Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!amdcad!military
From: hhm@ihlpy.att.com (Herschel H Mayo)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Kursk - Book on Tactics.
Summary: bad book
Message-ID: <27207@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 12 Sep 89 07:46:52 GMT
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From: hhm@ihlpy.att.com (Herschel H Mayo)

In article <27189@amdcad.AMD.COM>, ssc-vax!shuksan!major@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Mike Schmitt) writes:

> I would add for your library:

> "The Tigers Are Burning"  - Martin Caidin

I can not agree. This book is awful and filled with major errors.
Caidin is incapable of distinguishing the difference between a Tiger I
and a Porsche Elephant which he constantly Identifies as a Tiger. This
would not be so bad, except that he presumes that none of the German tank
types carried secondary machine guns, and expounds on this at length.
At another point he assures the reader that the Germans were still using
the 3,7 mm pak by the time of Kursk. With the exception of a hollow bomb
retrofit, no Germans in their right mind were still using these against
T34s. While he does attempt to give credit where credit is due, his
pro Russian bias is obvious. 

> (BTW:  I'm in the process of reading "Lost Battles" by von Manstein.
> I'll see what he has to say about Kursk.)

He states that the Germans were at the point of no return in the battle.
In spite of the fact that the attack was slowed, the Germans were making
steady gains, and had as much to loose by withdrawing as continuing the
battle. Hitler evidently didn't see it that way and decided to withdraw
vital forces to the south. He implies that the idea of the attack was to
draw out and destroy the Soviet reserves in a single battle rather that
territorial gain, a point which many students of the battle seem to miss.


In a personal note. I interviewed two German survivors of the battle of
Kursk. They stated that Soviet losses in the counter attack must have 
been worse that the initial battle itself. Both stated that they had
never seen such destruction of men and machinery on such a scale as they
saw and participated in. They were astounded that the Russians could
recover from such losses.  While such observations may be open to debate.
I get an uneasy feeling that the true picture of the battle of Kursk
lies somewhere between the recollections of the veterans and the claims
of the Soviets. Maybe the true story will never be told.

Larry Mayo