CrazyD88:

About those Ferdinands again....How do you feel after this?

For many years it was thought that most of the Elefants were lost because they had no machine guns, but this not true. Many of them were lost due to damage or a lack of fuel, not because of the deadly shooting from enemy guns or infantry. The Elefant was an offensive weapon, so during the retreating combat it had less
chance of fighting successfully and many of them had to be abandoned on the battlefields with only minor damage, like this one here."

During the battle of Kursk the Elephant was the heaviest AFV in service. In the time following the war the Elephant was described as unsuccessful and basically inefficient in combat. This is based on one statistic - the number of these lost, which was only 39. The losses were in fact heavy but they were only about half of Jagdpanzer Regiment 656 (Pz.Jag.653 and PZ.Jag654 ).

This was about the same percentage of the losses of the Tiger units involved in Kursk also. The Elephants exacted a heavy toll when they could during the 22 days of battle, the were responsible for the destruction of 502 tanks and other weapons

http://www3.sympatico.ca/admfisher/html/elefant.html

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