The battle of Kursk

The battle of Kursk was the last opportunity for the Luftwaffe to fully support a large-scale offensive, and was the Soviet air forces’ first success in battling their opponents to a standstill during summer months. Aiming to gain a success to stabilize the Eastern Front for the summer, Hitler ordered a concerted attack intended to cut off and destroy Red Army forces holding the Kursk salient. It turned into the greatest tank clash of the war.

In his book Kursk 1943, Airpower in the Eastern Front’s most pivotal battle, Soviet military expert William E. Hiestand explains how the complex air war over Kursk played out. With both sides deploying new aircraft specifically designed for destroying tanks, massive engagements took place above the clashes of armor. It was a simultaneous struggle to attain air superiority while bringing their Stukas, Hs 129s, and Il-2 Shturmoviks down for repeated low-level attack runs in the face of enemy fighters and antiaircraft fire.

The Ju-87G, the tank busting Ju 87 fitted with 37 mm Cannons

One of the best-known aspects of the Kursk air battle was the employment of the Ju 87 G with two 37mm cannon, famously flown by Stuka ace Hans-Ulrich Rudel. Searching for a better aerial capability to destroy enemy tanks, a special unit, Versuchskommando für Panzerbekämpfung, was established at Rechlin in Germany in late 1942 to experiment with new equipment. Two squadrons flew Ju 87s with 37mm cannon in underwing pods, each of the two with 12 tungsten armor-piercing rounds. An additional squadron experimented with a 37mm on Bf 110s, and another with Ju 88s carrying a large 75mm PAK 40 cannon. Of the three variants, only the Ju 87 was successful, and the squadrons were assigned one each to StG 1 and StG 2 in June 1943.

Rudel, the Luftwaffe’s leading tank-killing ace, would fly the Ju 87 G model with its 37mms, and end the conflict claiming to have personally destroyed 519 Soviet tanks. The Ju 87 G was even slower and more unwieldy than other models with the weight of the two cannons and was vulnerable to ground fire when attacking at low altitude. The Luftwaffe typically placed four G and eight D models in a squadron, and tactics called for the Ju 87 Ds to suppress Soviet antiaircraft fire with bomb attacks before the Gs flew in low to attack the T-34s from the side or rear.
Although its armament could penetrate enemy tanks’ weaker side and rear armor, the Ju 87 Gs were vulnerable to ground fire during their low-level attack runs.

Legendary Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel destroying 12 T-34s in one day

On Jul. 12, 1943, the seventh day of Operation Zitadelle (Operation Citadel, as the German offensive operation in July 1943 against Soviet forces in the Kursk salient was codenamed) the II SS Panzerkorps faced the 5th Guards Tank Army’s counterattack with little support on its flanks. As the Soviet tank brigades charged over two miles of open terrain, they faced deadly long-range fire from the II SS Panzerkorps tanks and guns, while Hs 129s, Fw 190s, and Ju 87s operated overhead. StG 1 and Panzerjägerstaffel/SchG 1 flew 248 sorties during the 12th, almost all in direct support of II SS and guided in by radio from Luftwaffe liaison officers on the ground.

Although the Stukas only managed 150 sorties, Hauptmann Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the Staffelkapitän of I/StG 2 “Immelmann,” reported destroying 12 Soviet tanks with the two 37mm cannon on his Ju 87 G. The number of Soviet tanks lost to air attack is uncertain, but the commander of the 36th Tank Brigade, Colonel Mitroshenko, was seriously wounded when his lend-lease Churchill tank was knocked out by Luftwaffe attack.
Rudel continued to fly the G model into 1945. On Feb. 9, he destroyed 13 Soviet tanks in an action near the Oder River, but lost his leg when his Stuka was damaged by Soviet antiaircraft fire. Rudel returned to the air in March, eventually flying to the Prague area to turn himself over to the Allies. An unrepentant Nazi, Rudel emigrated to Argentina after the war.

Photo credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-655-5976-04 / Grosse / CC-BY-SA 3.0 / Wikipedia