Belgorod occupied Belgorod from 25 October 1941 to 9 February 1943. The Germans re-captured it on 18 March 1943 in the final move of the Third Battle of Kharkov. On 12 July 1943, during the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in world history took place near Prokhorovka, and Red Army definitively retook the city on 5/6 August 1943. The Belgorod Diorama is one of the World War II monuments commemorating the event. In 1954 the city became the administrative center of Belgorod Oblast. From this time the rapid development of the city as a regional center began. Belgorod is
Tanks in World War II Italians also labeled the machine gun armed L3/35 a "light tank", although it is more commonly called a tankette. Like the US Army (which utilized French and British tanks in World War I), the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) did not have tanks of its own in World War I, so it started out by purchasing foreign tanks for evaluation during World War I and right after the war ended. Like many other nations, the Japanese initially didn't embrace the tank, as it didn't have the cavalry tradition. Cavalry was used for reconnaissance in the mountainous countryside, and initially, as with