Mark Urban

And they'd also formed brigades of anti-tank guns.

So you might have 72 guns in one of these anti-tank brigades and specialised tank destroyer vehicles.

A lot of the armies in the war, the Americans and the Germans also went for those, less so the British.

So the whole idea then became this sword and shield idea.

that when the enemy attacked in a movement like the Kursk Offensive, Operation Citadel, you would hold up your shield, as it were, and take the pain, take the blows, and slowly wear down the advancing tank force through mines and anti-tank guns.

And then when you were good and ready, you'd wield your sword, which was your own armoured counter-attack, where you held your tanks back

Yes, I think so.

The Kursk battle took place over a very wide area, involved a million and a half soldiers.

But there was this particular clash at Prokhorovka, where in a single day, over several miles of front, I think the Russians lost something like 350 tanks.

They claimed the Germans had lost 200 and something, including 55 tigers.

In fact, the Germans had lost 14, including one tiger.

But that's a whole story about how historians went back and analysed the true losses there.

But yes, I think that is, I mean, you know, it was later claimed by historians.

the head of the Israeli Armored Corps, that if you added the two fronts together, the Golan and the Sinai front in the 1973 war, you had more tanks engaged in a sort of smaller geographic area than the Kursk battle.

But I think that's a slightly tendentious... But not to say the 1973 battle wasn't a huge tank fight, but no, I think Prokhorovka is the kind of...

Well, we know that the Red Army buried the Nazis and therefore I think we know who in the end had the last laugh or grimace.

The Tiger, I mean, it is an extraordinary creation.

And in some ways, an awful lot of the tanks that one looks at and get developed

They still have the primary mission, the Sherman, for example.

They're basically there to help the infantrymen.