Record
The 503rd and the later Feldherrnhalle heavy tank battalions are credited with the destruction of around 1,700 enemy tanks. The battalion lost 252 Tiger I, Tiger II and also some Panzer III. Of these, 123 (49%) were destroyed by their crews and 113 (45%) were destroyed by the enemy. The battalion had more tanks put out of action outside combat than to enemy action. This was a common occurrence in German tank units as a result of the poor reliability of Tiger tanks and the fuel supply problems often suffered by the German army.
The 503rd maintained a kill ratio of 15:1 for combat losses, which was above average for German heavy tank battalions and the second highest for combat losses. The number of tanks claimed as destroyed by the 503rd will exceed the number which were actually destroyed, as a knocked out tank may be repaired, and two tanks firing on the same target may both claim the "kill," resulting in that target being counted twice, and some claims have simply been exaggerated. However, there are several examples where claims were found to be entirely accurate when enemy losses were counted, as when German troops held an area after a battle and were able to prevent Soviet forces from recovering their lost vehicles.
Read more about this topic: 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion (Germany)
Famous quotes containing the word record:
“The house seems heavier
Now that they have gone away.
In fact it emptied in record time.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.”
—Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)
“... many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)