give tanks a high degree of mobility. The Eastern Front war in 1941 and 1942 had thus developed into a series of German advances in the summer, followed by Soviet counterattacks in the winter.  In the winter of 1942/1943 the Soviets conclusively won the Battle of Stalingrad. One complete army had been lost, along with about 500,000 Germans and allies, seriously depleting the Axis strength in the east. With an Allied invasion of Europe clearly looming, Hitler realized that an outright defeat of the Soviets before the western Allies arrived had become unlikely, and he decided to force the Soviets to a draw. In 1917 the Germans had built the famous Hindenburg line on the Western Front, shortening their lines and thereby increasing their defensive strength. They planned on repeating this strategy in Russia and started construction of a massive series of defensive works known as the Panther-Wotan line. They intended to retreat to the line late in 1943 and proceed to bleed the Soviets white against it while their own forces recuperated.  In February and March 1943 Erich von Manstein had completed an offensive during the Second Battle of Kharkov, leaving the front line running roughly from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. In the middle lay a large 200 km wide and 150 km deep Soviet-held salient (bulge) in the lines between German forward positions near Orel in the north, and Manstein's recently captured Kharkov in the south. Von Manstein pressed for a new offensive based on the same successful lines he had just pursued at Kharkov, when he cut off an overextended Soviet offensive. He suggested tricking the Soviets into attacking in the south against the desperately re-forming 6th Army, leading them into the Donets Basin in the eastern Ukraine. He would then turn south from Kharkov on the eastern side of the Donets River towards Rostov and trap the entire southern wing of the Red Army against the Sea of Azov.  The OKW did not approve von Manstein's plan, and instead turned their attention to the obvious bulge in the lines between Orel and Kharkov. Three whole Soviet armies occupied the ground in and around the salient, and pinching it off would trap almost a fifth of the Red Army's manpower. It would also result in a much straighter and shorter line, and capture the strategically useful railway town of Kursk located on the main north-south railway line running from Rostov to Moscow. In March the plans crystallized. Walther Model's 9th Army would attack southwards from Orel while Hoth's 4th Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf under the overall command of Manstein would attack northwards from Kharkov. They planned to meet near Kursk, but if the offensive went well they would have permission to continue forward on their own initiative, with a general plan to create a new line on the Don River far to the east.  Contrary to his recent behavior, Hitler gave the General Staff considerable control over the planning of the battle. Over the next few weeks they continued to increase the scope of the forces attached to the front, stripping the entire German line of practically anything remotely useful for deployment in the upcoming battle. They first set the attack for May 4, but then delayed it until June 12, and finally until July 4 in order to allow more time for new weapons to arrive from Germany, especially the new Panther tanks. One could instructively contrast this plan with the traditional (and successful) blitzkrieg tactic used up to this point. Blitzkrieg depended on massing all available troops at a single point on the enemy line, breaking through, and then advancing as fast as possible to cut off enemy front-line troops from supply and information. Blitzkrieg involved avoiding direct combat at all costs: attacking a strongpoint makes no sense if an invader can achieve the same ends by instead attacking the trucks supplying the strongpoint. And Blitzkrieg worked best by attacking at the least expected location -- hence the Germans had attacked through the Ardennes in 1940, and towards Stalingrad in 1942.  The OKW's conception of the attack on the Kursk salient, Operation Citadel formed the antithesis of this concept. Anyone with a map could confidently predict the obvious point of attack: the German plan reflected World War I thinking more than the Blitzkrieg. A number of German commanders questioned the idea, notably Heinz Guderian who asked Hitler: Was it really necessary to attack Kursk, and indeed in the east that year at all? Do you think anyone even knows where Kursk is?. Perhaps more surprisingly Hitler replied: I know. The thought of it turns my stomach. Simply put, Operation Citadel embodied an uninspired plan. The Red Army had also begun planning for their own upcoming summer offensives, and had settled on a plan that mirrored that of the Germans. Attacks in front of Orel and Kharkov would flatten out the line, and potentially lead to a breakout near the Pripyat Marshes. However, Soviet commanders had considerable concerns over the German plans.  All previous German attacks had left the Soviets guessing where it would come from, and in this case Kursk seemed too obvious for the Germans to attack. However, Moscow received warning of the German plans through a spy ring in Switzerland. Stalin and a handful of the Red Army Stavka (General Staff) wanted to strike first. They felt that history had demonstrated the Soviet inability to stand up to German offensives, while action during the winter showed their own offensives now worked well. However the overwhelming majority of the Stavka, and notably Georgi Zhukov, advised waiting for the Germans to exhaust themselves in their attack first. Zhukov's opinion swayed the argument.  The German delay in launching their offensive gave the Soviets four months in which to prepare, and with every passing day they turned the salient into one of the most heavily defended points on earth. The Red Army laid over 400,000 landmines and dug about 5,000 kilometers of trenches, with positions as far back as 175km from the front line. In addition they massed a huge army of their own, including some 1,300,000 men, 3,600 tanks, 20,000 artillery pieces and 2,400 aircraft. The Germans had good information on the Soviet defensive preparations. Why they did not then switch targets remains a mystery.
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From...http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/hs129.html
Hs 129B-2 Series: Two 13mm MG 131 Machine Guns in nose. Two 20mm MG 151/20 cannon in nose. Various weapons were fitted inclusding 37mm BK 3.7 and 75mm BK 7.5. An interesting weapon was a battery of six 75mm smoothbore recoiless rifles that fired downawrds and to the rear. This system was fired by an automatic magnetic trigger that fired when the aircraft flew over metal objects. This system was reported to be quite successful.
Back to work I must go, hoping to finish hanging the sheetrock today, finally.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Changing a few laws will not change things. Laws are only a concern of the weak. Look at Clinton or Ebbers or, soon, Lay. Immune one day, sometimes not immune the next. Except Clinton, that creep. Remember Leona Helmsley's "Taxes are for the little people." And, of course, she was correct, though she didn't realize that the real Big Boys don't like parvenues.
What can work is neutralizing the Left, that is, destroying it's power.
So what is to be done? How to bell the cat?
Games of power get rough, as Lenin said, "Power means troops", or Mao's "Power comes from the muzzle of a gun." (A bit of a poet, Mao was, at least in his own mind!) In any case, we are talking about serious instability here.
President Bush is on track, looking to do what is possible by playing a long term game, and doing very well at it. The American Stalin is still on the horizon, but is taking some good lumps.
As Churchill put it, "Jaw - Jaw is better than War - War." Time to stick to the Jaw - Jaw.
Have been back posting FR just recently..
Or as they say in SG1...."Just gated in" : )
Saturday was a bit frustrating....the USS Laffey thread.
USS Isherwood,USS Pringle are also part of the radar picket heroism struggle from April 16th 1945.
so ya....would like others to know what else occured.....but then theirs the vanity side of it which I still feel kinda uncomfortable about : )
Jumping over to Hans Rudel....*Operation Citadel.
Its good to see the many forwards out which show that Germany had...A victory missed.
Russia pushing its tanks in close at least minimized the carange that Hans Rudel and company could do if they caught them in logistic movement.
Russia's going to loose their tanks wholesale anyway...might aswell make the sacrifice worth it.
Historically...such dramatics do change outcomes.
Israels airforce certainly hurled itself on Egypts sword of Russian SAM missiles.
IDF armor platoons ..outnumbered 7-1 and greater did the same in Sinai and Golan in the 73 war.
Like the Battle of Britian,
The many owe much to the sacrifice of the few.
To bad for Russia that they stumbled back under the shadow of evil.
They showed they had the right stuff at Kursk......at Stalingrad.
Well, the Left's Power is based in the ever-expanding Federal Leviathan, so if we can enforce the 9th and 10th Amendments, and begin the long-term process of devolving Power to the States, Localities, and Individuals, the Left will gradually implode, and it will take the DemonRAT Party with it!!
FReegards...MUD
More illness. Grrr.
Colonel, you are going to have to move to a warmer, sunnier climate!
Hope you are all well soon.
I sure hope so, it's just not enough to say "It'd be worse under the other Party", I was voting for something, not against something.
Why he's still breathing is beyond me.
So it's ok to get a blonde? ;-)
Thanks for the update Mayor.
Good afternoon! We had a wonderful Easter. Spent most of the day boxing up stuff to carry back to store in Waco. I am tired and just getting ready to walk out the door to work tonight.
Myranda is flying out next Tuesday to go spend a month in Alabama with Jill. Tom is TDY 27 days out of April and Jill could use the help. Myranda is waiting for summer semester to start so she can get back in school so this works out about perfect. :-) (until then, I have a helper)
:-(
I believe Soviet losses were a lot higher than originally reported, but in the long run they could replace them. Could the Germans have won? I doubt it, they were bogged down in the North and even if they did manage to cut of the salient, I don't think they could have prevented the Soviets from breaking out from or into the pocket. They just didn't have the strength anymore.
Sadly only about half my students ever grasp the use of the scale. They get that thrown in their first semester and then are thrown into CAD. They worry more about setting PLTSCALE nowdays.
It's good to see ya back. :-)
You first. I'll watch to see what happens.
Whatever it needs to be, the approved company drawing template will be set opposite.
Yep...and "The Future [fer the GOP] is NOW!!"**
FReegards...MUD
**...George Allen's campaign theme fer 2008, BTW!!
I couldn't agree more, my FRiend...I'm 41 now and dammit if I ain't gonna do what I can to leave my grandkids with AT LEAST as good a world as I was born into.
FReegards...MUD
LOL. I guarantee you it won't be pretty.
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