Erich- do we know if the northern sector actaully had any Tigers? The main references I have seen talk about tigers serving with the W-SS divisions, but no mention of Tigers on the northern wing that I can immediately recall. Hmmmm...

Actually, in the first days of the battle, german air support made a huge difference. One of the first actions during Kursk was the destruction of many russian planes on the ground by the Luftwaffe. The germans had less than half the artillery the russians did- they made up some of this difference with air support. The 37mm armed tank-busting Stukas did very well for the first few days destroying russian tanks, and normal bomb-equipped stukas took the place of artillery for the germans. It wasn't until about 5 or six days into the battle that the russians gained some air superiority and were able to prey on the slow stukas.

I'm pretty sure that the panther had it's main exhaust outlet pipe running very close to the gas tank. AS the tank ran, this pipe heated up considerably and could ignite the fuel. I'll check on this though...

[ 09 August 2002, 01:42 PM: Message edited by: CrazyD88 ]

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