Obscure Major Tank Battle on 9 July 1943

There is an extended discussion in my Kursk book called “The Reinforced 6th Panzer Division Crashes Forward” on pages 766-768.

There was a significant fight around the towns of Melikhovo and Shlyakhovoye in the III Panzer Corps sector on 9 July. The 6th Panzer Division had attached to it the panzer regiment from the 19th Panzer Division, the 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion (Tiger) and the 228th Assault Gun Battalion.The Soviet defenders included the 305th Infantry Division, 92nd Guards Rifle Division and 96th Tank Brigade.

To quote:

This fighting must have been extremely deadly for the 6th Panzer Division, for it appears to have lost 38 of 73 tanks this day…The attached Tiger Battalion fared no better, with a loss of 19 of 33 tanks….The 228th Assault Gun Battalion was clearly in the middle of the fight also, indicating a loss of 12 Sturmgeschuetz IIIs of 23. The Panzer Group Westhoven, attached from the 19th Panzer Division, would also fair poorly, losing 30 tanks this day. This was a devastating loss of almost 100 tanks in one day!…

The unheralded day of fighting appears to have cost the III Panzer corps over 100 tanks and assault guns. This was not only the worst day of combat for the corps, but one of the worst for the Germans in the attack in the south….

To put this in perspective, the SS Panzer Corps’ worst day had been fewer than 80 tanks lost (on the 6th)…..Even at the famed Battle of Prokhorovka on the 12th of July, the SS Panzer Corps lost fewer tanks. While Rotmistrov and the Fifth Guards Tank Army became renown for this action, the fighting today (9 July) between Andreyevskiye and Melikhovo was truly unheralded, yet not mentioned in major histories of the battles and the Soviet defenders have not been singled out. 

A few photos of the area:

The first is of the area northeast of Belgorod, showing where the Lipovyii and Severnyii Donets meet, 2 June 1943. The railroad on the left (west) goes to Prokhorovka. The two large villages in the south are Staryii Gorod and Blizhnyaya Igumenka while the three lrager villages in the north are Belomestnaya, Petrpavllovka, and Dalnayaya Igumenka  (see page 580). The small town of Andreyevskiye is on the river just to the north-northeast (1 km) of Blizhnyaya Igumenka. It is in the river just west of the woods north of Blizhnyaya Igumenka (the woods almost in the center of the map). Melikhovo is 4+ km to the northeast of the those woods. It is in the northeast corner of the picture, but hard to see in the darkened section. Shlyakhovoye is just beyond it.

Next is Stayii Gorod, 3 July 1943. Note the trench works in the while area and elsewhere (see page 572).

Finally there is the close-up photo of the woods just south of Blizhnyaya Igumenka and east of Staryii Gorod, 7 July 1943. Note the trenchworks. This would be a second echelon defensive position. The same woods is visible in the previous photo east of Staryii Gorod (see page 573).

 

I have four engagement sheets covering the operation of the III Panzer Corps for this day (pages 770-773):

German        German        Soviet         German      Soviet    German       Soviet

Unit               Strength       Strength     Armor         Armor     Artillery       Artillery

168th ID          8,077           9,342          6                 0             48             111

19th PzD       19,347        10,179         13                0              161           107

6th PzD         22,792        16,241        158               54            143           151

7th PzD         19,355        19,658          52               28            127           171

Total              69,571        55,420        229               82            479           540

 

German        German        Soviet          German         Soviet

Unit               Casualties    Casualties  Tank Losses   Tank Losses

168th ID          98                 193                0                      0

19th PzD        472                935                6                      0

6th PzD          177             1,476               97                   13

7th PzD          367                270                 5                     0

Total            1,114             2,874             108                   13

 

This was very heavy tank losses for a single day of combat, yet there is no one who discusses it. Is there something about this day that I have mis-interpreted?

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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7 Comments

  2. I guess I will need to pull up the daily war dairy ready-for-action records and discuss this point-by-point. Not sure I have time for that at the moment. Have a few other higher priority tasks to address first. I might address this later in four or so posts.

    Page 767 gives the losses for the III Panzer Corps for each day:

    Day……Tanks……Losses……Percent Loss
    4………395……….2………..0.5
    5………393………60……….15
    6………334………66……….20
    7………273………54……….20
    8………241………24……….10
    9………229……..108……….47

    Which several days am I lumping together to get losses of over a hundred tanks?

  3. Davie’s reply via Twitter:

  5. Looking at the records of the Soviet 69th Army there is indeed a lot of fighting in the area that might fit the bill.

    Attacks from Mikhailovka to Stariy Gorod:
    04:00
    10:00
    14:00
    deflected by the 81st Guards Rifle Division. The last attack was supported by 10 flamethrower tanks (sounds like the 10 tanks that go missing, I will see if they are claimed as knocked out).

    Attacks from Shelikhovo:
    9:40 at Mazikino supported by 20 tanks and a battalion of infantry
    15:20 to Shlyakhovoye
    deflected by 305th Rifle Division.

    Another attack of 20 tanks from Shelikhovo to Shlyakhovoye is reported on July 10th, but it doesn’t say what time.

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