usual opponents. They were competitive—but it took a good pilot to make up the technical difference. There was the rub. Soviet fighter trainees were routinely assigned to frontline units after only eighteen flight hours, compared with seventy for their German counterparts. The quality gap was bridgeable by skilled, experienced squadron and group leaders, but they were still in short supply. The difference would be made up in blood.
Soviet air doctrine was geared to the ground war. Close support and interdiction were its foci. In the context of Kursk, that involved a campaign against German airfields and railroads in the salient’s immediate rear by twin-engine bombers, as many as four hundred in a single raid. These were supplemented by the night light bomber regiments, composed of single-engine Polikarpov Po-2 biplane trainers—often flown by female military aviators (dubbed “night witches”). The planes’ distinctive engine sounds won them the nickname “sewing machines” from
Initially, German air offensives into Soviet rear areas were small-scale efforts, focused on train busting. These operations also diverted resources from a more relevant target: the Kursk rail yards, central to Soviet logistics in the salient. Major German raids on May 22 and June 2–3, the latter a round-the-clock operation, met bitter resistance from superior numbers of fighters. Losses were heavy enough and damage was so quickly repaired that the Luftwaffe decided to suspend daylight operations against Soviet rear areas for the balance of Citadel. Night operations continued at a nuisance level—though one midnight strike unknowingly hit Rokossovsky’s command post. He escaped by “mere chance,” or perhaps intuition. Both would be riding with the Red Army in the coming weeks.
During June, both sides concentrated primarily on building strength for the ground campaign. For the Germans, in that context air support had never been so crucial. The constrained nature of the fighting zone, the uniquely high force-to-space ratios on both sides, sharply restricted the ground forces’ maneuver potential. No less significant was the absolute and relative decline of German artillery, particularly its medium and heavy elements, compared with that of the Red Army. Forbidden heavy metal by Versailles, the Germans had been playing catch-up since rearmament began.
Put plainly, the German artillery could not be counted on to neutralize the Soviet guns. That made airpower critical to provide not merely support, but the shock that would open the front and let the mobile divisions through. Citadel gave the Luftwaffe three synergized missions: Work with the tanks and infantry to break through the Soviet defenses, fix and weaken Soviet reserves, and maintain not merely control but supremacy in contested airspace.
That last point was vital, because a high proportion of the ground-attack aircraft were so highly specialized that they could not protect themselves in the air. The Luftwaffe’s order of battle included only five ground-attack squadrons equipped with fighter-bombers in the Western style, modified Fw-190s. There were also five squadrons of specialized antitank aircraft: the Henschel Hs-129, whose twin engines, heavy armor, and 30 mm cannon made it the ancestor of the U.S. Air Force’s well-known A-10. The legendary but lumbering Junkers Ju-87 Stuka was still the backbone of the close-air-support squadrons. Interdicting the battlefield was the responsibility of the medium bombers. Like the Stuka, the Heinkel He-111 and the Ju-88 were prewar designs, effective only in daylight, defended by a few rifle-caliber machine guns in single mounts.
By this stage of the war, the fighter squadrons were the Luftwaffe’s elite, well trained, well led, widely experienced, and supremely confident. There is no such thing as a perfect fighter plane, but in the summer of 1943, the Fw-190A came close. Fast, well armed, and maneuverable, with a reliable engine, it would not be comprehensively challenged as an air superiority aircraft until a year later by the American P-51D Mustang.
Luftwaffe higher command for Citadel was flexible enough to be confusing. The Sixth Air Fleet cooperated with the Ninth Army and the Fourth Air Fleet with Army Group South. Their respective strike forces, the 1st Air Division and VIII Air Corps, incorporated most of the ground-support elements. Each also included four or five fighter groups, of around three dozen aircraft apiece. In practice, units were shifted from sector to sector as needed by a very efficient system of air liaison officers. Exact figures remain vague, but at Citadel’s beginning, the Luftwaffe could call on approximately two thousand first-line fighters, medium bombers, Stukas, and other ground-attack planes. The first-rate maintenance system would turn them around as quickly as they could be refueled and rearmed and keep them in the air as long as there was enough airframe to repair.
The Soviet air force had paid a high tuition since 1941 but had learned the Luftwaffe’s lessons of centralization and flexibility. Three air armies contributed directly to the defense of Kursk: the Sixteenth and the Second, attached, respectively, to the Central and Voronezh Fronts, and the Seventeenth from the Southwestern Front. The initial numbers totaled around 1,050 fighters, 950 ground-attack planes, and 900 bombers. Stavka had also assembled an impressive reserve force of three air armies with 2,750 planes. Intended to spearhead the attack projected to follow the German defeat, they soon joined in the fighting. Finally, more than 300 bombers from Long Range Aviation and 300 fighters from Air Defense Command were assigned for night raiding and point defense, respectively.
The air force possessed a counterpart to Zhukov in both ability and toughness. That Zhukov liked and trusted Alexander Novikov was significant—few on Zhukov’s level could claim the same relationship. Novikov was also first-rate. As a junior infantry officer, in 1922 he won a fifteen-minute flight in a lottery. Twenty years later, he was the air force commanding general, with a burgeoning reputation as an innovator able to combine new ideas and equipment with overall Soviet doctrine. In the circumstances of the Eastern Front, that meant cooperating closely with the ground forces, concentrating on tactical and operational levels with independent missions of any kind having low priority. At Kursk, above all, it meant ground support.
The medium bombers would maintain pressure on the German rear areas, as they had been doing for months. But stage center went to the Shturmovik. The Ilyushin Il-2 first went into action on July 1, 1941. By 1943, it made up a third of Soviet-built frontline aircraft. Of mixed wood and metal construction, it carried an offensive armament of two 23 mm cannon and two machine guns in the wings, plus rockets and hundred-kilogram bombs. At Kursk they added shaped-charge antitank bomblets that could penetrate the rear-deck armor of any German tank and explode before they bounced off. The two-man crew compartment, the engine, and the fuel systems were protected by an armored “bathtub” up to half an inch thick.
Altogether, the “Ilyusha” was a formidable instrument of war. Its slow speed and limited maneuverability were disadvantages in single air combat. But their standard attack formation of a squadron-strength circle enabled the Shturmoviks to cover one another’s tails against Luftwaffe fighters. That gave them a chance and decreased the burden of the Soviet fighter squadrons.
IV
Kursk’s delays were not decided in a Hitlerian vacuum. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW; Armed Forces High Command) was essentially responsible for directing the war everywhere except in Russia, which was the primary assignment of OKH. This divided command, ostensibly intended to facilitate focused planning, also reinforced Hitler’s position as the Reich’s ultimate decision maker. The OKW was increasingly concerned at the prospect of an imminent Allied landing in southern Europe—not only for operational reasons, but because of the opportunity the invasion would offer those Italian military and political figures who sought an exit from the war. On June 18, the OKW went so far as to recommend canceling Citadel and using the mobile divisions assigned to it to form two general reserves, one in Russia for theater purposes and the other in Germany.
Zeitzler too was having second thoughts. Intelligence reports on the metastasizing Soviet defensive system combined with continuing delays in the delivery not merely of new tanks, but of material of every kind, encouraged the chief of staff to question openly whether the series of delays had made Citadel an unacceptably dangerous risk. Then Model weighed in. A staff officer at Army Group Center later suggested his original intention had been to convince Hitler not to delay Citadel, but to abandon it. That seems a bit subtle for someone who took pride in “serving uncut wine” by eschewing the byzantine, Machiavellian politics long associated with the general staff. Model was concerned at the growing Russian buildup on the Orel salient’s northern face, in the rear of Model’s concentration against Kursk. The prospects of a boot up the backside with no effective counterforce available to block it increased as Kursk’s defenses grew more elaborate.
Using the panzers to make the breakthrough on Ninth Army’s front risked not only getting them stuck—even if successful, the mobile formations might well be left able neither to exploit the situation on their front nor to shift
