CHAPTER 5

“Any weakling can take victories, but only the strong can endure setbacks.”

Adolf Hitler, Berlin, January 30, 1942

Only two days after the winter counteroffensive began at Moscow, the Stavka sent orders to General-Lieutenant Dmitri T. Kozlov, commander of the Transcaucasian Front, directing him to begin planning to send the bulk of his forces across the Kerch Straits to liberate the Crimea. Kozlov and his chief of staff, General-Major Fyodor I. Tolbukhin, were given just two weeks to plan and execute the first major amphibious operation ever conducted by the Red Army. Kozlov was directed to land as large a force as possible, first to establish a secure lodgment in the Kerch Peninsula and then, once sufficient forces were across, to begin advancing westward to link up with Petrov’s Coastal Army in Sevastopol and liberate the Crimea. It was a grand vision, based upon Stalin’s belief that the Wehrmacht was a spent force, and that the moment had arrived for the Red Army to strike a death blow against the invaders.

Tolbukhin was generally regarded as a capable staff officer, but he had sat out the bulk of the 1941 campaign in the backwater Transcaucasus Military District and was eager to show off his talent in his first operation of the war. He developed an overly complicated plan that he hoped would quickly compromise the German ability to hold the Kerch Peninsula by making many small landings at multiple points, rather than one large landing. In the first echelon of Tolbukhin’s landing plan, five different transport groups would land 7,500 troops from the 224th Rifle Division and 302nd Mountain Rifle Division from General-Lieutenant Vladimir N. Lvov’s 51st Army on separate beaches north and south of Kerch. Then, after the Germans had reacted to this landing, General-Major Aleksei N. Pervushin would begin landing elements of his 44th Army to their rear, at Feodosiya. Oktyabrsky was expected to provide a significant part of the Black Sea Fleet to support the landings and provide naval gunfire support, while Rear-Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov’s Azov Flotilla would assist in bringing troops across the Kerch Straits. The VVS and VVS-ChF were expected to provide air support from bases in the Taman Peninsula. Despite the availability of troops and shipping, the Red Army had no experience with a complicated joint operation of this sort, and the short time provided for planning led to multiple failures of coordination. On top of this, the winter weather in the Black Sea at the end of December was predictably stormy, which greatly complicated the loading and unloading of troops. The constant siphoning of the best units and shipping to reinforce Petrov’s Coastal Army at Sevastopol further disrupted operational planning.

Although the weather over the Kerch Strait area was poor on Christmas eve, Bf-110 reconnaissance aircraft from 3.(F)/11 spotted unusual enemy naval activity and reported it to the Luftwaffe liaison officer within Generalleutnant Hans Graf von Sponeck’s XXXXII Armeekorps headquarters in Islam-Terek, located northwest of Feodosiya. Sponeck had commanded the 22. Luftlande-Division during the airborne invasion of Holland in May 1940 and was badly wounded; afterwards he was awarded the Ritterkreuz and continued to lead his division ably in the advance across southern Ukraine until promoted to command XXXXII Armeekorps in October. Now he was tasked with defending the Kerch Peninsula and much of the eastern Crimean coastline, but Manstein had stripped his corps to the bone in order to reinforce the offensive at Sevastopol. Consequently, Sponeck’s only combat units were Generalleutnant Kurt Himer’s 46. Infanterie-Division, two coastal artillery battalions equipped with obsolete artillery from World War I, a pioneer regiment and a Luftwaffe flak battalion. Himer’s division consisted of three infantry regiments (IR 42, 72, and 97) and three artillery battalions, but it was overextended and badly deployed. Oberst Friedrich Schmidt’s Infanterie-Regiment 72 had its three battalions concentrated around the old Yenikale fortress northeast of Kerch, guarding the coastline that was closest to the Taman Peninsula. Oberst Ernst Maisel’s Infanterie-Regiment 42 had just two battalions with 1,460 troops to guard a 17-mile stretch of coastline south of Kerch.¹ That left only Oberstleutnant Alexander von Bentheim’s Infanterie-Regiment 97 holding positions in depth, with one battalion at Feodosiya and two battalions near the northern coast along the Sea of Azov. The southern coast of the Kerch Peninsula was only lightly screened by Aufklärungs-Abteilung 46.² In a pinch, Sponeck could also call upon the Romanian Mountain Corps for help, which had the 8th Cavalry Brigade guarding the coast near Alushta. After receiving the aerial reconnaissance report about enemy naval activity in the Kerch Strait, Sponeck issued the Weihnachtsmann (“Santa Claus”) alarm, which put all units in XXXXII Armeekorps on alert to defend the Kerch Peninsula against amphibious landings.³

On the evening of December 25, 1941, the Soviet amphibious operation began when elements of the 51st Army’s 224th Rifle Division and the 83rd Naval Infantry Brigade loaded aboard small craft on the Taman Peninsula and began the short, but frozen, transit across the Kerch Strait. It was not a very impressive invasion flotilla. Group Two, heading for Cape Khroni, 4 miles northeast of Kerch, consisted of the gunboat Don (equipped with two 130mm and two 45mm guns), the transports Krasny Flot and Pyenay, a tugboat, two self-propelled barges that carried three T-26 tanks and some artillery, and 16 small fishing trawlers. Lacking landing craft that could deposit troops on beaches, Gorshkov’s Azov Flotilla was forced to use whaleboats to transfer troops from the transports to the shore – a tedious and dangerous process in turbulent seas. The weather was roughly Sea State 5 (waves 2–3 yards high, wind speed at 17–21 knots) with strong westerly winds and rain – similar to that experienced on D-Day in June 1944 – but was trending towards a more intense storm in the next 24 hours. At Cape Khroni, 697 troops from 2nd Battalion/160th Rifle Regiment succeeded in getting ashore by 0630hrs on December 26, but a number of troops trying to wade ashore through the surf either drowned or became hypothermia casualties. Later in the day, another rifle battalion was landed at Cape Khroni, along with a platoon of T-26 tanks and some light artillery. The landings at the more distant Cape Zyuk were problematic; only 290 troops succeeded in getting ashore in six hours and several vessels were grounded on the rocky coastline. At Cape Tarhan, there were only two whaleboats available and just 18 soldiers out of the 1,000-man landing force actually reached the beach. The most successful Soviet landings were in Bulganak Bay, just west of Cape Khroni, where the Azov Flotilla managed to land 1,452 troops from the 224th Rifle Division’s 143rd Rifle Regiment, along with three T-26 tanks, two 76mm howitzers, and two 45mm antitank guns. Other planned Soviet landings at Kazantip Point and Yenikale were aborted due to the weather. By midday, the Soviets had five separate beachheads on the northern side of the Kerch Peninsula, with barely 3,000 lightly equipped troops ashore. Enemy resistance initially was minimal, since very few Germans were stationed along this stretch of coastline, but the Luftwaffe arrived over the invasion areas by 1050hrs with He-111 bombers and Ju-87 Stukas. Gorshkov’s Group 3, wallowing in heavy seas off Cape Tarhan, was particularly hard hit, and the 3,900-ton cargo ship Voroshilov was bombed and sunk with 450 troops aboard. Group 2 off Cape Zyuk was also bombed, and one vessel with 100 troops sank.⁴

Tolbukhin’s amateurish landing plan, apparently made with little input from the Navy, simply dumped frozen, poorly supplied troops on remote beaches and assumed that they would somehow link up and seize the port of Kerch. Instead, the troops moved less than a mile inland and began to dig in against the expected German counterattacks. The isolated regimental and battalion commanders, with little or no communication between each other or their higher headquarters, decided to wait until the rest of the 224th Rifle Division and the follow-on 83rd Naval Infantry Brigade arrived before advancing further inland. However, after the initial landings were completed, the weather worsened, preventing any further large-scale landing operations across the Kerch Straits for the next three days.

The landing of the 302nd Mountain Rifle Division at Kamysh Burun, south of Kerch, was the only opposed landing on December 26. Here, the German I./IR 42 and II./IR 42 held excellent defensive positions on high ground overlooking the sandy beaches. The first wave of the invasion at 0500hrs ran into a deluge of German machine-gun, mortar, and light-artillery fire, which prevented most of the improvised landing craft from approaching the shore. An attempt to land on the beach at Eltigen was slaughtered by II./IR 42. A company of Soviet naval infantry managed to land at Stary Karantin, but was quickly overwhelmed by Major Karl Kraft’s I./IR 42. The second wave arrived at 0700hrs and was also repulsed. However, some Soviet troops managed to land at the dock area at Kamysh Burun, where they had some cover from German fire, and the third wave was able to establish a tenuous foothold there by the afternoon. Yet only 2,175 of 5,200 troops succeeded in getting ashore at Kamysh Burun, and the Luftwaffe sank a number of ships off the beaches.

Generalleutnant Kurt Himer had taken command of the 46. Infanterie-Division only nine days prior to the Soviet amphibious assault. By 0610hrs he was aware of several landings, but the disjointed nature of the Soviet plan made it difficult for him to assess the enemy’s main effort. Oberst Ernst Maisel’s IR 42 appeared to have repulsed the landings south of Kerch, but the landings to the north were largely unopposed. Himer ordered Oberst Friedrich Schmidt’s IR 72 to crush the landings at Cape Khroni, but there were no forces near Bulganak Bay or Cape Zyuk. After considering more reports on enemy activity, Himer ordered the Stabskompanie (headquarters company) of Oberstleutnant Alexander von Bentheim’s IR 97 and its alarm unit – Hauptmann Karl Bock’s III./IR 97 – plus a battery of 10.5cm howitzers, to rush toward Cape Zyuk. Bentheim’s regiment was the most spread out of Himer’s regiments, with II./IR 97 in Feodosiya and the other two battalions in central reserve. The roads were in bad condition due to heavy rain but Bentheim moved out with a horse-mounted platoon, and the lead elements of his regiment crawled eastward along the northern coast of the Kerch Peninsula toward Cape Zyuk. By midnight, Bentheim had both his I. and III. Battalions, along with two batteries of artillery, moving into position for a counterattack the next day.⁵

Kurt Himer had few forces available and was compelled to deal with multiple dispersed enemy landings and insufficient information on which to base his command decisions. At 1350hrs, IR 72 reported that they had captured a Soviet officer in skirmishing near Cape Khroni, and that under interrogation he had revealed that the Soviets intended to land a total of 25,000 troops near Kerch. With only six battalions to defend the entire eastern Kerch Peninsula, Himer – with Sponeck’s approval – began making decisions that would shape the battle. He decided to commit all of IR 72 to crush the Cape Khroni landing as quickly as possible and bring up all of IR 97 – including II./IR 97 in Feodosiya – to crush the Cape Zyuk landings. He directed IR 42 to contain the Kamysh Burun landings until the other counterattacks were completed. A small alarm unit known as Eingreifgruppe Bulganak, consisting of one rifle company from IR 72, an artillery battery, and some pioneers, was sent to contain the landings at Bulganak Bay. Meanwhile, Sponeck requested that the Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade be dispatched to reinforce Himer’s forces near Kerch. It was a typical German operational plan: decisive, expeditious, and based upon a faulty intelligence picture.

Due to the muddy roads, the two battalions from Bentheim’s IR 97 were not in a position to counterattack the Soviet beachhead at Cape Zyuk until 1300hrs on December 27. The terrain near the Soviet beachhead was flat and devoid of any vegetation, offering no concealment to either side. The Soviet troops – members of the 2nd Battalion/83rd Naval Infantry Brigade – spotted the Germans and immediately launched a spoiling attack against Hauptmann Karl Bock’s III./IR 97 as it was deploying, committing three T-26 tanks and several companies of infantry. The Germans were briefly knocked off balance but a Panzerjäger platoon from 14./IR 97 was able to deploy a 3.7cm Pak, and Obergefreiter Max Freyberger fired 42 rounds into the attacking Soviet tanks, knocking all three out. A few Luftwaffe aircraft also arrived overhead and bombed the Soviet infantry, who fell back to their beachhead, but the German counterattack was postponed until the next day. Both sides hunkered down for the night on the open terrain, with a strong, cold wind chilling the troops.

At dawn on December 28, a cloudy day with light frost, the two battalions of IR 97 converged on the Soviet beachhead from the southwest, supported by two 10.5cm howitzers from 3./AR 114, while a pioneer company blocked the eastern exits from the beach. The Soviet landing force was in an indefensible position, crammed between the coast and Lake Chokraks’k, which made any defense difficult. Around 1000hrs, a few Stukas from StG 77 and six He-111 bombers arrived to bomb the Soviet beachhead.⁶ Hauptmann Karl Bock’s battalion quickly smashed through the Soviet defenses and headed toward the beach. The 42-year-old Bock was an unusual battalion commander in the German Army, being both a veteran of World War I and a member of the Nazi Party who had served six years in the SS. By 1200hrs, Bock’s troops had the beach in sight. The Soviets fought from rock outcroppings and then were pushed back further, some troops fighting standing waist-deep in the surf. Yet by late afternoon, Soviet resistance at Cape Zyuk was broken; and IR 97 took 458 prisoners and counted about 300 dead. Bentheim’s regiment suffered roughly 40 casualties in reducing the Soviet beachhead.

In the meantime, IR 72 had moved with I. and II./IR 72 and crushed the Soviet beachhead at Cape Khroni. At dusk on December 28, a Soviet follow-on convoy approached Cape Khroni with reinforcements and observed German troop activity all along the coastline. One Soviet officer and 11 men managed to swim out through the frigid waves to a patrol boat, where they revealed that the beachhead had been destroyed. There were still pockets of resistance inland to be mopped up, and over 1,000 troops were still ensconced on the shore of Bulganak Bay, but by late on December 28, Himer and Sponeck had reason to be satisfied – over 1,700 prisoners had been taken and the bulk of the Soviet landing forces had been defeated. The Soviets had gained a sizeable lodgment at Kamysh Burun, but IR 42 had them surrounded and they could be dealt with as soon as IR 72 and IR 97 completed their mop-up operations. If the storms over the Kerch Straits had remained for another day or so, a significant German tactical victory would have been in hand, but the weather began to subside on the evening of December 28/29 and the Soviets were now ready to spring the second phase of their invasion upon Sponeck.

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At 1300hrs on December 28, two assault regiments from General-Major Aleksei N. Pervushin’s 44th Army began loading aboard an invasion fleet at Novorossiysk comprised of two light cruisers, eight destroyers, 14 transports, and numerous small craft. Four and a half hours later, the advance elements steamed out of Novorossiysk aboard the light cruiser Krasny Kavkaz; the elderly Fidonisy-class destroyers Shaumyan, Zhelezniakov, and Nyezamozhnik; and a group of patrol boats and coastal minesweepers. The weather improved briefly, allowing the flotilla to travel at 16 knots for most of the way, until the destroyer Sposobnyi struck a mine and suffered 200 casualties. Many of the troops spent the whole voyage on exposed, ice-crusted decks, and were frozen and seasick after a few hours. Off the port of Feodosiya, two Soviet submarines waited on the surface, ready to mark the harbor entrance with lights when the assault force approached.

Inside Feodosiya, which had a pre-war population of 28,000, the German garrison was not expecting action, since Sponeck had dispatched the only infantry unit, II./IR 97, to support the battle around Kerch. The main units left defending the port of Feodosiya were II./AR 54 (equipped with four 10cm and 11 15cm howitzers of World War I-vintage) and I./AR 77 (equipped with six captured Czech 15cm howitzers). Both artillery battalions were deployed in coastal-defense positions around the port, but had limited transport and means of ground defense. Also available in or near Feodosiya were 700–800 engineers from Oberstleutnant Hans von Ahlfen’s Pionier-Regimentsstab z.b.V. 617 (two assault-boat companies, one Brücko B bridging company, and Landungs-Kompanie 777), although they were equipped only with light small arms. Ostensibly, the harbor entrance was protected by a raft boom, preventing enemy access.

Once the Soviet 51st Army began landing on the Kerch Peninsula, Sponeck ordered the Romanian Mountain Corps to send first its 8th Cavalry Brigade then its 4th Mountain Brigade to reinforce Himer’s 46. Infanterie-Division, leaving only the 3rd Rosiori motorized Cavalry Regiment near Feodosiya. By the evening of December 28, the bulk of Colonel Corneliu Teodorini’s 8th Cavalry Brigade had marched halfway to Kerch, but Brigadier-General Gheorghe Manoliu’s 4th Mountain Brigade and General-Major Gheorghe Avramescu’s Mountain Corps headquarters was still located at Stary Krym, 14 miles west of Feodosiya.

At 0350hrs on December 29, the Soviet flotilla approached Feodosiya and the destroyers Shaumyan and Zhelezniakov fired star shells that illuminated the port, followed up by a 13-minute naval bombardment. Then four MO-IV type sub-chasers sprinted toward the outer edge of the long harbor mole where the lighthouse sat at the end. Pulling up alongside the mole, about 60 naval infantrymen led by Lieutenant Arkady F. Aydinov leapt onto it and quickly secured the lighthouse. They then began clearing the mole, capturing two unmanned 3.7cm Pak guns, and Aydinov used green flares to signal to the fleet that the harbor entrance was clear. German gunners from II./AR 54 engaged the patrol boats ineffectually, and the Soviet naval infantrymen seized the entire mole before the Germans could effectively react. Amazingly, the raft boom was found to be open, apparently due to negligence. At 0426hrs the destroyer Shaumyan entered the harbor, moved alongside the mole, and disgorged a company of naval infantrymen within 20 minutes. The destroyers Zhelezniakov and Nyezamozhnik repeated the maneuver, further reinforcing the Soviet lodgment. Although the Shaumyan was damaged by German artillery fire, the Germans never expected the Soviets to attempt anything so bold, and had not properly fortified the harbor entrance. Soviet audacity and the speed of the initial landings caught the Germans completely by surprise.

Once the three destroyers had disembarked their assault troops, Captain 1st Rank Aleksei M. Guscin brought his cruiser Krasny Kavkaz alongside the mole at 0500hrs and began landing 1,853 troops from the 633rd Rifle Regiment of the 157th Rifle Division. By this point, the Germans were fully awake and concentrated all their fire on the Soviet cruiser, hitting her 17 times, setting her No. 2 turret on fire. However, Guscin was far from helpless, and he directed his 180mm batteries to fire point-blank at the enemy artillery and machine-gun positions, winking at them from the shoreline. After more than three hours of intense combat in the port, Guscin finally maneuvered his damaged cruiser away from the mole, having accomplished his mission.⁷ Belatedly, the Luftwaffe showed up and sank a minesweeper and patrol boat, but were too late to impede the Soviet landing operation.

By 0730hrs the Germans had completely lost control of the port and the Soviet transports had begun to land artillery and vehicles. Once Soviet infantry began moving into the city, the German artillerymen began abandoning their positions and the German defense quickly collapsed. Ahlfen’s pioneers briefly tried to put up resistance but they soon retreated as well. By 1000hrs, Sponeck learned that the Soviets had seized most of Feodosiya and were pouring ashore. Indeed, the remarkable thing about the Feodosiya landing is the speed that Oktyabrsky’s fleet was able to land 4,500 troops in the morning and have elements of three rifle divisions from Pervushin’s 44th Army ashore by the end of the day. Sponeck realized that no substantial German forces were near Feodosiya and that the Soviet landing represented a clear threat to his corps’ lines of communications. He immediately ordered Teodorini’s 8th Cavalry Brigade to turn around and march back to Feodosiya, while Manoliu’s 4th Mountain Brigade was ordered to form blocking positions west of the city. In a telephone conversation with Manstein, Sponeck requested permission to withdraw the 46. Infanterie-Division from Kerch back to the Parpach Narrows, where it could contain the Soviet bridgehead at Feodosiya and establish a viable defensive line until reinforcements arrived. Manstein refused, and ordered Sponeck to hold on; he promised Gruppe Hitzfeld from the 73. Infanterie-Division, that the entire 170. Infanterie-Division would be sent to retake Feodosiya.

What happened next was – and remains – highly controversial, and is known as “the von Sponeck affair.” Having been ordered not to withdraw Himer’s 46. Infanterie-Division, the 53-year-old Graf von Sponeck did something almost unheard of in the Wehrmacht – he severed communications with AOK 11 headquarters in Simferopol and decided to disobey Manstein. At 0830hrs, Himer was ordered to force-march his entire division westward in order to prevent it from being cut off in the Kerch Peninsula. Was Sponeck justified in retreating, or did he panic, as was suggested at his subsequent court martial? While it is true that there were no significant German troops left near Feodosiya, the Romanians had close to 20,000 troops converging on the city, as well as German reinforcements from AOK 11. It had been Sponeck’s decision to pull these troops away from Feodosiya toward Kerch and now he reversed himself, leading to countermarches that exhausted the Romanian troops. Sponeck insisted that the two Romanian brigades launch a counterattack against the Soviet lodgment at Feodosiya on December 30 – without air or artillery support – and they were quickly repulsed. Pervushin’s three rifle divisions then pushed northward, threatening to isolate XXXXII Armeekorps forces in the Kerch Peninsula.

Himer’s division spent December 30–31 marching 75 miles westward in a snowstorm toward Sponeck’s corps headquarters, which was still located at Islam-Terek, 18 miles northwest of Feodosiya. Shortages of fuel caused some vehicles to be abandoned, and the division’s heavy weapons lagged behind. Yet by the time that the vanguards of IR 97 and IR 42 reached the important crossroads town of Vladislavovka on the morning of December 31, they were shocked to find that the Soviet 63rd Mountain Rifle Division had already seized the town and created a roadblock. Himer tried to push both regiments to crash through the Soviet position, but it was far too formidable, and his troops were exhausted and lacking in artillery support. Unable to break through the Soviet roadblock, the 46. Infanterie-Division retreated west cross-country across the flat, snow-covered landscape through a 6-mile-wide gap between the Sea of Azov and the Soviet pincer. The retreat of the 46. Infanterie-Division was a near-run thing, with isolation from the rest of AOK 11 a distinct possibility, but it was no Anabasis (Xenophon’s 4th century BC history of the march of the Ten Thousand through the Persian Empire). Himer’s division abandoned a good deal of material, but personnel losses were light. Between December 24 and December 31, 1941, Infanterie-Regiment 42’s battle strength was reduced from 1,460 to 1,279, a 12 percent loss rate. By the time that his division formed a new defensive line east of Islam-Terek on January 1, 1942, Himer still had over 4,300 of his infantry remaining.⁸

As if the situation was not bad enough for the Axis, on the night of December 31 a 250-man Soviet airborne battalion led by Major Dmitri Ya. Nyashin leapt from 16 TB-3 bombers into the black void north of Vladislavovka. The Soviet paratroopers were obliged to climb out of a hatch onto the bomber’s wing and then slide off, one at a time, which resulted in a very dispersed drop. Nyashin’s paratroopers were scattered in the corridor that the 46. Infanterie-Division was retreating through, and engaged in a number of small skirmishes with the retreating Germans, who were panicked by the sudden appearance of Soviet paratroopers. Darkness concealed the small size of Nyashin’s force, and increased Sponeck’s apprehension about his vulnerable position. Soon thereafter, Nyashin linked up with Pervushin’s ground forces.

By January 1, 1942, XXXXII Armeekorps had established a new line of defense 12 miles from Feodosiya. The lead elements of Gruppe Hitzfeld were arriving, led by Oberstleutnant Otto Hitzfeld with his Infanterie-Regiment 213 of the 73. Infanterie-Division, I./AR 173, Panzerjäger-Abteilung 173, a platoon of four StuG III assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197, and a flak detachment from 3./Flak 14. Manoliu’s 4th Mountain Brigade had also established a stable defense around Stary Krym, although the 236th Rifle Division was pushing against their lines. By this point, Pervushin’s 44th Army had carved out a 7½-mile-deep lodgment from Feodosiya and was probing northward and westward. On New Year’s Day, Soviet infantry and light tanks attacked toward the XXXXII Armeekorps command post at Ismail-Terek, but Panzerjäger-Abteilung 173 had just arrived at the front and succeeded in knocking out 16 T-26 tanks. German historian Paul Carell claimed that in this action, “the armored spearhead of the Soviet Forty-fourth Army had been broken,” but in fact, Pervushin still had at least 18 tanks left and more on the way.⁹

The 51st Army had also taken advantage of Himer’s retreat from Kerch to break out from the Kamysh Burun beachhead, and Colonel Mikhail K. Zubkov’s 302nd Mountain Rifle Division liberated Kerch on December 31. By the next day, the 51st Army began liberating the rest of the eastern Kerch Peninsula. Soon, XXXXII Armeekorps would have to face two Soviet armies, determined to push west toward Sevastopol. Could this paper-thin defense hold? If not, the entire German position in the Crimea was at risk. However, this was no longer Sponeck’s problem, since Manstein relieved him of command on New Year’s Eve. Within three weeks, Sponeck was courtmartialed in Germany for disobedience and retreating without orders. Although many other German commanders had done the same during the Soviet Winter Counteroffensive, the regime chose to make an example of Sponeck, who was sentenced to death, thereafter commuted to six years’ imprisonment. Manstein said nothing on behalf of his subordinate, and allowed the new commander of Heeresgruppe Süd, Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Reichenau, to impose group punishment upon the entire 46. Infanterie-Division. Reichenau ordered that, “because of its slack reaction to the Russian landing on the Kerch Peninsula, as well as its precipitate withdrawal from the Peninsula, I hereby declare 46. Infanterie-Division forfeit of soldierly honor. Decorations and promotions are in abeyance until countermanded.”¹⁰

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Inside his underground headquarters in Sevastopol, Vice-Admiral Oktyabrsky planned to mount an amphibious diversionary operation to prevent Manstein from sending any of his limited reserves to interfere with the 44th Army’s landings at Feodosiya. He reckoned that the Germans were stretched so thinly that they could not afford to deal with another crisis. An obvious target was the port of Yevpatoriya, located on the coast only 40 miles north of Sevastopol. Oktyabrsky and Petrov envisioned a lightning amphibious raid to seize the harbor at Yevpatoriya – believed to be lightly guarded by Romanian troops – which would then be used to host a larger landing by a brigade-size force. There was talk of a paratroop landing and using partisans to support it, but details were sketchy. If a large enough force could be landed at Yevpatoriya, Manstein would be placed on the horns of a dilemma: being forced to choose between sending his limited reserves to the east or west, but not both. Oktyabrsky wanted the landing to occur shortly after New Year, but the winter storm that had plagued the Kerch landings returned and made this impossible for several days. It was not until the evening of January 4, 1942, that the weather abated enough for the landing to be attempted.

At 2330hrs on January 4, a small flotilla consisting of the Tral-class coastal minesweeper Vzryvatel’, seven MO-IV sub-chasers, and the tugboat SP-14 under the command of Captain 2nd Rank Nikolay V. Buslaev left Sevastopol harbor and headed north along the coast in the darkness. Embarked aboard the flotilla was Captain Georgy K. Buzinov’s separate Naval Infantry Battalion, augmented with engineers, reconnaissance troops, and an NKVD detachment. Three hours later, Buslaev’s tiny flotilla arrived off the entrance of Yevpatoriya harbor. The wind and sea were extremely rough, knocking his formation about and surely inducing seasickness in the naval infantrymen, who were almost all loaded above deck. Buslaev directed his ships to land their troops on three piers jutting out into the harbor.

Although there was only a German coastal artillery unit, a platoon of military police, and a few Romanian troops in Yevpatoriya, they were not caught by surprise. After the rapid loss of Feodosiya, Manstein had put all other coastal units on high alert, no matter what the weather. As Buslaev’s small craft approached the piers, searchlights switched on and caught the Russians in the act of landing. The largest contingent of 500 troops landed at the main passenger pier, with Buslaev bringing his minesweeper Vzryvatel’ alongside. The Germans and Romanians opened fire with machine guns and mortars, killing about 50 naval infantrymen just as they landed on the pier. Subsequent groups jumped directly into the shallow-but-freezing water and waded ashore, using the pier for cover. A nearby coastal battery fired on the pier and one round struck the bridge of the Vzryvatel’, killing Buslaev. German forward observers directed fire against the landing from the roof of the nearby Crimea Hotel. The pier itself was damaged by an explosion, which made it difficult for the other Soviet ships to unload heavy weapons and supplies. Eventually, Lieutenant Vladimir P. Tityulin rallied enough troops underneath the pier to push inland and overrun the Crimea Hotel by 0500hrs. Two other companies had landed separately on two smaller piers and also gradually fought their way into part of the city. Not long after the landing, the Vzryvatel’ ran aground on a sandbar just 50 yards offshore, and became hopelessly stuck. One sub-chaser and a tugboat remained to offer assistance, but the rest of the flotilla departed before dawn, since the Luftwaffe was sure to arrive once the sun came up.

In Yevpatoriya, the Soviet naval infantrymen expanded their control over the southern part of the city, but German blocking positions equipped which machine guns prevented them from moving too far inland. Meanwhile, news of the Soviet landing at Yevpatoriya had reached Manstein’s headquarters, and he ordered several units to head there immediately. Oberstleutnant Oskar von Boddien’s Aufklärungs-Abteilung 22 was in the lead, followed by Oberstleutnant Hubertus-Maria Ritter von Heigl’s Pionier-Bataillon 70 and Oberst Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller’s Infanterie-Regiment 105 of the 72. Infanterie-Division. The lead elements of these units began to arrive after 1000hrs, but the Germans decided to wait until all the reinforcements were assembled before launching their counterattack.

Oktyabrsky tried to send reinforcements to Yevpatoriya. Another naval infantry battalion was loaded aboard the destroyer Smyshlyonyi, the coastal minesweeper Yakor’, and four MO-IV sub-chasers, but could not land at Yevpatoriya on the night of January 5/6 due to a violent storm. On the morning of January 6, the German counterattack started, supported by artillery and the Luftwaffe. German artillery demolished the Crimea Hotel and began reducing other Soviet strongpoints. Engineers from Pionier-Bataillon 70 used flamethrowers to burn Soviet pockets of resistance. A battery of 10.5cm howitzers was brought up to engage the stranded Vzryvatel’ with direct fire, and they repeatedly punctured its hull. Soviet sailors bravely refused to abandon their ship until it was reduced to a burning wreck; there was only a single survivor. By the evening of January 6 there were only 120 naval infantrymen left out of the original landing force of 740 men. Captain Buzinov led a breakout effort, hoping to reach either Sevastopol or nearby partisan units. The naval infantrymen mounted a desperate frontal attack against one of the German blocking positions, manned by troops of the Aufklärungs-Abteilung 22. A wild close-quarter melee ensued, with submachine guns and grenades in the dark. Sixty Russians were killed, but Oberstleutnant von Boddien was also killed. The remaining Russians fled into the darkness, but Buzinov and a group of 17 naval infantrymen were cornered the next morning in a nearby village, where they made a last stand. Only four sailors, led by Captain-Lieutenant Ivan F. Litovchuk, managed to reach Soviet lines at Sevastopol.

The Germans stamped out the last resistance in Yevpatoriya on the morning of January 7. One sailor escaped by swimming out in the icy water using a float and was picked up by a Soviet patrol boat. Altogether, the Germans claimed 600 Soviets killed and 203 captured, which was virtually the entire landing force and the naval crews. The Soviets later claimed that the Germans executed wounded naval infantrymen – which is quite possible – and then began rounding up civilians in the city who had aided the landing force. Thousands were imprisoned, deported as forced labor to Germany, or simply turned over to Einsatzgruppe D for elimination.

When Oktyabrsky lost contact with the landing force, he decided to send a small naval reconnaissance team to ascertain their status. A 13-man reconnaissance team was landed from the submarine M-33 near the Yevpatoriya lighthouse on the evening of January 8. It did not take long before they realized that Buzinov’s battalion had been annihilated, but before they could re-embark, the stormy weather returned in full force. For six days the team remained near the lighthouse, awaiting a chance to return to the submarine, but the Germans eventually detected them and destroyed the team, except for a sole survivor. The Soviet landing at Yevpatoriya proved to be a forlorn hope that was mostly undone by adverse weather conditions and rapid enemy reaction.

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General-Major Aleksei N. Pervushin’s position at Feodosiya seemed very good on January 1, 1942: his 44th Army had three rifle divisions with 23,000 troops ashore and the enemy forces in front of him were weak and disorganized. General-Lieutenant Vladimir N. Lvov’s 51st Army was advancing to join him with another four rifle divisions and, together, they would crush the Axis forces before they could establish a firm defense across the narrow neck of the Kerch Peninsula. Yet while the Black Sea Fleet had brilliantly pulled off the surprise landing at Feodosiya, the Red Army proved less adept at exploiting this victory. Pervushin’s three divisions had occupied so much ground around Feodosiya that he lacked the manpower to mass for a real offensive to destroy either the Romanian Mountain Corps of XXXXII Armeekorps. Gruppe Hitzfeld had arrived and had established a rock-solid defense in the gap between the Romanian Mountain Corps and XXXXII Armeekorps. Instead, Pervushin settled into a semi-defensive posture around Feodosiya, waiting for Lvov’s army to arrive before mounting a joint offensive. Unfortunately, this decision handed the initiative back to Manstein’s AOK 11.

Once it was clear that the Soviet forces in Feodosiya were not pushing westward in any strength, Manstein resolved to organize a counteroffensive to retake the city. Although the Germans was not particularly adept or equipped for winter offensive operations, Manstein sensed an opportunity to inflict a reverse upon an overconfident and overextended enemy. He began by sending General der Infanterie Franz Mattenklott, former commander of the 72. Infanterie-Division, to replace Sponeck as commander of XXXXII Armeekorps. Mattenklott was an iron-willed officer who would hold the line until reinforcements arrived. Initially, Manstein was only going to send the 170. Infanterie-Division to reinforce XXXXII Armeekorps, but he decided to add the 132. Infanterie-Division and two battalions from the 72. Infanterie-Division as well. The only remaining armor support was three StuG IIIs from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 190 and a handful from the newly arrived Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197, which were sent as well. Committing this many reinforcements required AOK 11 to abandon some of the hard-won positions gained in the December offensive, which irritated Hitler, but Manstein argued that a counteroffensive capable of achieving operational-level objectives required this kind of tactical sacrifice. The Romanian also agreed to send Brigadier-General Nicolae Costescu’s 18th Infantry Division to reinforce XXXXII Armeekorps.

For the next two weeks, the front assumed a static character with only minor combat activity on either side. The vanguard of Lvov’s 51st Army reached the Parpach Narrows by January 5, but took no offensive action against the opposing 46. Infanterie-Division. Lvov’s army moved into place very slowly, and even by January 12 he still had only two rifle divisions deployed forward. Meanwhile, Axis reinforcements poured in, and by January 13 Manstein had amassed more than four divisions outside Feodosiya. He also brought up the XXX Armeekorps staff, now under Generalmajor Maximilian Fretter-Pico, to spearhead the counteroffensive while Mattenklott occupied the attention of Lvov’s 51st Army. Manstein also requested greater help from the Luftwaffe, and General der Flieger Robert Ritter von Greim was sent to Sarabus airfield in the Crimea to take charge of the Sonderstab Krim (Special Staff Crimea).

On the Soviet side, General-Lieutenant Dmitri T. Kozlov’s Caucasus Front still directed the operations of the 44th and 51st Armies, but he believed that the Germans were too weak to threaten either of these armies before he was ready to make his own “big push.” He violated one of the primary tactical lessons learned during World War I – entrench your forces whenever they stop advancing – and did not emphasize defensive measures. Prior to launching a major offensive, Kozlov also wanted to conduct another landing behind enemy lines on the Black Sea coast in order to divert Manstein’s reserves – a tactic which had already demonstrably failed at Yevpatoriya. On the night of January 5/6, 218 soldiers from the 226th Infantry Regiment were landed from the destroyer Sposobnyi near Sudak, 25 miles southwest of Feodosiya. The Germans detected the landing but regarded it as a nuisance and sent only a single company of Panzerjägers to contain it, which Kozlov interpreted as weakness.

Generalmajor Vasiliy K. Moroz’s 236th Rifle Division had its main line of resistance 9 miles northwest of Feodosiya on the Biyuk–Eget ridge, which towered over the flat plain. He also had a forward security zone, deployed 3 miles forward of the ridge. Moroz was an experienced cavalryman and his division was close to full strength, sitting atop the best terrain in the area. At dawn on January 15, 1942, Manstein’s counteroffensive kicked off with a brief artillery preparation on Moroz’s forward security positions, followed by Stukas and He-111s bombing the ridgeline. Then three battalions of Oberstleutnant Otto Hitzfeld’s IR 213 advanced, along with I. and II./IR 42 from Himer’s division. Hitzfeld was one of the best German regimental commanders in the Crimea and an aggressive tactical leader. Apparently caught by surprise, Moroz’s forward security positions were quickly overrun by Hitzfeld’s soldiers. Three StuG IIIs supported the advance and knocked out two T-26 light tanks, but then one assault gun was knocked out by a Soviet 76.2mm antitank gun.¹¹ During the day, German bombers found Pervushin’s command post and blasted it to pieces; Pervushin was badly wounded and the 44th Army’s command and control was disrupted at a critical moment. His chief of staff, Colonel Serafim E. Rozhdestvensky, took over command, but the situation was too chaotic to make informed decisions. The rest of the 46. Infanterie-Division and the Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade conducted feint attacks against the 51st Army, which further confused the Russians, who wasted their reserves in this unimportant sector. By evening, Hitzfeld’s infantry had captured virtually the entire Biyuk–Eget ridgeline, and German forward observers could now observe virtually all of the 44th Army’s lodgment. Moroz’s division had been badly defeated in a single day by just five German infantry battalions – a stunning upset from an enemy who had seemed on the ropes. Nevertheless, Fretter-Pico’s corps suffered 500 casualties on the first day of the offensive.¹²

On January 16, Fretter-Pico’s XXX Armeekorps continued to pound against the 44th Army’s faltering defense north of Feodosiya, reinforcing Gruppe Hitzfeld with more battalions from the 46. and 170. Infanterie-Divisionen. The Soviets mistakenly interpreted the German operational objective as seizing the town of Vladislavovka, near the juncture of the 44th and 51st Armies, and committed most of their reserves in this sector, leaving Feodosiya itself poorly protected. The Soviets attempted to assemble a battalion-size armored counterattack to save Vladislavovka but ran straight into the assault guns of Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 190, which knocked out 16 T-26 light tanks.¹³ Meanwhile, the main German effort steadily pushed the 63rd Mountain Rifle Division back toward the sea and threatened to isolate the 236th Rifle Division in Feodosiya. Since the VVS-ChF was still flying from airfields in the Taman Peninsula, the Luftwaffe was able to operate over Feodosiya with little interference from enemy aircraft. By the evening of January 16, Fretter-Pico brought up the 32. Infanterie-Division to attack directly into Feodosiya.

With the port of Feodosiya hanging in the balance, Kozlov – who was only vaguely aware of the 44th Army’s critical situation – made a nearly insane command decision. He decided to commit the 44th Army’s remaining reserves and most of the Black Sea Fleet’s available warships into a larger diversionary landing at Sudak. Escorted by the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna, the cruiser Krasny Krym, and four destroyers, a flotilla deposited Major Georgy N. Selikhov’s 226th Rifle Regiment at Sudak. Naval gunfire scattered the small Romanian garrison in the town and the Soviet troops were able to gain a small lodgment, but to what end? Once ashore, the Soviet troops entrenched themselves and waited for the enemy to react. Unfortunately, Manstein was moving in for the kill at Feodosiya and was unwilling to be distracted. Aside from a few blocking detachments sent tokeep Selikhov’s troops under observation, they were ignored for the time being.

On the morning of January 17, the 132. Infanterie-Division attacked directly into the northern part of Feodosiya, ripping apart the remaining defenses. Gottlob Bidermann’s Panzerjäger unit from IR 437 was involved in the final push toward the suburb of Sarygol, on the Black Sea. Soviet resistance became desperate as the Germans pushed into the city outskirts, and Bidermann’s platoon was suddenly attacked from behind by a bypassed Soviet infantry unit:

The attackers poured out of the depression. There were at least one hundred Russians streaming with a loud “Urrah!” toward our seven-man Pak crew and one machine-gun position. Rifle shots slammed into the side of the vehicle and ricocheted off the gun shield of our Pak gun. Hans took charge of the machine-gun position. Laying his machine gun across the ammunition trailer, he fired a long burst from a standing position… An unteroffizier lying next to me near the wheel of the carriage was firing short, sustained bursts from his machine pistol when he suddenly rolled backward, screaming with pain. We had no time to assist the wounded, only to fire, fire, and fire to save our lives.¹⁴

Bidermann’s platoon eventually repulsed the sudden Soviet attack, but suffered several casualties. His battalion then moved into Sarygol, thereby isolating the remaining Soviet troops in Feodosiya. Thick black smoke from burning buildings languished over the city while Stukas relentlessly bombed the harbor area without mercy. Despite the Black Sea Fleet’s attempt to conduct an emergency evacuation, few troops from the 44th Army escaped by sea. Kozlov authorized the broken remnants of the 44th Army to retreat northeast toward the Ak-Monai or Parpach position. The next day, German troops entered the shattered city, after rounding up 5,300 prisoners.¹⁵ Although his 236th Rifle Division was annihilated, General-Major Moroz managed to escape – only to be convicted by a military tribunal three weeks later and executed. The right wing of the 44th Army escaped the debacle at Feodosiya, but its two remaining divisions were in poor shape and virtually leaderless.

Rather than halting, the German counteroffensive actually accelerated on January 19, as Fretter-Pico’s XXX Armeekorps wheeled along the coast, pursuing the remnants of the retreating 44th Army. Lvov’s 51st Army had no real ability to counterattack since most of its artillery had still not reached the front and even its rifle divisions were far from complete. While the 302nd Rifle Division managed to repulse IR 97’s attack on Vladislavovka, that position became increasingly untenable as the headlong retreat of the 44th Army caused the Soviet front to unravel. Having misjudged the German capabilities, Kozlov now exaggerated them to the Stavka and believed them capable of “throwing our forces into the sea.”¹⁶ By January 20, both Soviet armies were in retreat, and XXX and XXXXII Armeekorps were able to advance to the Parpach Narrows, which greatly simplified their ability to block any Soviet exit from the Kerch Peninsula. Thereafter, the new front line settled into a World War I landscape of trenches, dugouts, and barbed wire. Overall, the German counteroffensive crippled the 44th Army at a cost to Fetter-Pico’s XXX Armeekorps of 995 casualties, including 243 dead and missing.¹⁷

Once Kozlov’s main armies had been defeated, Manstein was able to dispatch five German and two Romanian infantry battalions from Fretter-Pico’s XXX Armeekorps to deal with the Soviet lodgment at Sudak. Fretter-Pico sent two Kampfgruppen against the Sudak lodgment, one from the east and one from the west, but by the time they arrived Selikhov’s regiment had had a week to entrench itself. The Germans quickly found that the Soviet position was a strong one, and settled down into a siege, using artillery and air attacks to grind down the Soviet regiment. In an arrant display of stupidity, Kozlov decided to reinforce failure, and on the night of January 24/25 the Black Sea Fleet landed Major Sergei I. Zabrodotsky’s 554th Mountain Rifle Regiment at Sudak. An additional 1,300 troops were landed the next night, bringing the total landed at Sudak to 4,264 men. However, the additional troops only extended the death throes of the Soviet lodgment, which the Germans began to crush in late January 1942. By January 28, XXX Armeekorps declared that the enemy forces at Sudak were eliminated and that 876 prisoners had been taken, but failed to mention that the prisoners were executed. About 2,000 Soviet troops died in battle at Sudak and a few hundred were evacuated by sea, but the vast majority simply disappeared into the mountains. Perhaps 350–500 joined local partisan groups, but others simply went into hiding. Fretter-Pico was forced to leave a Romanian mountain-infantry battalion around Sudak in mop-up operations until the summer, and they continued to discover small groups of survivors until June.

Manstein’s winter counteroffensive at Feodosiya was a unique German triumph that stood in stark contrast to Soviet successes on many other parts of the Eastern Front during the winter of 1941/42. In just a matter of days, he had managed to inflict a signal defeat on Soviet forces in the Kerch Peninsula that threw Kozlov’s forces onto the defensive. It was not a decisive victory, since Kozlov’s armies would soon be back for a rematch at the Parpach Narrows, but Manstein had gained time to build a better defensive front and had greatly leveled the playing field. Had his forces not recaptured Feodosiya, he would soon have had to contemplate evacuating the Crimea and falling back toward Perekop.

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On December 31, 1941, Hansen was forced to evacuate a good deal of territory captured during the December offensive in order to release the 132. and 170. Infanterie-Divisionen to participate in the counteroffensive to retake Feodosiya. With only the 22., 24., 50., and 72. Infanterie-Divisionen plus the Romanian 1st Mountain Brigade left in the siege lines around Sevastopol, Hansen could not afford to hold everything that had been seized. Consequently, LIV Armeekorps withdrew from the area around Mekenzievy Station and, once again, the Kamyschly Ravine became the front line. At the end of the year, Hansen’s LIV Armeekorps did begin receiving some replacement batallions, but rail traffic across the Dnepr was still so sporadic that some troops were required to walk from Perekop to Sevastopol. German logistics in the Crimea were still very primitive during the winter of 1941/42, meaning that Hansen’s troops were desperately short of food, fuel, ammunition, and winter clothing. There was no food for the 50,000 horses in AOK 11 at all, so they were evacuated to the logistics depot at Kherson, leaving most of Hansen’s division-level artillery immobile for the duration of the winter.¹⁸ The defenders also faced severe food shortages, and were not much better off than those in encircled Leningrad, which was also under siege.

Both sides settled into a routine of desultory trench warfare, with occasional raids. Most of the German troops were able to construct underground shelters, but a typical day on the front line was monotonous and dangerous. However, static warfare afforded an opportunity for German scouts to covertly tap Soviet field telephone lines at night, which led to an intelligence coup on January 21 when the Germans learned about an imminent Soviet sortie against the 24. Infanterie-Division. Forewarned about the timing of the enemy attack, German artillery shredded the Soviet infantry as soon as they left their trenches.¹⁹

Aside from lax communications security, another major problem facing the Soviet defenders was that most of Morgunov’s coastal artillery had worn out their barrels by firing too many rounds during the November–December fighting. Even the 305mm gun turrets in Coastal Batteries No. 30 and No. 35 were no longer fit for combat; Lieutenant Georgy A. Aleksandr’s Battery No. 30 had fired 1,238 rounds since the beginning of the siege and was non-operational. Now only a mile from the closest German positions and visible to enemy forward observers, Morgunov’s engineers came up with a bold plan to replace the 50-ton gun barrels in late January 1942. It took 16 nights’ worth of heavy, dangerous labor, but the barrels were replaced and the battery operational again by February 12. Following this, Soviet naval engineers replaced the barrels of Coastal Battery No. 35, then of six 152mm guns, three 130mm guns, and four 100mm guns. Soviet engineers also stripped the guns from the crippled cruiser Chervona Ukraina and the destroyer Sovershennyi, both lying in Sevastopl’s inner harbor area, in order to provide for five new naval artillery batteries to defend the landward side of the city. Captain-Lieutenant Aleksei P. Matyukhin led 65 sailors from the destroyer Sovershennyi to the Malakhov Hill, famous from the 1855 siege, where they established Battery 701 with two 130mm guns. By the end of March, Morgunov’s coastal batteries were restored to full effectiveness.²⁰

It helped that Sevastopol was not really under tight siege during the winter of 1941/42, and that naval convoys could deliver supplies and spare parts from naval depots in Novorossiysk with only modest opposition from the Luftwaffe. Petrov received nearly 6,000 replacements in January, and 2,194 of his wounded were evacuated. The Romanian Navy was far too weak to interfere with Russian convoys, and although the German Kriegsmarine was planning to dispatch light naval forces to the region, they had not yet made an appearance. Fighters from the VVS-ChF were able to maintain air superiority over Sevastopol because the only German fighter unit in the Crimea – III./JG 77 at Sarabus – was forced to concentrate most of its limited sorties over the Parpach front. However, Manstein prevailed upon the Luftwaffe to increase its efforts to interdict Soviet naval supply lines to the Crimea. At the end of January 1942, the Luftwaffe sent Oberleutnant Hansgeorg Bätcher’s 1./KG 100 to the Crimea specifically to interdict Soviet shipping in the Black Sea. Bätcher’s Staffeln had only eight operational He-111 bombers, but he was one of the greatest bomber pilots of World War II and his unit’s aircrew among the elite of the Kampfflieger. Bätcher’s aircrew had no experience in anti-shipping operations, but they learned low-level bombing tactics that began to inflict a toll on Soviet ships going to Sevastopol and Kerch.²¹ The VVS-ChF in Sevastopol responded by launching repeated raids on Bätcher’s squadron at Saki airfield, but failed to put the German anti-shipping unit out of business.

Although Bätcher’s attacks were initially more of a nuisance than lethal, Petrov did not receive all the replacement troops and equipment he requested, though enough arrived to rebuild many of the battered units in his Coastal Army and restore its fighting effectiveness. By February 8, he had 69,853 troops in his Coastal Army, plus 12,128 naval infantry. Three convoys during February 12–15 brought in another 7,746 troops and 1,900 tons of supplies. However, the Stavka would not allow Petrov to spend the entire winter quietly rebuilding his army, but required him to launch attacks against the German siege lines concurrent with Kozlov’s offensive to break out of the Kerch Peninsula. On February 26, 1942, Petrov mounted a large attack with the 345th Rifle Division, the 2nd Perekop Naval Infantry Regiment, the 3rd Naval Infantry Regiment, and the 125th Separate Tank Battalion against the German 24. Infanterie-Division near Mekenzievy Mountain. The German troops were not expecting such a serious attack and the Soviet troops were able to advance 1,300 yards into the German lines before being stopped by a counterattack. Desultory combat continued in this area until March 6, which cost the 24. Infanterie-Division 1,277 casualties, including 288 dead or missing. Petrov’s assault forces suffered much heavier losses, including 1,818 dead and 780 captured. After this, the German siege lines were forced to maintain greater alertness against the possibility of more Soviet sorties.

Recurrent Soviet landings along the Black Sea coast forced Manstein to create a large number of ad hoc coastal-defense units, such as Gruppe Heigl to defend Yevpatoriya and Gruppe Schroder to defend the area around Yalta. Indeed, much of the German 170. Infanterie-Division, Romanian 10th Infantry Division, and Romanian 4th Mountain Brigade were tied down on coastal-defense duties for much of the winter, which severely strained AOK 11’s meager resources. Troops deployed along the coast were often bombarded at night by the Black Sea Fleet and harassed during the day by VVS-ChF air raids. In return, Zuckertort established some of his long-range artillery to shell Severnaya Bay whenever convoys appeared in the harbor. The Black Sea Fleet continued to operate weekly supply convoys into Sevastopol all winter, relying heavily upon the light cruisers Komintern and Krasny Krym; the flotilla leaders Tashkent and Kharkov; the destroyers Boiky, Bditelny, and Bezuprechny; and the freighters Abkhazia, Belostok, Pestel, and Lvov. The Italian-built flotilla leader Tashkent, commanded by Captain 2nd Rank Vasiliy N. Eroshenko, was one of the star players on the Novorossiysk–Sevastopol route and almost invulnerable to German air attacks since it was capable of bursts of speed up to 39 knots and armed with six 37mm 70-K antiaircraft guns. Eroshenko made multiple trips in and out of Sevastopol with impunity throughout the winter. Overall, the convoys brought in 35,000 replacements between January and May 1942 and evacuated 9,000 wounded, as well as thousands of civilians.

The winter around Sevastopol was much milder than elsewhere on the Eastern Front, and temperatures rose above freezing after the first week of March 1942.²² By mid-March, Hansen’s troops often didn’t need to wear their bulky overcoats during the day, and spring arrived in the first week of April. During the late winter, once the ground was clear, each of Hansen’s divisions set up close-combat courses to teach the new replacements how to breach obstacles, clear trenches, and knock out bunkers, all of which had been learned in the December offensive. In the Soviet lines, Petrov’s troops also prepared for renewed fighting, but had to be more circumspect about training in the open. Soviet artillery harassed the German siege lines with sporadic firing, discouraging movement in daylight. German artillery did the same to Petrov’s men, firing 50 tons of ammunition even on a quiet day. Daily frontline “wastage” was similar to World War I, with Hansen’s LIV Armeekorps suffering five to ten dead and 15 to 25 wounded every day from enemy snipers, artillery fire, and air raids.²³ One sniper, Lyudmila M. Pavlichenko from the 25th Rifle Division, began to rack up an impressive number of “kills” with her SVT sniper rifle, although probably nowhere near the 257 Germans from AOK 11 that she claimed. Petrov’s Coastal Army included a number of women in combat roles, but it is difficult to confirm their actual accomplishments. Soviet “kill” claims were often highly inflated by unit-level commissars, eager to prove that their unit was fulfilling its duty to the Rodina (Motherland). Another female soldier, Senior Sergeant Nina A. Onilova, also from the 25th Rifle Division, fought as a machine gunner in a number of actions around Mekenzievy Mountain and was awarded the HSU after being mortally wounded in action on March 1. German soldiers were often surprised when they captured Soviet female soldiers, which happened on a number of occasions around Sevastopol.

Another inspirational leader in the Soviet defense at Sevastopol was General-Major Nikolay A. Ostryakov, the VVS-ChF commander, who even flew his own Yak-1 fighter on patrols over the city. His 3rd Special Aviation Group (3 OAG) had coalesced into an elite aviation group, with some of the best Soviet naval fighter pilots available. Unfortunately, the Luftwaffe also became aware of Ostryakov’s role in the defense and made efforts to target him. On April 24, General-Major Fedor G. Korobkov, the deputy commander of Soviet naval aviation, arrived in Sevastopol on an inspection trip for the Stavka, and Ostryakov took him to see the main VVS-ChF facility in Kruglaya Bay, west of the city. Thirty minutes after the generals and their staffs entered a hangar to look at ongoing maintenance activities, six Ju-88 bombers zoomed in from the sea and headed straight for the airbase. Before anyone could react, the Ju-88s dropped their bomb loads on the facility, and one 500kg bomb entered through the hangar roof, killing the two Soviet generals and their staffs. Soviet sources make no mention of how such a catastrophe could occur, but it is unlikely that it was a serendipitous event. Soviet communications security was often lax and it is likely that Luftwaffe radio intercept units noted the arrival of a senior figure like Korobkov and gleaned details of his itinerary in order to plan an air strike – this was essentially the same method that the Americans used to target Japanese Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto in 1943. In any case, the death of Ostryakov was a major blow to the VVS-ChF.

In late February 1942, Bätcher’s 1./KG 100 was joined by Major Horst Beyling’s II./KG 26, which had been trained as a torpedo squadron. Beyling brought 34 He-111H-6 bombers to Saki airfield on the coast near Yevpatoriya, with more than half outfitted to deliver two aerial torpedoes. Beyling’s torpedo bombers damaged a Soviet freighter in the Kerch Straits on the night of March 1/2, and Bätcher’s low-level bombers damaged the Soviet tanker Valerian Kuybyshev at Kerch on March 3; the tanker was delivering a critical load of fuel to sustain the offensive by Kozlov’s Crimean Front. Increasingly, Soviet ships bound for Sevastopol or Kerch came under air attack and suffered damage. In retaliation, the VVS-ChF mounted raids on the German air bases in the Crimea and managed to destroy five of Bätcher’s He-111s on the ground. Nevertheless, one of Beyling’s He-111H-6 bombers torpedoed and sank the transport Vasiliy Chapaev on March 23. The III./KG 51, a Ju-88 bomber unit based at Nikolayev, was brought in to raid the Soviet Caucasian ports of Novorossiysk and Tuapse. At midday on March 24, Hauptmann Werner Baumbach led nine Ju-88s from KG 51 over the Black Sea and caught the port of Tuapse completely by surprise. There was no flak or fighter opposition, enabling the German bombers to inflict considerable damage on ships and facilities.²⁴ In response, the VVS-Crimean Front hastily tried to establish air cover over the ports and the Kerch Strait, but inter-service coordination was not a Soviet strong suit and most of the Soviet fighters were too short-ranged to operate effectively over the Black Sea. In March, the three German bomber units sank five small Soviet freighters totaling 10,338 GRT, which might not seem like much, but the Soviet merchant marine in the Black Sea was beginning to run out of ships and could not replace them. It was also apparent that the Caucasian ports were no longer safe, which boded poorly for Sevastopol’s lifelines.

In April 1942, the German anti-shipping campaign became increasingly painful for the Soviet merchant marine in the Black Sea as He-111 bombers seeded the shipping routes across the Kerch Strait with air-delivered mines. The tanker Valerian Kuybyshev, after being repaired, attempted another run to Kerch on the evening of April 2, escorted by a destroyer and two MiG-3 fighters overhead. Nevertheless, five He-111s from Beyling’s II./KG 26 swooped in low and launched torpedoes, one of which struck the tanker’s stern, turning it into a ball of flame. Soviet officials in Sevastopol had been evacuating as many civilians as possible by sea during the winter in order to reduce the logistical needs of the isolated city and to minimize casualties from a renewed German offensive in the spring. Unfortunately, the passenger ships were large targets, and on the afternoon of April 17 the 4,125-ton passenger ship Svanetia was sunk, attacked by a group of He-111H-6 bombers and struck by two torpedoes; the ship sank in 20 minutes, taking 750 of the 950 passengers and crew aboard to the bottom with her. Lacking long-range fighters that could patrol over convoys at sea, the VVS-Crimean Front commander decided to employ his handful of Pe-2 tactical bombers as “heavy fighters,” believing that they could deter He-111 attacks on shipping. They did not. Further raids on Tuapse and Novorossiysk sank two merchantmen and damaged four others. On April 28, the Luftwaffe made a maximum effort with 43 He-111s raiding Kerch and 21 Ju-88s raiding Novorossiysk, losing just one bomber to Soviet fighters.

The end result of the winter siege was that the Luftwaffe had failed to interdict Sevastopol’s sea lines of communication, which enabled Petrov’s defenses to improve considerably. On the other hand, German air attacks had cost the Soviet merchant marine losses that it could not sustain indefinitely, and the VVS had been unable to prevent the Luftwaffe from attacking shipping and ports. Sevastopol’s sea lines of communication remained intact by the onset of spring, but they were vulnerable. On the ground, both sides had used the winter months to rest and replenish their forces, as well as to improve their positions. Petrov’s Coastal Army was well suited to defending the fortified naval base, but it lacked the armor and mobile artillery to break through the German siege lines and link-up with Kozlov’s forces. Help would have to come from outside, and thus, both the Germans and Soviets looked to a decision first in the Kerch Peninsula before the fate of Sevastopol could be decided.

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Kozlov’s 44th and 51st Armies were so disorganized after the retreat caused by Manstein’s Feodosiya counteroffensive that they were incapable of offensive action for more than a month. However, reinforcements began to flow steadily into the Crimea after part of the Kerch Strait froze over on January 20 and remained frozen for three weeks. Soviet engineers built an ice road across the frozen strait, which enabled 96,618 troops, 23,903 horses, and 6,519 vehicles to cross from the Taman Peninsula to the Kerch Peninsula in this period.²⁵ A 47th Army was created at Kerch with two rifle divisions, but remained a second-echelon holding command for some time. On January 28, 1942, the Stavka rationalized the command structure in the Crimea by placing Kozlov in command of the new Crimean Front and subordinating the Black Sea Fleet and the SOR to the front. At the same time, the Stavka issued a directive for Kozlov to begin preparations for a major offensive to break out of the Kerch Peninsula and advance westward to link up with Petrov’s Coastal Army in Sevastopol. The 45-year-old Dmitri T. Kozlov, a former junior officer in the Tsarist Army, had been a decent regimental commander in the 1920s but was in over his head trying to run a joint command structure involving four armies, a fleet, and various air units. Kozlov’s staff was equally amateurish and incapable of developing anything but the most basic of plans, and were further burdened with Stalin and his Stavka representatives constantly pushing them to attack. Commissar Lev Mekhlis, the head of the Red Army’s Main Political Administration, arrived as the Stavka’s representative to the Crimean Front in late January and immediately began interfering with operational planning.

Stalin and Mekhlis wanted Kozlov to attack and retake the Crimea by mid-February, but this was simply not possible, as the logistical situation in the Kerch Peninsula was still quite rudimentary, since preference had been given to combat units moving across the straits, not service-support units. Three regiments of 76mm USV guns had arrived without any ammunition and food was in very short supply for the Crimean Front. The transportation network in the Kerch Peninsula was primitive, and heavy rains made the dirt roads impassible to traverse even for Soviet trucks. After the recapture of Feodosiya, the Luftwaffe shifted its focus to battlefield interdiction, and began bombing Kerch’s port facilities and regularly sinking cargo ships crossing from Novorossiysk. Consequently, Kozlov was not able assemble a combat-ready force of five rifle divisions in the 51st Army and four rifle divisions in the 44th Army until late February.

Kozlov decided to make his main effort with Lvov’s 51st Army in the northern part of the Parpach Narrows, in the area between Koi-Asan and the Sivash. This area, roughly 5½ miles wide by 6 miles deep, was a flat, grassy steppe with no significant elevations, and would become the most fought-over terrain in the Crimea for the next three months. Aside from a handful of small villages in this area, there was very little cover and concealment, which made any kind of movement susceptible to artillery and air attacks. The Germans built Stützpunkt (strongpoints) in the villages of Tulumchak, Korpech’, and Koi-Asan. Mattenklott’s XXXXII Armeekorps held this area with General Nicolae Costescu’s Romanian 18th Infantry Division and Himer’s 46. Infanterie-Division, while the 132. Infanterie-Division held the southern end of the Axis line. Gruppe Hitzfeld was in reserve. This was excellent defensive terrain, and the narrowness of the front enabled Mattenklott and Fetter-Pico to establish defensive positions in accordance with German doctrinal norms; unlike other places on the Eastern Front, where German divisions were required to hold 12–15 miles of front line, here a division was required to hold only a 2–4-mile-wide front. Yet both sides made costly mistakes at the Parpach Narrows. The Germans chose to hold on to a salient jutting out from the Koi-Asan position and required the Romanian 18th Infantry Regiment to defend an exposed position in the north, along the Sivash. Soviet offensive planning was made with very little regard for terrain or weather, which was atrocious in late February. Unlike other parts of the Eastern Front, which were still receiving large snow storms, the warmer Crimea received less snow but far heavier soaking rains, which lasted for days.

At 0630hrs on February 27, 1942, Kozlov began his first offensive, beginning with an artillery preparation from about 230 artillery pieces, although the vast majority were lightweight 76mm guns. The German strongpoints, usually reinforced with stones from nearby rock quarries, were not damaged much by 76mm high-explosive rounds, and Kozlov’s heavy artillery was limited to just 30 122mm howitzers. Nor did he have any long-range guns for counterbattery work to suppress the German artillery. Nevertheless, when Kozlov committed his armor against two battalions of the Romanian 18th Infantry Regiment, they achieved quick success. Despite heavy rains that made the low-lying ground too soft for his battalion of KV-1 heavy tanks to advance, the lighter T-26 tanks moved forward and overran the Stützpunkt at Tulumchak. The Romanian infantry regiment was routed, opening up the northern end of the Axis defensive line. A German artillery battalion, supporting the Romanians, was overrun and lost all 18 of its 10.5cm l.FH 18 howitzers, as well as 14 3.7cm Pak guns.²⁶ Kozlov’s armor and infantry were able to advance 2½ miles on the first day of the offensive, until Gruppe Hitzfeld was rushed up to halt them. Thereafter, the Soviet assault units were blocked by marshy terrain and determined German infantry, preventing any further advance. The stalled Soviet tanks and infantry were then exposed to persistent artillery and antitank fire, which eroded their numbers. Although Kozlov had attached sappers to his armor units, they had fallen behind, and seven Soviet tanks were knocked out by German Teller antitank mines near Stützpunkt Tulumchak. On the left flank of the Soviet penetration Stützpunkt Korpech’ remained in German hands, and its machine guns and mortars concentrated on anything moving upright in the open terrain. The Soviet assault literally bogged down. The ground near the Sivash was so waterlogged, with large standing puddles of water, that Soviet troops could not even lay prone in some places. The Axis defense was also undermined by the lack of air support; the Luftwaffe managed only three sorties over the battle area on the first day, against over 100 sorties from the VVS-Crimean Front.

Encouraged by his success on the right, Kozlov kept reinforcing this sector in the hope of achieving a breakthrough. He directed the reserve 47th Army to send its 77th Mountain Rifle Division to support the right hook around the enemy line. Mattenklott responded to this alarming situation by repositioning Hitzfeld’s IR 213 and I./IR 105 to backstop the battered Romanians, while the 46. Infanterie-Division committed all its strength to holding the center of the Axis defensive line at Koi-Asan. Hitzfeld was inclined to take the offensive, and he aggressively led an attack on the morning of February 28 that temporarily recovered some ground on the northern flank. The crisis of the battle developed during the afternoon, as Kozlov committed his best remaining infantry against the Romanians, and they gave way. The fresh 77th Mountain Rifle Division succeeded in a minor breakthrough, which captured the village of Kiet, nearly outflanking the entire Axis defensive line. The 51st Army claimed the capture of over 100 Romanians. However, Gruppe Hitzfeld and the I./IR 105 were able to counterattack and retake the village. Blocked by the marshy and waterlogged terrain around Kiet, it proved impossible for Kozlov to expand his position in this sector and he was left holding an exposed salient. The wide marshes just north of Kiet were no-go terrain even for infantry.

While Mattenklott fed part of the 170. Infanterie-Division into the northern sector to allow Costescu’s battered division to go into reserve, the rest of the front was reduced to desultory combat levels on March 1. During the first three days of the offensive the 44th Army had conducting little more than nuisance attacks against the German XXX Armeekorps sector on the right, which allowed Manstein to concentrate his reserves against Lvov’s army. Kozlov was frustrated by his lack of progress in the center against Stützpunkt Koi-Asan, held by IR 42 and IR 72, which was the key to the Axis position, and by his inability to convert his success on the right into a real tactical advantage. Instead, Kozlov became fixated on mounting diversionary attacks to draw Manstein’s reserves away from Koi-Asan, but this proved wishful thinking. He ordered the Black Sea Fleet to bombard Axis positions around Feodosiya and Yalta, and, over the course of four nights, the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna fired 100 rounds of 305mm against these targets, with the heavy cruiser Molotov and eight destroyers joining in as well.²⁷ A minor naval landing was made at Alushta on March 1, then withdrawn after four hours having achieved nothing.

Resolved to accomplish some signal success before weather and logistics brought his offensive to a premature end, Kozlov decided to make an all-out attack against Stützpunkt Koi-Asan on March 2. He deployed two rifle divisions, supported by the newly arrived 39th, 40th, and 55th Tank Brigades, and the 229th Separate Tank Battalion (OTB), against the strongpoint, but the Soviet armor piled up against the still-intact German obstacles and was shot to pieces by Panzerjägers and artillery. Furthermore, the Luftwaffe was finally able to provide some air cover, including 40 Stuka sorties from III./StG 77 that targeted the massed Soviet armor.²⁸ The Soviets admitted that they lost 93 tanks on this one day, in addition to about 40 other tanks lost in the opening days of the offensive. Nonetheless, Kozlov’s assault did overrun a battery of four 14.9cm s.FH 37(t) howitzers, and a VVS bomber raid on Vladislavovka destroyed an ammunition dump containing 23 tons of munitions.²⁹ Yet it was apparent that Kozlov’s offensive had failed to dent the Koi-Asan or Korpech’ positions, and he suspended his offensive on March 3, after losing a great deal of infantry and most of his armor, including 28 of his 36 KV-1 tanks. The 51st Army was left holding a salient in open terrain across the northern part of the front, but only security troops could be posted in this exposed area. At great cost, Kozlov’s first offensive had bent back the left wing of XXXXII Armeekorps, but the Koi-Asan strongpoint held firm in the center. In his memoirs, Manstein downplayed the Soviet offensive by writing that “we eventually succeeded in containing the enemy breakthrough in the northern sector,” while omitting the near-disaster on the first day.³⁰ He did decide to mass all his assault guns at Koi-Asan, including the newly arrived 2./Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 249.

Failure to achieve a clean breakthrough brought instant recriminations, with Kozlov blaming the weather. Although Tolbukhin was certainly at fault, as chief of staff, for the poor planning, Mekhlis put the brunt of the blame on him and had him relieved. Stalin ordered Kozlov to immediately begin preparing for another offensive, to start within ten days. The plan for the second attack paid more attention to the German defenses and decided to concentrate most of the 51st Army’s offensive power against Stützpunkt Koi-Asan in the center of the enemy line, reckoning that its loss would allow Lvov to punch through Mattenklott’s line. Kozlov also directed that this time, the 44th Army would play a greater role in the offensive by mounting a diversionary attack against the 132. Infanterie-Division positions along the Black Sea coast. Mekhlis, who had no tactical experience, bragged that “we’ll organize the big music for the Germans!” and then foolishly directed Kozlov to split up his 224 tanks among the rifle divisions, rather then keep them as a mobile exploitation force.³¹ Rather optimistically, Kozlov claimed that his forces could advance 2½ miles in a three-day offensive. Stalin also ensured that the VVS-Crimean Front was greatly reinforced, and by early March it had 581 aircraft, although most were older I-16 fighters, I-153 fighter-bombers, and DB-3 bombers. The Germans used the respite to reinforce the Koi-Asan position with over 2,000 Teller antitank mines.³²

It was snowing when Kozlov’s second offensive began at 0900hrs on March 13. Lvov attacked with three rifle divisions across terrain that was still too waterlogged to prevent rapid tactical movements, and the initial results were the same as before: all Soviet attacks were repulsed with heavy losses. Mekhlis ordered the armor committed in order to support the infantry, but they ran into antiarmor ambushes established by two assault-gun companies. But 1. Kompanie of Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 197 had a great day, with Leutnant Johann Spielmann’s section claiming 14 T-34s destroyed and Oberwachtmeister Fritz Schrödel personally claiming eight enemy tanks, including three KV-2s. The Soviet armor did manage to inflict some losses, including a direct hit on Oberleutnant Nottebrock’s StuG III, which mortally wounded the commander of 2./Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 249.³³ It is clear that the Soviet armor was destroyed in piecemeal fashion, with 157 tanks lost in the first three days of fighting. More than half of these losses came from the 56th Tank Brigade, which lost 88 of its tanks. Spielmann was awarded the Ritterkreuz for his battlefield accomplishment.

However, XXXXII Armeekorps was beginning to suffer from losses, and air attacks by the VVS-Crimean Front were becoming increasingly painful. Once again, Soviet DB-3 bombers blew up the main ammunition dump at Vladislavovka, detonating 60 tons of munitions. While II./JG 77, newly arrived in the Crimea from refitting in Germany, inflicted heavy losses upon the older fighters of the VVS-Crimean Front, it could not gain air superiority over the Parpach sector. Heavy expenditures of infantry finally paid off, and the 51st Army captured Stützpunkt Korpech’ from IR 105 on March 14, as well as a battery of three 10.5cm f. FH 18 howitzers and nine Nebelwerfer launchers. Mattenklott’s defenses were seriously dented, but Kozlov’s artillery had expended most of its ammunition and a pause was necessary before the offensive could be renewed.

Manstein was sufficiently concerned by the loss of Stützpunkt Korpech’ that he decided to mount an immediate counterattack with the 22. Panzer-Division, which had just arrived in the Crimea. The OKH had sent the new division to AOK 11 in order to spearhead a major counteroffensive against the Crimean Front, but now Manstein decided to use it in a local counterattack to retake a battalion-size strongpoint. Nor was the 22. Panzer-Division complete, since parts of it were still arriving from France and the unit was untested in combat. Nevertheless, Manstein imprudently decided to employ Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Koppenburg’s Panzer-Regiment 204 without much infantry or engineer support. Furthermore, the bulk of Koppenburg’s tanks were ex-Czech Pz 38(t) models, which could not stand up to Kozlov’s T-34s and KV-1 if encountered. When Koppenburg’s two Panzer Abteilungen crossed the front line at 0600hrs on March 20, a thick fog limited visibility to 100 yards or less. Unfamiliar with the terrain, one of Koppenburg’s battalions became disoriented in the fog and the other ran into a minefield. The counterattack then became a confused meeting engagement in the fog, which went very badly for the Germans. Alerted to the approach of German armor, the Soviet 55th Tank Brigade quickly appeared with a battalion of T-26 light tanks and four KV-1s, which blocked access to Korpech’. Attempting to maneuver, I./Pz. Regt 204 ran into a nest of Soviet 45mm antitank guns and suffered 40 percent losses. Eventually, Koppenburg aborted the counterattack by 0900hrs, having completely failed in his mission. The 22. Panzer-Division’s counterattack at Korpech’ was one of the most badly bungled German armored attacks of the entire war on the Eastern Front; 32 of 142 tanks had been lost (including nine Pz IIs, 17 Pz 38(t)s, and six Pz IVs) and the division had to be sent to the rear to refit.³⁴ Using tanks without proper battlefield reconnaissance or the use of air, artillery, infantry, or engineer support went completely against German combined-arms doctrine, and the failure to properly plan or support the attack was entirely Manstein’s fault. Kozlov’s second offensive had failed to achieve a breakthrough, but he had dented the German main line of resistance, and the decimation of the 22. Panzer-Division prevented Manstein from gaining the initiative.

After taking just a week to replace losses and restock his artillery ammunition, Kozlov began his Third Offensive on March 26, intent upon taking the tenacious Koi-Asan Stützpunkt. However, this attack fizzled out very quickly, and the Crimea Front was incapable of making a serious effort until early April. The Luftwaffe mounted continuous raids on the port facility at Kerch, which seriously disrupted Soviet logistic operations, and, consequently, Kozlov could not resume his offensive until April 9, but with fewer tanks and artillery pieces than required.³⁵ Once again, Mehklis pressed Kozlov to commit his armor while German lines were still unbroken, which was akin to smashing against a wall at high speed. Manstein had also begun to receive reinforcements in the spring of 1942, including the 28. leichte Infanterie-Division, which was equipped with the new 2.8cm s.PzB 41 tapered-bore antitank guns. On the first day of the latest Soviet offensive, Obergefreiter Emanuel Czernik destroyed seven T-26 tanks and one BT with the new weapon, at ranges of 70–660 yards.³⁶ Unlike larger antitank guns, the low-silhouette s.PzB 41 could be easily concealed even in flat terrain like the eastern Crimea. After three days of unsuccessfully pounding on German defenses at Koi-Asan, Kozlov finally decided to halt his offensives and rest and resupply his exhausted divisions. As a result of these four offensives, most of the Crimean Front’s combat power was concentrated on its right flank in the 51st Army, while the 44th Army had not received priority and the 47th Army was little more than a holding command. Unwittingly, lax Soviet radio communications during the March–April fighting had enabled German signals troops to intercept traffic between the Crimean Front’s army-level headquarters and to determine their positions – which were then provided to the Luftwaffe.³⁷

During the four months from January to April 1942, Kozlov’s Crimean Front (including the forces in Sevastopol) suffered a crippling 352,000 casualties for the liberation of just the Kerch Peninsula. Most of these losses were incurred during the four offensives conducted between February 27 and April 11, which made only modest tactical gains. In the same time period, Manstein’s AOK 11 suffered a total of 24,120 casualties, indicating an extremely unfavorable 14-1 casualty ratio for Kozlov. Indeed, it is clear that AOK 11 made an impressive stand against long odds at the Parpach Narrows, while maintaining the siege of Sevastopol – a great feat of generalship. On the other hand, after making a daring amphibious landing at Feodosiya in December 1941, the Crimean Front reverted to a dull, plodding form of operations. Given the excessive casualties of the attackers for marginal gains across unsuitable terrain, Kozlov’s four offensives bear a striking resemblance to British offensives at Passchendaele in 1917, but these equally large battles have been almost completely forgotten today.

“The Bolsheviks will be driven off and never return!” proclaims a propaganda poster distributed by 11. Armee in the Crimea. This poster ties in with Manstein’s secret memorandum about annihilating the “Judaeo-Bolshevik” system and depicts the Wehrmacht acting as exterminators under the Nazi banner. (NARA)

German infantry cautiously advance into a Crimean village, 1941–42. (Nik Cornish, WH 721)

This photo was taken in 1920 from the bottom of the ditch below the Tartar Wall. At top left, the remains of barbed wire from the White trenches atop the wall are still visible. (Nik Cornish, RCW 111)

This is the point of Wrangel’s defenses on the Litovsky Peninsula along the Sivash where the Red Army took advantage of the weather to outflank the Perekop position by wading through the lower-than-usual water. Rows of barbed wire were established to bar the movement of small boats, but the fieldworks defending the obstacle were primitive and virtually unmanned. (Nik Cornish, RCW 94)

Since the time of Catherine the Great, Russian naval power in the Black Sea was based upon possession of the naval base at Sevastopol and the possession of capital ships to operate from that base. The battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna was transferred to the Black Sea in 1930 to serve as flagship for the fleet, but it subsequently proved to be ill-suited to operate in Crimean waters that were dominated by enemy air power. The Black Sea Fleet’s sole battleship and handful of cruisers did play a major role in stopping the initial German assault upon Sevastopol in November–December 1941, but afterwards sat out much of the rest of the war in obscure backwater anchorages. (Author’s collection)

Soviet coastal gunners at Coastal Battery 30 (later dubbed “Fort Maxim Gorky I” by the Germans) in Sevastopol before the German attack. The 305mm gun turrets were designed to traverse 360 degrees and could fire against naval or ground targets. Like the British at Gibraltar, the Russians at Sevastopol were more concerned about attack from the sea and put more effort into preparing for a naval attack that never came, rather than the landward attack that did. (Author’s collection)

Soviet VVS-ChF MiG-3 fighters of the 32nd Fighter Regiment based at the Chersonese airstrip south of Sevastopol in 1941–42. A small number of Soviet naval fighters tenaciously defended the skies over the naval base for six months until overwhelmed in June 1942. (Author’s collection)

German soldiers from Hansen’s LIV Armeekorps observe Soviet positions on the Perekop Isthmus, September 1941. The 11. Armee was forced to mount a deliberate assault against a Soviet defense in depth, yet was not properly equipped with siege artillery or combat engineers. (Author’s collection)

German infantry are seen here having occupied positions in the Soviet outer defenses at Perekop and are observing an artillery preparation of Fort Perekop. The Soviets planted steel beams in the ground to form an antitank barrier, and behind the barrier were numerous antipersonnel mines. (Author’s collection)

Fort Perekop, the main Soviet defensive position behind the Tartar Wall (the ditch is marked with a “T”). This obsolete field work, extant since the 17th century, was improved by Red Army engineers with protective trenches and a dense minefield on the approaches. Hansen’s troops never actually captured the fort, which was abandoned once the town of Armyansk (located to the south) fell into German hands. (NARA)

Hansen’s LIV Armeekorps used small Stossgruppen (assault groups) consisting of grenadiers and flamethrower-equipped pioneers to overcome the tough Soviet forward security positions at Perekop, before even reaching the Tartar Wall. Here, a grenadier flings a Stielgranaten at a Soviet position. Note that the entrenched Soviet defenders are virtually invisible, while the upright German attackers are fully exposed and vulnerable. (Author’s collection)

German infantry from the LIV Armeekorps crossing the Tatar Ditch on September 26, 1941. The steep walls formed an excellent defensive parapet and it was only through the use of aggressive combined-arms tactics that the Germans were able to breach this position so quickly. (Author’s collection)

Soviet prisoners taken at Perekop, September 1941. The 51st Army failed to hold either the Perekop or Ishun defensive positions, and lost about half its troops and the bulk of its field artillery. (Author’s collection)

German infantry advance south from Ishun into the Crimea. Most of the 11. Armee could only advance at a walking pace. The flat, grassy terrain made movement easy but also rendered attackers very vulnerable to defensive fire when Soviet rearguards chose to stand and fight. (Author’s collection)

Once the Soviet defense at Ishun was broken on October 26, 1941, Manstein initiated a pursuit operation. Brigade Ziegler was an extemporized motorized unit, which consisted mostly of thin-skinned wheeled vehicles. Note the alertness of the German troops – looking out for Soviet rearguards or ambushes – and the air-recognition flag on the hood of the vehicle. (Author’s collection)

A Soviet I-153 “Chaika” fighter patrols over the entrance to Sevastopol’s Severnaya Bay in 1941. At this point, naval traffic in and out of the port appears still normal, with a minesweeper and transport in the background. However once the Luftwaffe appeared over Sevastopol, most naval traffic only moved at night, in order to avoid attacks. (Author’s collection)

Romanian motorcycle troops from the 6th Motorized Rosiori Regiment were used in the pursuit after Ishun in November 1941, as well as during Operation Trappenjagd in May 1942. Note the German vehicle in the foreground, likely belonging to a liaison officer. (Nik Cornish, WH 1410)

A Soviet 152mm howitzer in a wood-framed firing position. Most of Sevastopol’s perimeter defenses in late 1941 were still fairly basic in layout, and it was not until the winter that most of the artillery was emplaced in more robust positions. (Nik Cornish, RA 105)

When the destroyer Sovershennyi was crippled by German bombers in Severnaya Bay, the Soviets stripped the wreck of its 130mm gun turrets and deployed them in two batteries on the Malakhov Hill. Matyukhin’s Battery 701 had two 130mm guns deployed in open concrete pits, which continued to operate until the final days of the siege. (Author’s collection)

A German infantry NCO cautiously peers around a shell-pocked building in a Crimean village. Note that he is prepared for unexpected close combat, with an entrenching tool in one hand. By the time that the 11. Armee reached the outskirts of Sevastopol in November 1941, its infantry units were severely depleted. (Author’s collection)

German troops from the 132. Infanterie-Division fought their way into Feodosiya on January 18, 1942, routing the Soviet 44th Army. Note that the weather is cold and that the German infantry are outfitted only with standard greatcoats. Manstein’s 11. Armee was greatly aided by the mild Crimean winter and suffered relatively few frostbite casualties, unlike the rest of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. (Author’s collection)

A German soldier at Yevpatoriya scans the sea for further Soviet landings, with the shattered wreck of the Tral-class coastal minesweeper Vzryvatel’ behind him. After running aground during the raid on the night of January 6, 1942, the Vzryvatel’ was riddled by point-blank fire from German 10.5cm howitzers. However, the defiant resistance of the doomed vessel served as an example of selfless service for the Black Sea Fleet and an indication to the Germans of the willingness of the Soviets to mount near-suicidal amphibious raids. (Author’s collection)

Caught by surprise by the Soviet capture of Feodosiya, Manstein was forced to abort his offensive against Sevastopol and hurriedly transfer elements of three divisions to retake the city. The 11. Armee did not possess much wheeled transport by January 1942, but unlike the rest of the Eastern Front, the Crimea did not receive sufficient snowfall to immobilize the German Army. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403719)

After retreating from Kerch, the German 46. Infanterie-Division was forced to construct hasty defenses across the Parpach Narrows to prevent a Soviet breakout. The Soviet Crimean Front made four efforts to break through the Parpach Line between February and April 1942. Note the open nature of the terrain, which meant that troops were often under enemy observation. There were several stone quarries in the area, which the Germans used to gather material for their fighting positions. Due to a high water table, it was difficult to dig trenches in this area. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403804)

Manstein received the newly-raised 22. Panzer-Division in March 1942, but the unit was badly defeated in its first action on March 20, 1942. However, the division performed much better during Operation Trappenjagd in May 1942. This division was primarily equipped with the Czech-built Pz 38(t) tank, which could not stand up to the T-34 or KV-1 tanks encountered in the Crimea. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403725)

Two T-34 tanks lie wrecked near Koi-Assan on the Kerch Peninsula after the Soviet offensive in March 1942. The Soviets were unable to use their superiority in armor to break out from the Kerch Peninsula, and the Parpach Narrows became a lethal killing ground reminiscent of World War I battlefields. (Author’s collection)

German pioneers and StuG III assault guns advance through the Soviet defenses at Parpach during Operation Trappenjagd in May 1942. Note the use of smoke to conceal the breach site in the Soviet obstacle belt. Manstein was able to overcome well-prepared Soviet defenses through the use of skillful combined-arms tactics and overwhelming air support. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403782)

Manstein’s trump card in the Crimea was the assault boats of 902. Sturmboote-Kommando, which he used to outflank the Soviet defenses at Parpach in May 1942, and then to cross Severnaya Bay in June 1942. Using the element of surprise, these assault boats enabled the Germans to conduct a new form of maneuver warfare in coastal waters. (Nik Cornish, WH 1336)

The Svobodnyi, a Type 7U class destroyer, was the newest destroyer in the Black Sea Fleet, having been commissioned in January 1942. It was involved in the regular supply run from Novorossiysk and was caught in daylight hours by Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers in Sevastopol’s Severnaya Bay on June 9, 1942. After being struck by multiple bombs, the destroyer sank near the Count’s Quay. (Author’s collection)

Tracers and parachute flares arch over the frontline trenches around Sevastopol in June 1942. Although most combat occurred during daylight hours, frontline units received regular harassing fire during the night, and the Soviet naval infantrymen were particularly fond of conducting local trench raids during hours of darkness. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403699)

A German sniper looks for targets in the opposite hills around Sevastopol. Note that he is using a captured SVT-40 sniper rifle – which was highly prized by German soldiers. Positional warfare afforded ample opportunity for snipers on both sides to rack up a significant number of “kills.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00059506)

The “Thor,” one of two 60cm “Karl”-type super-heavy mortars deployed to reduce Soviet defenses at Sevastopol. The two mortars fired a total of just 122 rounds during the siege, and fired their last rounds on June 9, 1942, against Coastal Battery 30. While these 60cm mortars gathered a great deal of publicity, they were not really practical battlefield weapons due to their very short range. (Author’s collection)

A modern view of the rebuilt Coastal Battery 30, with the rangefinder in the foreground and the two turrets in the background, facing the Black Sea. The Germans assaulted the battery from this angle and the photo gives a good indication of the constricting nature of the ridge. (Author’s collection)

A Luftwaffe ground crew prepares to load an SC 1000 bomb on a Ju-88 bomber. The Luftwaffe primarily relied upon 250kg and 500kg general-purpose bombs and did not have a large number of super-heavy or specialized bombs designed for attacking fortified targets. Consequently, the reduction of Soviet concrete gun batteries took multiple air attacks. (Nik Cornish, WH 1250)

The transport Abkhazia was sunk by German bombers in Severnaya Bay on June 9. The ammunition bunkers located behind the wreck of the Abkhazia in the chalk-faced cliffs are known as “White Cliff” – which was the target of the German 80cm Dora rail gun on June 6–7. Note that there is no evidence of a massive explosion as claimed by some German sources. (Author’s collection)

With all the attention given to “Dora” and “Karl,” it is often missed that the siege of Sevastopol represented the first opportunity for the Germans to employ massed Nebelwerfer rocket barrages in support of infantry attacks. Previously, they had been used only in small numbers, but at Sevastopol up to three or four battalions were simultaneously used to suppress a single enemy position. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403714)

Dead Soviet troops inside one of Sevastopol’s concrete forts. The German air and artillery bombardments inflicted only modest casualties on the well dug-in Soviet troops, but served to suppress positions, which could then be overrun by German combined-arms assault groups. (Author’s collection)

The Soviets employed three armored trains during the fighting in the Crimea in 1941–42. The Zhelezniakov was the most powerful, armed with five 100mm naval guns and numerous 12.7mm DShK heavy machine guns. These trains provided mobile firepower, but were extremely vulnerable to air attack. (Author’s collection)

Soviet naval infantrymen counterattacking to regain lost ground. Note the mixed weapons: a PPSH-41 submachine gun, SVT-40 automatic rifle, and captured German MP-40. German troops were often unnerved by the sudden onslaught of Soviet naval infantrymen, who could emerge from terrain that was thought to have been cleared and then conduct near-suicidal close-quarter assaults.

Romanian troops in the hilly terrain outside Sevastopol in June 1942. The performance of the Romanian Corps was decent, when properly supported by artillery and close air support. Without the participation of the Romanian mountain infantry, Manstein’s 11. Armee would have had a difficult time overwhelming Petrov’s Coastal Army. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403679)

German infantry scramble up to the top of a shell-cratered hill outside Sevastopol, June 1942. Note that the German leader, armed with an MP-40, has a vertical white stripe painted on the back of his helmet. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403689)

A German 10.5cm le. FH18 howitzer methodically shells Fort Constantine on June 24, 1942. By this point, German artillery clearly dominated Sevastopol’s harbor area and could strike targets almost anywhere in the city. Note that the German howitzer is deployed on a forward slope in broad daylight – apparently there was no fear of Soviet counterbattery or air attack by this point. The German artillerymen are acting as if they are on a range shoot. (Author’s collection)

Soviet troops emerging from the ruins of shattered positions during the final fighting in late June 1942. The German 11. Armee captured 95,000 Soviet troops at Sevastopol, but very few officers above the rank of colonel. After bravely resisting for months against superior firepower, the soldiers of the Coastal Army were abandoned by their commanders, who slipped away in the dead of night. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 00403653)

Part of the daily log from a German security unit in the Crimea, for March 17, 1942. Note the numerous notations for “Juden Akten” or Jewish Action, indicating liquidation operations against local civilians. The banality of evil is quite evident on this piece of bureaucratic memorabilia, with the most interesting touch being that the Germans actually used a stamp for ethnic-cleansing activities. (NARA)

German R-Boats. The Kriegsmarine transferred the 3. Räumbootsflotille to the Black Sea in July 1942, and these small warships played a major role in the operations around the Crimea in 1943–44. Although intended primarily for coastal minesweeping, the R-Boats proved quite useful as convoy escorts, anti-submarine vessels, and even in surface combat against the Azov Flotilla’s motor gunboats. (Nik Cornish, WH 1180)

German high-speed landing barges (MFP) unloading troops on the Sea of Azov, 1943. As a bonus from the aborted Operation Sealion, the versatile MFP proved well-suited to the shallow waters off the Crimea. Soviet naval forces never had much luck in efforts to interdict MFP coastal traffic, and it was not until the Luftwaffe lost its bases in the Crimea that Soviet air power could inflict significant losses on these craft. (Author’s collection)

A Soviet MO-IV sub-chaser, SKA-038, operating off the Crimea. The Black Sea Fleet had 42 vessels of this type in service at the start of the war and built another 75 in 1941–44. This 50-ton, wooden-hulled vessel served as a jack-of-all trades in the Black Sea and was useful for landing troops and for escort duties. Although armed with two 45mm 21K guns, the MO-IV boats were much slower than the German Schnellboote, but about evenly matched with the R-Boats. (Author’s collection)

Scouts from the 2nd Guards Rifle Division “Tamanskaya” land near Yenikale on November 4, 1943. Small groups of scouts were landed on the rocky coastline by light vessels from the Azov Flotilla, but the Soviets lacked the amphibious craft to land tanks or heavy artillery across this type of terrain. The failure to secure the port of Kerch in the initial phase of the Kerch–Eltigen operation greatly delayed the Coastal Army’s breakout from their lodgment. (Author’s collection)

Troops of the 346th Rifle Division crossing the Sivash on November 1, 1943. Soldiers had to link arms during the crossing, lest they become mired in the soft bottom. It took over two hours to walk across this 1½-mile wide ford, but the Soviet crossing was initially unopposed and took the Germans completely by surprise. Note that all the infantrymen are armed with PPSH submachine guns, and the flat Crimean coast in the distance. (Author’s collection)

The Soviet 10th Rifle Corps had great difficulty in moving heavy weapons across the Sivash, and boats were nearly useless. Here, a 45mm anti-tank gun and two horses are being transported on two small boats, which must be pushed across the mud, rather than floated. It is interesting that German engineers thought that the Sivash could not be crossed by a large unit, and the ability of the Red Army to adapt and persevere in this kind of situation often dumfounded the more conventional German approach to warfare. (Author’s collection)

Tanks from the 19th Tank Corps race through Simferopol on April 13, 1944, after the breakout from the Sivash bridgehead. Vasilevsky’s decision to transfer this tank corps across the Sivash bridge rendered the German stand at Perekop futile and caused the entire Axis position in the Crimea to disintegrate virtually overnight. The 19th Tank Corps started the operation with 221 tanks and assault guns, including 63 British-built Valentine tanks. (Author’s collection)

The freighter Totila under attack by Il-2 Sturmoviks on the morning of May 10, 1944, off Sevastopol. When it sank, it took an estimated 3,000 German and 1,000 Romanian troops with it. Soviet aircraft did not seriously interfere with the Axis evacuation from the Crimea until the final stages of the operation, but the concentration of Axis merchant shipping off the Chersonese was an easy target. (Author’s collection)

A group of smiling female partisans in the Crimea, May 1944. Soviet partisans participated in the liberation of some of the coastal cities, such as Yalta and Alushta, which were close to their operating areas, but they completely failed to interfere with the retreat of V Armeekorps through the Yaila Mountains. Had the partisans delayed this German retreat by even a few days, the Red Army would almost certainly have overrun Sevastopol before the Axis had a chance to evacuate the rest of AOK 17. (Author’s collection)

Soviet troops from the 2nd Guards Army in Sevastopol, May 10, 1944. The destroyed StuG-III assault gun in the foreground was probably blown up by the retreating Germans. Note that the building at left is the same one that the destroyer Svobodnyi was photographed next to in June 1942. (Author’s collection)

German troops emerge from shattered buildings in Sevastopol to surrender on May 9–10, 1944. It is unclear exactly how many Axis troops were captured in the final days in the Crimea, but probably in the neighborhood of 8,000–10,000. (Author’s collection)

Soviet naval infantrymen entering Sevastopol near Nakhimov Square, May 10, 1944. Fort Constantine can be seen in the background. At the end, the Germans put up no real resistance inside Sevastopol but instead made a beeline for the evacuation beaches. (Nik Cornish, RA 190)

Two Germans who attempted to flee from the Chersonese on a raft are captured by a Soviet naval infantryman. A handful of Germans escaped on improvised rafts or floating debris, but most fell victim to strafing attacks by Soviet fighters. Hitler’s refusal to authorize an earlier evacuation condemned much of AOK 17’s troops to death or capture. (Author’s collection)

A Ukrainian BTR-70 armored personnel carrier occupies a defensive position near the Perekop Isthmus, March 2014. As in previous Crimean campaigns, control of the Perekop Isthmus is key terrain that both sides moved quickly to block.

Russian airborne troops arrived quickly in the Crimea in March 2014 in order to secure key facilities, but wore masks to conceal their identity. Nevertheless, their equipment – including RPG launchers – clearly identified them as regular troops and not the local patriots claimed by Russian television. Once the Crimea was annexed, Russian President Putin admitted that these men were, in fact, Russian troops.

The face of Russian imperialism in the 21st century looks remarkably like it did in the previous three centuries. Russian agitators used violence to terrorize anyone in the Crimea who opposed their annexation plan. Note the Cossack wielding a whip – ample proof that very little has changed in the age-old game to dominate the Crimea.