prochorovka

[besilarius]

http://rt.com/news/prokhorovka-wwii-tank-battle-987/

[bob48]

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

[GDS_Starfury]

Ill comment whenever I get home.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I saw that when I was watching RT on TV last night.  It made me go and fire up Achtung Panzer immediately afterward and a had a very exciting and enjoyable Quick Mission where I pitted a mass of T-34s, M3 Stuarts, T-60s and a whack of Soviet shock troops against a bunch of evil SS types in PzKw IIIs. 

[GDS_Starfury]

Who won?

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

First playthrough I played as the dirty Nazis.  I had my 5 PzKw IIIs in good hull down position with a nice open field of fire in front of them.  The Soviet light tanks were no match and 6 of them were burning wrecks in no time.  The T-34s proved to be more of an issue.  I was able to knock the tracks off two of them and keep hammering away with my little 50mm pop guns until the crews bailed.  The other 3 T-34s got past my tanks and knocked the hell out of my infantry but the barve buggers managed to get close enough to knock them all out with AT grenades despite the high casualty rate.

Then the Soviets launched a human wave attack.  It's the first time I'd seen the AI do that in this game and it was very cool to watch.  Hundreds of the little buggers charging full tilt across a farm field at once.  My tanks opened up with their MGs and the high tide mark of bodies was only about 20 metres from my tanks. 

Second playthrough I played as the Soviets.  I had my mortars drop a smokescreen where I thought the SS tankers might be and then rolled my T-34s up into position (they suck at long range due to their shitty optics.)  When the smoke cleared our tank lines started battering the hell out of each other.  I knocked out 3 of theirs for one of mine dead and one de-tracked.  While that was going on, I rushed my light tanks down a tree lined road and towards the objective.  They were ambushed by infantry and the first two got knocked out by AT grenades but the remaining tanks ripped the guts out of the German infantry.  Then the Stukas showed up.

The first bombs went wide but they were nailing turrets after that.  I lost 2 more T-34s and 3 M3 Stuarts by the time the Luftwaffles returned to base.  Kinda ground down to a stalemate after that.  My infantry and theirs traded fire from treelines across about 150m of open ground and my remaining T-34s and their Pz IIIs just kept plinking away at each other until time wound down and the game ended in a draw.