Prokhorovka. The Great Tank Battle

[Askari19]

The autopsy continues...

According to Strenght Dialog (and I don't trust it fully), Soviets had these AFVs remaining at the end  of the battle:

- 10 T-70s
- 140 T-34s (so we lost only 66% of them...)
- 6 M3Ms
- 13 Churchills
- 4 KV-Is
- 2 SU-76s
- 6 SU-122s
- 4 SU-152s
- 12 Ba-64 ACs
- for a total of 197 AFVs.

This puts the total Soviet AFvs at 695 (including ACs), which in turn puts our AFV loss ratio at 72%.

140 out of 150 T-70s lost...

Madness. 

In the central sector, 18 Tank Corps and its follow-on forces reminded the light tankers that their job is to die for information, and with the prospect of Uncle Joe's justice awaiting them, they did just that. 

Short visibility was a major factor in the early, foggy turns, which was mostly to the Soviets' advantage, but it did mean that when you came out of the fog at 2-3-4 hex range, the AP fire was quite deadly.

The distributed mountain of T-70 wreckage (not to mention all the rest) will feed the foundries of the motherland for quite some time... and be reincarnated in forms much more formidable.  I.e., Comrade can afford the losses, and learns to stop worrying and love attrition warfare.

[Crossroads]

Ha.

Here's the Axis AFV strength at the end of the day, according to Strength Dialog:

- 3 mk II
- 18 mk III
- 19 mk IV
- 6 mk VI
- 1 T-34
- 9 StugIII
- 4 Marder II/III
- for a total of 60 AFVs

So, a loss of some 79% of their armored assets...

I am not sure what goes on though with the Strength dialog. I only looked at Tiger numbers as they are so few, but if there were 16 of them, and they lost 4, how come the end result is 6 standing tanks... Somethings wrong here.

Anyway, the trend is obvious. You enter the fight, but you don't come out of it...

[Crossroads]

Anyway, the trend is obvious. You enter the fight, but you don't come out of it...

There was one famous survivor, however...



As you can observe, life in the kessel got pretty crowded towards the end.

[Dan Caviness]

Anyway, the trend is obvious. You enter the fight, but you don't come out of it...

There was one famous survivor, however...



As you can observe, life in the kessel got pretty crowded towards the end.

Life got crowded just about everywhere by the end.  One "issue" or better put "challenge" for the Germans is to find somewhere to hide all your HQ's and whatnot.  For the record, we played the Germans as follows:

Jesse/Kernelt:  North, Totenkopf Division, Maj. Gen. Priess
Ed/(forgot your handle Ed....sorry):  Middle, LAH Division, Brig. Gen. Wisch
Dan:  South, Das Reich Div., Maj. Gen. Krueger

One interesting dilemma for the Germans is what to do with Hausser himself.
We rapidly discovered he had to go.
Somewhere besides where he was, that is.
His initial position, nice and safe tucked back on the main road, got really unsafe pretty damned quick.

In the end we decided he was best off hiding on my southern flank.

This actually has an effect on the game, as with low ammo availability every turn you have to move an HQ the world will be out of load the next turn. 
When you move your CORPS HQ...yeah...

Nice to see Wittmann made it out...he's got some Shermans and Comets to kill in Normandy down the road...