The Luftwaffe Stukas also attacked and had considerable success in destroying the Russian artillery batteries, but, Lomme recounted German pilot Hans Rudel:The Russians' guns were almost as numerous as their mines and the camouflage was done. masterfully...
We had to assume that each copse was an artillery battery and swoop down to the trees...Four out of five times we'd find out we'd hit a 76...if he hadn't gotten us first. »
This success, however, did little to erase the difficulties facing the tanks on the morning of 5 July. The whole of the 48th Panzer Corps - the 3rd and 11th Panzer Divisions and the Gross Deutschland - were ordered to move from the bombarded villages to the next Soviet line of defense, then to take Ssyrzew and Ssyrzewo which were beyond the Pena, and to move north-west to seize the wood of Beresowka and the three heights in its extension.
The flood caused by the downpour made this mission impossible without the help of engineers; the sappers were continually harassed by Soviet snipers and aircraft. When dawn came the tanks, in close formation along the entire 48th Corps front, appeared very vulnerable, many of them bogged down from getting too close to the marshy ground near the Pena, and all being in open ground and thus constituting easy prey during air attacks.
The three S.S. divisions to the right of the 48th Corps had better luck. The ground they attacked was slightly higher and largely outside the flooded area. Sepp Dietrich of the S.S. Leibstandarte, a leader of great valor and great courage, pushed his tanks more than 11 kilometers ahead destroying 27 T34s. In the late afternoon, his patrols reported that the village of Gremutshy was empty of enemies, but Dietrich was not to be trapped by the deserted objective. He stopped his tanks, put them into the folds of the terrain and made sure that they were well concealed.
This maneuver was rewarded. At dusk, the bombardment of Gremutshy began; it continued until midnight. Then, the whole Leibstandarte resumed its advance, without having lost a single tank. Gremutshy had been reduced to smoking ruins by artillery fire. Its thatched houses were still ablaze when by moonlight Dietrich's tanks surrounded the razed village and moved into position.
Dietrich surmised, correctly, that the Soviets thought that their bombardments had damaged or destroyed many enemy tanks and that the Germans were therefore not ready for the attack.
The element of surprise was essential, he wasted no time on unnecessary refinements such as clearing the fields of ruins; besides, the losses were more numerous as the S.S. Leibstandarte advanced. By noon, the big Panthers, which were invulnerable to 76 mm fire except at point-blank range, had penetrated the Soviet defense lines south of Werchopenje and were pushing towards the 260 to 1,600 meter mark south of Noweosselowka, one of the objectives that had not been achieved by the 48th corps.
Losses had been heavy both from breakdowns and from Russian attacks. The day ended with a zero result in this central part of the front.
It was not, in fact, until the third day, July 7, that real success was achieved by the troops forming the south jaw of the pincer.
The sun had dried the ground by then, and the battlefield looked different, albeit just as desolate:miles of devastated wheat fields, hundreds of destroyed tanks, and corpses already swollen with heat. A soldier reported in his diary:“A man had been taken by the blast of a bomb while he was crouching in a ditch, his trousers down. The height of humiliation. »
Minefields had wreaked havoc:the blackened flesh and bones of victims littered the battlefield:"Sneaking up to a small grove, I looked up and saw the face of a sniper tree.
Panicked, I fired a pistol shot at him before he got to me himself. But it was only a head, a head torn from a body by an explosion, still with, it seemed to me, a smirk on its lips; she had come to lodge there in the branches. I climbed up to dislodge it and it fell to the ground with a thud; the smirk hadn't gone away. »
The Russians had retreated to the ruins of Gremutshy to prepare their counterattack. As they moved into position, the 48th Panzer Corps launched its operation late, attempting to push a double attack to the northwest.
He took the enemy by surprise, broke through in force on either side of Ssyrzew; the 7th Guards Army had to flee in disorder and take cover behind Hill 243 beyond Warchopenje, losing 70 tanks and artillery pieces to the carefully prepared and adjusted German barrage.
With the ground now clear before them, the Gross Deutschland gathered momentum and moved on Ssyrzewo without suffering any casualties. The Russians seemed helpless for the time being. But in the afternoon they recovered and launched their counter-attack on Ssyrzewo. This resulted in a very violent frontal shock, 500 tanks were battling for several hours; by nightfall, neither side had gained ground.
It became clearer than ever that the main feature of the Battle of Kursk was a huge waste of men and material in a completely unimaginative fight. Mass was pitted against mass in a conflict which theoretically should have been brief but which, in five days, showed no sign of reaching its decisive point.