>>20597This sounds like bullshit to me, what are the sources on throw weight here? What is the time frame for Soviet and German artillery barrages? The Battle of Kursk was an example of a German Offense running into a heavily entrenched Soviet defense (which like in today's Russian defensive lines in the SMO) included the use of massed artillery on advancing armor and troops. The Germans forwent an artillery barrage before their initial assault, hoping to catch the Soviet's unawares in the early morning, but the Soviet artillery opened fire on their flanking armor and forced them to run into the minefields. This continued even as the Germans advanced through the defensive lines while German artillery had limited capability in hitting soviet positions because of the risk in hitting their own troops. German artillery only came into significant play during the Counter-Attack phase of the battle, when the Soviets halted and routed the German advance at Prohorovka and pushed into Orel, which was met with German artillery. Thus the use of artillery at different times in the battle are important to state. Moreover this discounts aviation, as Soviet fighters downed many bomber and dive-bomber aircraft, while their own Sturmoviks dealt immense losses to German armored and infantry forces.
Also how is artillery counted? Is it including Self-propelled artillery like the Stug-III or SU-122? as artillery units? Was the German and Soviet methods of counting if one is artillery or not different?* Does it count mortars as artillery? Are MLRS systems like the Katyusha counted?
Going by statistics of artillery the Soviets had nearly 20K mortars and cannons at eve of battle with over 7.5K more in reserve. Meantime the Germans collectively had 10K of all artillery, and none in reserve. More importantly the Soviets main howitzer artillery was in the 122 or 152mm range, which had higher throw weights that normal German artillery, and the mortars for Germany and the USSR were roughly equal in capability, firing speed and throw weight.
49% of 51,083 tons is 25,030 tons of shells and 36% of 21,867 tons is 7872.12 tons. Meaning the Germans were firing over 3x more than the Soviet forces, even though they had 2-2.5x fewer artillery. That sounds fucking ridiculous, especially considering Soviet artillery doctrine. The idea that they fired far less ammunition than the Ge
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