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Episode 6 - The Last Advance

By the 8th July 1943 on the Kursk salient’s northern front line the fighting around Ponyri had reached stalemate, but fifteen kms to the west Model’s panzer divisions made their last flailing effort to breach the Russian defences. The goal was the town of Olkovatka where the last Soviet line could be smashed on the way to meeting up with von Manstein’s 4th Army, advancing from the south to meet it east of Kursk. Rossokovsky addressed the threat by rushing his last armoured reserves to meet the Germans on the heights before the town, leading to three days of intense attack and counter-attack. Although there were local successes there was to be no breakthrough…and in three days time to the south, Von Manstein’s panzers would reach the approaches to Prokorovka.

I couldn’t really depict the battle(s) of Kursk without attempting a tank vs tank confrontation, and its sometime result. Suffice to say it was more difficult to pull off a close-quarter detonation than I’d imagined, but after a number of failures I finally got lucky with this sequence, the T34 turret doing exactly what I wanted.

Ep 7 next month and then I’m done, thanks for looking in.