campaign, notable, interwar and Second World War
Operation Citadel
Operation Citadel was a campaign fought in 1943 at Kursk, in what is now Russia. Its exact site is not recorded; the atlas places it at Kursk. It was part of World War II, which ran from 1939 to 1945. The recorded result: Soviet victory.
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Where it sits in World War II
Record
| Date | 1943 (year precision) | |
|---|---|---|
| Place | Kursk, Russia 51.737N, 36.187E | |
| Kind | Campaign, interwar and Second World War | |
| Territorial change | Soviets prevent a German breakthrough and inflict high attrition on German forces | |
| Strength | Operation Citadel: 780,900 men; 2,928 tanks; 9,966 guns and mortars | Operation Citadel: 1,910,361 men; 5,128 tanks; 25,013 guns and mortars |
| Casualties and losses | Operation Citadel: 54,182 men; 323 tanks and assault guns destroyed,; Between 600–1,612 tanks and assault guns damaged; 159 aircraft; c. 500 guns; Battle of Kursk: 45,444 killed or missing and 119,843 wounded (per German military medical data); Total 165,287 men; Estimate 760 tanks and assault guns destroyed; 681 aircraft (for 5–31 July) | Operation Citadel: 177,847 men; 1,614–1,956 tanks and assault guns destroyed; 459 aircraft; ~1,000 aircraft; Battle of Kursk: 254,470 killed, missing or captured; 608,833 wounded or sick; Total 863,000 men; 6,064 tanks and assault guns destroyed or damaged; 1,626–1,961 aircraft; 5,244 guns |
| Commanders |
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Nearest engagements
- Battle of Kursk 1943, 7.3 km SW
- Battle of Prokhorovka 1943, 87 km SE
- Siege of Kromy 1605, 110 km N
- Battle of Dobrynichi 1605, 142 km NW
- Siege of Hlukhiv 1664, 157 km W
In the same war
- Before: bombing of Gelsenkirchen 1943
- After: Battle of Zvornik 1943
- All 1155 engagements of World War II
Elsewhere in 1943
Combat data (CDB90)
| Attacker: GER 48TH PZ CORPS | Defender: SOV 6TH GDS ARMY(+) | |
| Strength | 56,000 | 129,000 |
| Casualties | 2,900 (5.2%) | 30,200 (23.4%) |
| Mission accomplishment, 1 to 10 | 4 | 7 |
| Outcome | defender won | |
| Duration | 2 days | |
| Front width | 25 km | 25 km |
| Attacker advanced | 3 km | |
From the US Army Concepts Analysis Agency Database of Battles (CDB90, battle 496), public domain, in the CC0 tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold. Figures are the database's estimates, compiled in 1990 from published histories, and may differ from the Wikipedia infobox above.
Operation Citadel is one of 4,429 engagements of the 20th century in the atlas and one of 425 in present-day Russia.
Sources
Identity, coordinates, dates and the war from Wikidata Q12136088, released under CC0. Result, belligerents, commanders, strength and casualties from the infobox of the English Wikipedia article Operation Citadel, revision 1370631410, read 2026-11-15, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; the article's text is not reproduced here. Present-day country and state from Natural Earth. Dates before 1582 follow the Julian calendar as recorded.