German World War II records are often not stereotypical “German-like” in their depth and detail. Often it is hard to tell on any given day how many tanks are damaged versus destroyed versus broken down. For much of my work on Kursk, I have had to rely on changes in daily tank strength reports, and work from there. Many authors seem to have hung their hat on German reports of total tank losses, or tanks destroyed, which is systematically reported. One the more detailed tank status reports we have came from the III Panzer Corps from 9 to 21 July 1943.
Let me show you want they have (this was the most complete report):
Tank Report as of 9 July 1943 early (morning):
And then there is a key at the bottom that said “+ (green) into repair” and “+ (red) total.” Of course my copy is in black and white, taken from microfilm at the U.S. archives (T312, R68, pg 4374). Perhaps someone has a color copy of this file from Germany.
Anyhow, 26 tanks lost this day. Note that they count Sturmgeshuetz (Assault Guns) as tanks (many authors don’t).
The total tank losses reported are:
8 July 1943: 26
9 July 1943: 60 + 48 for the 6th Panzer Division = 108 !!!
1. (they do not give losses for the 6th PzD but it only had 22 tanks ready-for action early on 10 July).
2. See: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/2018/10/10/6th-panzer-division-tank-losses-on-9-july-1943/
3. This is a significant action that is not clear from the records and certainly not from the 10-day “totally destroyed” list.
10 July 1943: No figures given
11 July 1943: 29 (but they only report for the 7th and 19th PzD.
12 July 1943: 21 (no reports from three battalions)
13 July 1943: 24 (no reports from 7th PzD and two of the Bns)
14 July 1943: 1
They don’t report any losses from the 15th through the 21st.
The 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion (Tigers) reports 19 tanks lost on the 9th. Only two Tigers were reported destroyed from the 5th – 10th.
This is one of the few German reports I have seen that report damaged tanks, and it is clearly incomplete. Usually they just report ready for action and total destroyed. The problem is that the unit can be in significant action one day (like 9 July when III Panzer Corps lost over 100 tanks), and they end up only recording a couple of tanks destroyed.
Just to show the differences (data from pages 1336, 1337 and 1339 of my Kursk book):
These counts to not include Marders (self-propelled antitank guns).
I think, if you are really looking at analyzing and understanding German armor operations in World War II, then you need to look at the daily changes in ready-for-action, not just their “total destroyed claims.”
The records that have survived are mostly from division, corps and army HQs. From their perspective, it was hardly relevant to keep track on damaged tanks. They wanted to know the number of tanks that could be committed to action (hence it was important to report the number of operational tanks), but also it was relevant to know how many tanks that were irretrievably lost, as this indicated the need for replacements.
The number of tanks damaged was less relevant to the higher command echelons, but in the few surviving records from panzer regiments and battalions such information can often be found. Unfortunately, most such records were destroyed in the spring 1945, when the magazines caught fire during a bombing raid (if I remember correctly).
Well, I do have the KTB for 19.1 to 8.8.43 for the 11th PzR, 6th PzD. They don’t regularly report tank losses either. For example, on 6 July they report “Verluste: 8 Panzer durch Beschuss, 3 durch Minen.” They don’t report losses for the 7th or 8th, but they do make sure they claim Soviet tank kills for each of those days. They do not report losses for the 9th or 10th either, but give a tank status on the 10th. No time is given. So the Army report records for the morning of 10 July 22 tanks: 12 Pz III l, 1 Pz III 7.5, 7 Pz IVs, and 2 Bef. They had 2 Pz IIs listed, but then x’ed through them. The 11th Pz Rgt reports 47 tanks: 5 Pz II, 17 Pz III lg, 5 Pz Pz III k, 10 Pz IV, 2 Bef, 4 Fla-Pz, 4 T-34s. No time is given but these reports are usually towards the end of the day.. The paragraph before that discussed the battle group, which included the 19th PzD’s tank regiment.
So…….either they:
1. Lost less tanks than indicated on the 9th.
2. They repaired lots of tanks.
3. Or this is a combined report for the battle group….including the panzer regiments for the 6th and 19th PzDs.
Hard to say.
But is that the complete war diary with annexes? I have copies of the war diary for the Pz.Rgt. 11 for Jan-Feb 1944 and that is not the complete war diary with annexes.
In two of the cases I have written about here on the blog, Pz.Jäg.Abt. 654 and I./Pz.Rgt. 26, I have had access to what appears to be the complete war diaries with annexes and in those cases it is possible to track every loss down to turret number. For the III./Pz.Rgt. 36, I only have the war diary itself, but no annexes. In that case it is not possible to track down tank losses in the same way as I could do for the other two battalions.
As the extant records for regiments and battalions have not come to us through the regular channels, they are often not complete.
No. My copy is also missing pages.