The wider Battle of Kursk - from 5 July to 23 August 1943 - was indeed a turning-point in World War Two. Soviet forces thwarted a huge Nazi counter-attack, after Adolf Hitler's troops had suffered a colossal defeat at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43.
But recently a British historian, Ben Wheatley, analysed German Luftwaffe aerial photos of the Prokhorovka battlefield, taken on 14-16 July, when the area was still in German hands. The photos were found in the US National Archives at College Park, Maryland.
Wheatley's assessment, backed by detailed study of battle reports and historical archives, is that on 12 July the
Germans lost just five Panzer IV tanks at Prokhorovka, but decimated "kamikaze" Soviet tank formations, turning
more than 200 Soviet tanks into smouldering wrecks.
He writes that dozens of Soviet T-34 tanks tumbled into an anti-tank ditch 4.5m (15ft) deep, dug by Soviet infantry, and when the Red Army realised its mistake other T-34s started queuing up to cross a bridge. German tanks were easily able to pick them off at the bridge.