Battle of Prokhorovka Battle of Prokhorovka The Battle of Prokhorovka was fought on 12 July 1943 near Prokhorovka, southeast of Kursk in the Soviet Union, during the Second World War. Taking place on the Eastern Front, the engagement was part of the wider Battle of Kursk, and occurred when the 5th Guards Tank Army of the Soviet Red Army attacked the II SS-Panzer Corps of the German Wehrmacht in one of the largest tank battles in military history. In April 1943, the German leadership began preparing for Operation Citadel, with the objective of enveloping and destroying the Soviet forces in the Kursk salient,
Battle of Kursk retreat and increasingly lost tanks in combat as well as from abandoning and destroying damaged vehicles. Across the entire Eastern Front 50 Tiger tanks were lost during July and August, with some 240 damaged. Most of these occurred during their offensive at Kursk. Between 600 to 1,612 tanks and assault guns sustained damage in the period from 5 July to 18 July. The total number of German tanks and assault guns destroyed during July and August along the entire Eastern Front amount to 1,331. Of these, Frieser estimates that 760 were destroyed during the Battle of Kursk. Beevor writes that