The largest tank battle in history began 77 years ago today — here’s how it changed WWII, ( battle of Kursk).

 The largest tank battle in history began 77 years ago today — here’s how it changed WWII, ( battle of Kursk).

German infantryman Raimund Rüffer would never forget the first day of Hitler’s offensive toward the Russian city of Kursk

"Ivan bullets zipped around us; I could hear them flying past my ears. 

I expected to be cut down any moment or blown to smithereens by the shells that slammed about….I heard my old friend Ernst panting seconds before his right arm was torn from his body by an explosion that flung his rifle at my feet. 

He whimpered as I moved toward him, but was silent by the time that I was at his side. 

A movement to my right. I twisted to see a camouflaged cover being thrown off a trench. I instinctively yelled a warning, dropped to one knee and squeezed the trigger of my rifle. 

The butt kicked and a round was sent hurtling toward a faceless Soviet soldier. In that same instant I was knocked off my feet as though hit by a heavyweight boxer. A Soviet round had struck me in the shoulder, shattering the bone and leaving me gasping for air."

Soviet tank officer Yevgeny Shkurdalov: “I knocked the first tank out while I was moving along a railroad platform, and literally one hundred meters [328 feet] away I saw a Tiger tank standing on the side that started to fire at our tanks

Apparently it had knocked out a good number of our machines, seeing as how tanks were driving with their sides to it, and it kept firing at their sides. I aimed an armor-piercing shot at it and fired. The tank burst into flames.

 I fired again, and yet more flames.

The crew bailed out, but, for some reason, I wasn’t up to it [to go after them]. I went around the tank, then knocked a T-III and a Panther out.

 When I knocked the Panther out, I got a kind of, you know, a sense of elation, like, look at that—I just did something so heroic.” 

German tank crewman Wilhelm Res: “Suddenly a T-34 broke through and headed right for us. 

Our first radio operator started giving me shells to put into the gun. At this time, our commander above us was shouting ‘Fire! Fire!’ nonstop, because the tank was getting closer; and only after the fourth ‘Fire!’ I heard ‘Thank God!’

“Then, sometime later, we determined that the T-34 had stopped just eight meters [26 feet] from us! Up high on the turret, as if punched in, there was a five-centimeter [2-inch] hole […]. 

The battle lines of both sides had been mixed up with one another. Our tankers had successfully hit the enemy at close range, but they too suffered heavy losses.”

On July 5, 1943, the largest tank battle in history began near the southern city of Kursk.

Over the course of the war, the Soviet lines had bulged into German-held territory near Kursk. This bulge or salient was 250 kilometers long from north to south and 160 kilometers wide. 

The Nazi army planned Operation Citadel to encircle and cut off the Red Army located within the salient and then renew their offensive.

Top commanders such as Erich Von Manstein wanted to attack in May, before the Soviets had time to dig in and reinforce the salient.

 But a nervous and indecisive Hitler decided to postpone Operation Citadel until July, to allow time to deploy his vaunted new Panther, Tiger and Elefant tanks. 

While the big cats lumbered off the railroad cars near the front lines, the Germans managed to amass nearly 800,000 men, 3,000 tanks, 10,000 guns and mortars, and 2,000 aircraft.

 It would be the last time the Germans could concentrate such an attack force (by comparison, at the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans had 400,000 men and 600 tanks). Yet as usual, the Germans were outnumbered. 

They faced 1.9 million Soviet soldiers, 5,000 tanks, 25,000 guns and mortars and more than 3,000 aircraft.

Citadel was a prophetic name for the German offensive. 

The Soviets used the extra time to build an incredibly dense defense system of multiple layers of fortifications, including trenches, bunkers, tank traps and machine gun nests 25 miles deep, as well as minefields that averaged more than 3,000 mines per kilometer.

At the end of the fighting in Kursk, the German forces had suffered 200,000 casualties and lost 500 tanks, while Soviet losses amounted to 860,000 casualties and 1,500 tanks.