Some Interesting Facts

These are the German strength before battle of Kursk

- 900,000 men
- 2700 tanks
- 2000 aircraft
- 10,000 guns

Theser are the Soviet strength before Kursk

- 1,336,000 men
- 3444 tanks
- 2900 tanks
- 19,000 guns

:kill: :bang: :kill: :bang: :smok: :smok:

 

And at the end of the Battle, they lost

Germany:

200,510 dead, wounded, and captured
500 tanks
200 aircraft

Soviets:

860,370 dead, wounded, and captured
1,500 tanks
1,000 aircraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk

 

The battle was another meat grinder for both sides.

The difference was that Russian wasn't that bothered as it could all be replaced. Germanies losses couldn't.

In reality I would say that the battle was a draw. Germany failed to make it's objectives but Russia in the defence and counter attack was mauled and failed to push to the Germans significantly back.

FNG

 

Germany had 2,542 tanks, not including the Sturmgeschütz Abteilungen (but including most other units, such as the total of 89 Ferdinands divided between 653. and 654. s.Pz.Jäg.Abt.). Of these, only 1,206 were modern tanks, i.e. Pz.Kpfw.IV lg., Panther or Tiger.

 

I´ve heard that these 89 Ferdinands destroyed more then 500 Soviet-tanks, is this correct??

 

As I recall, one of the units claimed more than 500 vehicles - but the German claims were usually inflated by about 100 %, so a more reasonable figure would be 250 vehicles.

Christian

 

can't beleve those ferdinand were so succesfull. their slow, too heavy (about 70 tons if i'm not wrong) and thei had to manoevre the whole tank to turn the cannon.

 

Their positives are:

excellent long-range gun
excellent armour (can't be penetrated until very close range)

Get a bunch of them in a defensive position with nice clear lines of sight all around, and you will have a target range.

If they get outflanked, and need to move, you are in deep...

 

I believe their days of glory were later, during the fighting for the Dniepr river, where conditions were more like the situation Ricky just described.

 

hmm, some of the Ferdinands were used during the battle of Anzio in 1944, does someone know somethin´ about their engagement there?

 

the only equipment used by the germans at anzio are those rail way guns.


BTW: what happend with DORA. (if that is tha name)
it was a huge gun, t, took sixty trains to pul her, builded to destroy the magenotline, took half an hour to load and fire her. used at sebastopol (that city on the crimea) and then i loos tracking of it

 

Um... are you sure of that :-?

 

totaly sure, there was a railway gun hidden in a tunnel. occasionally they rolled it out and let it fire for a while. when allied aircraft came they rolled it back in.

okay, they used other equipment as well (tanks and normal guns) but i'm only totally sure that they used a railway gun

 

That was what I was looking for.

Yes, they used a railway gun - Anzio Annie, as the US troops nicknamed her.

 

Wasn't there actually two of those big railway guns? AFAIK the other was called Anzio Express.

 

I think it was "Leopold" called Anzio Annie and "Robert" called "Anzio Express".

Anzio Annie is on display now in aberdeen.





@Qullin

Dora never saw any combat:
Dora" was the second gun to be produced. It was deployed briefly against Stalingrad, were the gun arrived at its emplacement 10 miles (16 km) to the west of the city sometime in mid-August 1942. It was ready to fire on September 13th. However it was quickly withdrawn when Soviet encirclement threatened. And when the Germans began their long retreat they took Dora with them. Dora was broken up before the end of the war, being discovered in the west by American troops some time after the discovery of Gustav.

The only 80cm gun that ever shooted, was the Schwerer Gustav.

In February 1942 the Heavy Artillery Unit (E) 672 reorganised and went on the march, and the Schwerer gustav began its long ride to the Crimea. The train carrying the gun was 25 cars long, a total length of 1.6 km. The gun reached Perekof isthmus in early March 1942, where it was held until early April. A special railway spur was built to the Simferopol-Sevastopol railway 10 miles (16 km) north of the target, at the end of which four semi-circular tracks where built specially for the Gustav. The siege of Sevastopol was to be the first combat test of the Gustav. Emplacement of the gun began in early May, by June 5th the gun was ready to fire. The targets that were engaged:

* June 5th

- Coastal guns at a range of 25,000 m. Eight shells fired.
- Fort Stalin. Six shells fired.

* June 6th

-Fort Molotov. Seven shells fired.
-The White Cliff: an undersea ammunition magazine in Severnaya Bay. The magazine was sited 30 meters under the sea, with at least 16 meters of concrete protection. After nine shells were fired, the magazine was ruined, and many of the boats in the bay were damaged.

* June 7th

-Firing in support of an infantry attack on Südwestspitze, an outlying fortification. Seven shells fired.

* June 11th

-Fort Siberia. Five shells fired.

* June 17th

- Fort Maxim Gorki and its Coastal battery. Five shells fired.

By the end of the siege on July 4th the city of Sevastopol lay in ruins, 30,000 tons of artillery ammunition had been fired. Gustav had fired 48 rounds, and worn out its original gun tube, which had already fired around 250 rounds during testing and development. The gun switched to the spare tube, and the original barrel was sent back to Krupp for relining.

The gun was then dismantled and moved to the northern part of the eastern front, where an attack was planned on Leningrad. The gun was emplaced some 30 km from the city near the railway station of Taizy. The gun was fully operation when the attack was cancelled. The gun spent the winter of 1942/43 near Leningrad.

When the German retreat began the gun was moved back to the west where it fired 30 rounds into the Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 uprising.

The gun then appears to have been destroyed to prevent its capture sometime before April 22nd 1945, when its ruins where discovered in a forest 10 miles (16 km) north of Auerbach about 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Chemnitz.


Or did I make a mistake? I think it was Schwerer Gustav and not Dora.

 

The germans hade a plan to finish the battle but the Americans landing on Sicily right so then Hitler took troops form the front.

 

correction: it was not used against the maginot line, by the time it was finished (gustav ) the maginot line was taken from the rear!!!!
the remains of gustave were founded in bavaria by the us 3rd army , the remains of dora were later found near leipzing and parts of a third gun, never compleated, were found in the essen factory and on the meppen proof ground, but not even a single gun could be assamble with the remains of the 3 guns and eventually everything was scrapped

 

I thought Gustav was the name of a defensive line in Italy? Doesn't the military only use names for one thing, to keep it simple? Come to think of it, they called it the Gustav Line, so it wouldn't really make sense.
Anyway, if they had used either Gustav or Dora during Kursk to bombard enemy tank concentrations, would it have made a difference, or would the Soviets still have crushed the Germans?

 

they would still be crushed. the amount of troops the russians had deployed couldn't be stopped, not even with Gustav