Did 1 Tiger Beat 50 Tanks

Thank you World of Tanks for sponsoring this video. During registration use the code COMBAT to get for free: 7 days of premium access, 250k credits, the premium tank Cromwell B (tier 6), and 3 rental tanks for 10 battles each: Tiger 131, T78, and Type 64. Applicable to new users only. One of the most famous Tiger battles took place on July 8th 1943 during the Battle of Kursk when supposedly a lone Tiger under the command of Franz Staudegger destroyed 22 T-34s. The Soviet's fielded a total force of 50 to 60 Russian tanks. How could 1 tiger hold against that many tanks? This episode is still hotly debated. What really happened there? We use both German and Soviet sources to shine some light on the incident and show you both sides of the story in this film. For the German side we used internet articles “Panzer Aces Wittmann and Staudegger at Kursk” and “Revised footnote on Staudegger” by Christopher A. Lawrence, and also “Franz Staudegger – German Tiger Ace in the Battle of Kursk” by Evan Pinter. For the Soviet side we looked through archive documents in Russian, scans of which can be found on the site of TsAMO, “Memory of People” page. First one is ”Excerpt from the War Diary of 26th Tank Brigade from June 23rd to July 6th of 1943”, second - "Combat Directive for units of 2nd Tank Corps for July 7th - July 8th 1943”, and third - "After-action report of 2nd Tank Corps for July 1943”. Photo Credits: ”Unternehmen Zitadelle" Zwei Soldaten beim Betrachten eines Treffers an einem Panzer VI "Tiger I" - image provided by Bundesarchiv (Bild 101I-219-0553A-36) "Unternehmen Zitadelle" - Soldat beim Betrachten eines abgeschossenen, noch leicht qualmenden sowjetischen Panzer T-34 - image provided by Bundesarchiv (Bild 101I-022-2935-24)