The Doomed Story of the 5th Guards Tank Army — 400 Tanks Lost in a Single Morning

On a wide slope of farmland outside a small railway town in western Russia, wheat grows back every summer over ground that once held the wreckage of an entire tank army. On the morning of 12 July 1943, near a place called Prokhorovka, more than 600 Soviet tanks rolled forward into the open fields. By that afternoon, hundreds of them were burning, and close to 400 had been destroyed or knocked out, most of the crews still inside. This was the 5th Guards Tank Army. But the men weren't sent into a battle. They were sent into a trap, and for decades the truth of that morning was buried under a lie. This is the story of the 5th Guards Tank Army, and of one morning that broke it. It's a story of tank crews who did almost everything they were asked to do, and were failed by the men who ordered them forward. But it doesn't begin on that slope outside Prokhorovka. It begins five months earlier, with a brand-new army built for a single purpose, and a general who would spend the rest of his life explaining what went wrong. If you're new to this channel, a like helps these crews be remembered. On WW2 Regiments, we follow one unit at a time, back to the ground where its story ended.