The Belgorod Diorama Of The Tank Battle of 1943

Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

The Belgorod Diorama Of The Tank Battle of 1943

The Belgorod Diorama

The Belgorod Diorama is the biggest museum dedicated to the most hot part of the Kursk battle: the tank battle of Prokhorovka of July,12,2943. The whole square of the picture is 1005 square meters (67 meters longwise and 15 meters of height) and the object plan is more than 500 square meters.
The diorama is made by a group of battle-painters of the Grekov Studio from Moscow.
Besides the diorama there is also a big exposition of this battle in the museum.

The Kursk battle is one of the biggest battles of the World War II. During this battle the Red Army at first fought in active defence (July, 5 - 11, 1943) and then took the counter-offensive (July,12 - August,23, 1943). In this battle 2 big German groupings were defeated and the last attempts of the German Command to make a big offensive in summer of 1943 were ruined.

The main goal of the German Command was to strike the concentrated blows from North and South in the direction to Kursk. The German Headquarters tried to break through the Soviet troops defences on the Kurst part of the front, so called "Kursk Duga" (Duga in Russian means "an arc") and defeat and destroy the Soviet forces.

A fragment of the Belgorod diorama

On July,12, 1943 the Soviet troops of the Voronezh front took the counter-attack. The main combats took place in the region of the village of Prokhorovka (about 40 kilometers far from Belgorod). After unsuccessful attemps of German troops to attack in the direction to Oboyan and Korocha on July,9 , the German Command didn't give up the plans to break to Kursk, and on July, 11 the Germans at the cost of serious losses could to move towards Prokhorovka.

The Prohkorovka battle 1943. A fragment of the Belgorod diorama.

On July,12, in the morning the Soviet troops counter-attacked in this part of front. And in the West and South of Prokhorovka the great tank battle ran high.

Somewhere near Prokhorovka. A fragment of the Belgorod Diorama

In this battle from both sides more than 1.5 thousands of tanks and big air-forces took part. Under the order of the General Headquarters of the Red Army the 5-th Tank Army and 5-th Army of Generals Rotmistrov and Zhadov were transferred from the Stepnoy front to Prokhorovka just in time.

In the centre of the Prokhorovka battle (a fragment of the Belgorod Diorama)

After a long, hard and bloody battle the Germans were stopped and after several days of very hard combats they were thrown back to Belgorod.

In the battle at Prokhorovka Marshal A.M.Vasilevsky commanded the Soviet troops.