Large photo report on the fighting of German armor in Hungary - useful for research

[Evgeni M]

Dear All,

Just want to post ta link to a very nice photo report that I found on the internet on the fighting of German armored formations in Hungary (including SS units). It's a war time report of the Soviet Army commission that assessed the fighting in the area. A lot of detailed info is in Russian, but there are English descriptions as well!

Бои у озера Балатон. Январь–мар� � 1945 г. (fb2) | Либрусек

Enjoy your research

Cheers,

Evgeni

[KRISSE]

Well, very nice. It is in Russian.....

[Evgeni M]

The description of the photos are in both Russian and English

[roger9344]

Excellent site! Even though I can't read Russian well at all, the photo's are great!

[NickD]

Excellent site! Even though I can't read Russian well at all, the photo's are great!

look under the Russian writing you'll see the English translation as well

[Tango]

Some excellent photos there!! I was just thinking the loss of live & equipment... amazing amount.. cheers Terry.

[Paul D]

Interesting link thanks for posting.

[sitges1990]

Excellent link Evgeni. I'm with Tango, mind boggling how much equipment was destroyed and captured in this small operational area alone.

Jay

[Woolgar]

Amazing images ! That knocked out King Tiger at the beginning still looks in good nick !! I wonder what happened to these slain monsters

Thanks for showing this site

Nick

[Evgeni M]

Always a pleasure to share interesting stuff! Indeed, the fighting was very heavy and it was the last big German offensive of the time. Same sources report 50-60 tanks per km of the front at the start of the offensive (mainly heavy tanks and SPGs) in the area of the breakthrough. From almost 900 tanks committed to the offensive 500 were lost (you can see the white numbers marked by the inspection on the tanks).

One of the main reasons why such a powerful attack was repelled was in the preparation of the Red Army . Mid-February the Soviets knew about the German plans and prepared a strong line of defence using experience of Kursk (up to 30 km in depth). Main focus was on artillery (in the most dangerous places of the front a saturation of 50-60 pieces per km was achieved) in combination with prepared defensive position (camouflage, trenches and mine fields). A lot of importance was also given to logistics as artillery uses loads of ammunition and trucks need fuel to carry it to the front. For that purpose roads were constructed to manoeuvre the reinforcement and even a pipeline across the Danube river was constructed.

BTW Kurt Knispel (panzer ace of aces of the axis) also fought in that area (Kurt Knispel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)