History's 15 Largest Tank Battles

This was the first major tank battle of World War II and occurred just after Germany launched its attack on the Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) and France. France had a qualitative advantage in tanks at this time, but Germany prevailed because of its superior tactical deployment and mobility. The German tanks also had more crew members, so the commander could focus on command tasks. French commanders had to act as a gunner and assistant gunner besides commanding. The success was crucial in Germany’s eventual trapping of Allied armies at Dunkirk.

Following the Normandy invasion, the Allies troop movements had reached a stalemate and could not break out from the beaches. Field Marshal Bernard F. Montgomery decided on a plan titled Operation Goodwood to launch a huge armored assault that would capture the city of Caen and break the deadlock. It failed to do so.

The Germans schooled the Allies with skillful fighting withdrawals and well-coordinated counterattacks. German tank repair crews reclaimed damaged German and Allied tanks. While the allied lost over 200 tanks, the Germans lost only 75, with more than 40 were because of Allied bombing. Because of poor weather that limited Allied air superiority and inadequate British coordination and intelligence, Goodwood was a German defensive victory of the Normandy campaign.

The Battle of the Valley of Tears was fought in the Golan Heights, the area between Syria and Israel, during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Of Syria’s 1,400 tanks, about 400 were T-62s, state-of-the-art Soviet tanks at the time. The rest were a combination of older T-54 and T-55s. Facing them were two Israeli armored brigades of Centurion and M-48 Patton tanks. The overwhelming number of Syrian tanks penetrated the Israeli defenses at first, but the ferocity of the defenders bought Israel time to call up its reserves to reverse Syria’s gains. The number of destroyed tanks in the area earned it the name “Valley of Tears.”

The German military operation known as Operation Citadel was an attempt by the Nazis to regain the offensive initiative on the eastern front. Prokhorovka was the focus of the offensive. As it turned out, Citadel would be the last German offensive in the east. On July 12, 1943, counter-attacking Soviet tanks advanced over open ground and sustained heavy losses to German tank fire, including from heavily armored Tigers with 88-millimeter guns. Though this was a tactical loss for the Russians, their action inflicted enough damage to help stall,  and eventually stop,  the German offensive.

The Second Battle of El Alamein, fought near the western frontier of Egypt, was won by the British Eighth Army led by Montgomery. The Axis forces of Germany and Italy were helmed by the legendary “Desert Fox,” Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Earlier in the year, the first battle of El Alamein had ended in a stalemate. A strong British defensive position and the Qattara Depression, an area of quicksand impassable to mechanized forces, reduced the effectiveness of Germany’s tank formations. Superior numbers of equipment and air superiority also favored the British. This battle proved to be the turning point of the North African campaign in the Second World War.

There were at least four major tank engagements between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1941 and in this was one, Soviet resistance helped halt the Nazi advance on Moscow. Led by General Heinz Guderian, who pioneered the use of mobile, mechanized troops, the Germans attacked in an unexpected direction and took the cities of Bryansk and Oryol. In the process, three Soviet armies were encircled. The enveloped Russians never stopped fighting, delaying the Nazi march to Moscow by two weeks. This and heavy autumn rains and the onset of winter contributed to the German failure to take Moscow.

After the Syrian defeat in the Golan Heights, Egypt continued to engage Israel in the Sinai. Egyptian armor unleashed an assault with 1,000 tanks in what was the largest tank battle since World War II. Israeli tanks halted the attack, destroying 250 Egyptian tanks, and then drove the Egyptians back across the Suez Canal and almost went to Cairo before the Arabs asked for a ceasefire.

The Battle of Rzhev in the summer of 1942 was part of a series of engagements that lasted 15 months in the center of the eastern front. Rzhev, 140 miles west of Moscow, was captured by the Nazis during Operation Typhoon the previous winter when a German advance on Moscow was halted. The Soviets, under generals Konev and Zhukov, counter-attacked beginning in July 1942. Stubborn German resistance stopped the Soviet offensive, and the Russians failed to take advantage of their numerical superiority in tanks. The Russians suffered tremendous casualties and gained little ground.

The area around Smolensk is a 45-mile wide land area between the headwaters of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers. It has been the invasion route into the heart of Russia and Moscow from the west, taken by the Poles in the 17th century and Napoleon in 1812. The region would see vicious fighting in 1941. German Army Group Center, commanded by tank generals Heinz Guderian and Hermann Hoth, was tasked with encircling the Soviet troops defending the line of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers, to seize the cities of Vitebsk, Orsha, and Smolensk, and open the way to Moscow. It was one of the bitterest battles of World War II, and even though Soviet losses were heavy and the Germans gained ground, the Russians slowed the German advance to Moscow.

The Battle of Norfolk is one of two major tank battles on this list that was fought during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. It pitted the armored forces of the U.S. and the U.K. against the Ba’athist Iraqi Republican Guard in the Muthanna Province of southern Iraq. Iraqi armor was completely overmatched as American and British forces destroyed about 850 Iraqi tanks and hundreds of other types of combat vehicles. It was the last battle of the conflict before the ceasefire took effect.

On Feb. 24, 1991, about 3,000 tanks and thousands of armored vehicles along with infantry surged across the lightly guarded Saudi-Iraqi border as part of the effort to liberate Kuwait from Iraq. Commanding General Norman Schwarzkopf had devised a plan in which Allied coalition tanks would head north into Iraq, then turn east toward occupied Kuwait City, destroying resistance enroute.

Two days into the operation, American M1A1 tanks encountered the Republican Guard tanks. Several coalition units fought wave after wave of Iraqi tanks for four hours. Later on, more U.S. armored units battled more Republican Guard tanks in fierce and chaotic fighting. The Iraqi tanks were completely outgunned by the coalition’s armor. When the 100-hour Gulf War was over, about 3,300 Iraqi tanks were destroyed; the coalition lost 31.

The Battle of the Bulge was Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s great gamble to split the Allies armies and force them to the peace table. At the start of the battle, the Germans had the advantage in numbers in men, guns, and tanks, which included the Panzer IVs, Panthers, Tiger 1s and Tiger 2s. The U.S. Sherman tank had thinner armor and less firepower than its German counterparts.

The German offensive was slowed by pockets of U.S. resistance and lack of fuel for its tanks. Counterattacks that included General George Patton’s Third Army thwarted the German advance, and the battle ended in a German defeat.

The Battle of Brody in western Ukraine was a World War II tank battle fought between the German’s 1st Panzer Group’s III Army Corps and XLVIII Army Corps and five mechanized corps of two Soviet armies in the early stages of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The Red Army inflicted considerable casualties on the invaders. Despite having technological and numerical advantages, the Soviet Union lost the battle because of German air superiority, poor logistics, and a breakdown in command.

Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, commenced on June 22, 1941, displaying the full range of blitzkrieg tactics that caused the collapse of the Russian front line. The main thrust of the German effort was in the center, with two Panzer groups led by generals Heinz Guderian and Herman Hoth. By the end of June, all or most of four Soviet armies were trapped in pockets in Bialystok and Minsk. The Germans eliminated the resistance in both pockets and bagged almost 300,000 prisoners of war.

The titanic Battle of Kursk is regarded as the greatest tank battle in history. This conflict, as well as the Battle of Stalingrad, turned the tide on the eastern front. The Germans had scheduled the attack known as Operation Citadel at the salient around Kursk in May. They delayed the operation so they could bring to bear new, more powerful weapons such as the Panzer V (Panther Tank) Panzer VI (Tiger Tank) and the Elephant/Ferdinand Heavy Tank Destroyer.

The Russians countered with T-34s, KV-1s, T-70s, and some British Churchill tanks. The Soviets got wind of the German plan and the delay gave them time to build a formidable defense. The Tigers and Panthers were effective, but there were too few of them to make a difference. The Russians blunted the German attack and pushed the Germans back to their starting positions. Never again would Nazi Germany launch a major offensive on the eastern front.