The Battle for Crimea, 1941–1944

Anthony Tucker-Jones

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781473867307
• eBook ISBN: 9781473867321
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The selection of over 150 rare wartime photographs in this volume in Pen & Swords Images of War series offers a graphic visual record of the dramatic and bloody battles fought for the Crimea during the Second World War. They show every grim aspect of the fighting and reflect in many ways the ruthless character of the struggle across the entire Eastern Front. The German-led Axis forces took eight months to conquer the Crimea in 1941-2 the Soviet defenders of the fortified city-port of Sevastopol held out against repeated assaults for 250 days. In 1944, after the course of the war had turned against the Wehrmacht and their allies, the city was liberated by the Red Army, but only after over 120,000 Axis troops had been evacuated across the Black Sea. Naval operations involving the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and the Romanian Royal Navy are covered in the book, as is the battle in the air between the Luftwaffe and the Red Air Force. But perhaps the most memorable photographs give an insight into the ordinary soldiers experience of the fighting and show the enormous material damage the conflict left behind.

Chapter One

The Road to Sevastopol

In the wake of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union the Romanian 4th Army moved over the Dniester River on 3 August 1941, with the intention of occupying the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa. The Romanians were given this task on the assumption that the Soviet garrison, known as the Separate Coastal Army, would quickly surrender once hemmed in. Things did not go according to plan and the fierce Soviet resistance did not bode well for the capture of Sevastopol in the Crimea.

Although the Romanian Air Force fought well against the Red Army and Red Air Force, crucially it was unable to prevent the Soviet Black Sea Fleet from supporting Odessa. In addition the small Romanian Navy was outnumbered and outclassed by the much bigger Soviet fleet. This meant that it was held back to protect the shipping routes in and out of the Romanian port of Constanta and through the Bosporus into the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, two Romanian torpedo boats managed to intercept a Soviet destroyer south of Odessa on the night of 18 August 1941 and damaged it.

Such successes were limited. By the end of the month the Romanians had suffered almost 30,000 casualties and were held outside Odessa by the Soviet main line of defence. The Romanian assault was resumed on 12 September with the assistance of pioneer and artillery units from the German 11th Army. Two days later the attack was hampered by a shortage of artillery ammunition. The Black Sea Fleet continued to bring in reinforcements and supplies and the Separate Coastal Army held out for another month before being evacuated to Sevastopol.

The destruction of the Red Army across the western Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 was not good for the morale of the Soviet garrison in the Crimea. Nonetheless, the German conquest of the region was certainly not a forgone conclusion. Crucially, unlike the Crimean war of 1854-56 when the Western Powers had naval supremacy, in 1941 the Soviet navy and air force dominated the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

The combined Axis forces had to fight a campaign on two fronts, first with the breakthrough at Perekop into northern Crimea and the Battle on the Sea of Azov. From 26 September 1941 the Axis forces launched an operation that successfully occupied most of the Crimea with the exception of Sevastopol, which like Odessa continued to hold out against the Axis armies.

General Erich von Manstein arrived to take command at the headquarters of 11th Army in Nikolayev, the Soviet naval base at the mouth of the Bug on 17 September 1941. He replaced Colonel General Eugen Ritter von Schobert who had been killed after his reconnaissance aircraft crashed in a Soviet minefield. Manstein was pleased by what he found, noting that 11th Army’s operations staff ‘was almost without exception a superb team’.

He also found he had responsibility for the Romanian 3rd Army. In theory the Axis forces committed to the invasion of the Soviet Union from Romania, comprising the German 11th and Romanian 3rd and 4th Armies, were under the direction of the Romanian leader Marshal Antonescu, who answered to Army Group South under Field Marshal von Rundstedt. By the time Manstein arrived only the Romanian 4th Army remained under Antonescu, while the 3rd Army under the command of General Dumitrescu had been subordinated to the German 11th Army.

Manstein was not impressed by the Romanian military; the bulk of their troops were drawn from the peasantry, which meant that their overall level of education was poor. Crucially, they lacked adequate combat training. Manstein felt that most of the officers were not up to the job and there was an absence of recognisable noncommissioned officers. Worryingly their weapons were largely obsolete, especially their anti-tank guns, leaving them vulnerable to Soviet tank attack. The Romanian Army, having regained Bessarabia, had no stomach for marching further into the Soviet Union.

Upon Manstein’s arrival the staff at 11th Army HQ briefed him on the current situation. The army constituted the southernmost wing of the sprawling Eastern Front. Their area of operations ran from the Dnieper bend south of Zaporozhye down into the Crimea. Manstein found that after the forests of northern Russia his region of responsibility was ideal for tank warfare – except that 11th Army had no panzers.

Manstein’s task was twofold; he had to keep the pressure on the Red Army as it retreated eastwards. This required the bulk of his troops, consisting of General Salmuth’s 30th Corps and General Kübler’s 49th Mountain Corps, to push along the northern coast of the Sea of Azov toward Rostov. At the same time he was expected to subdue Soviet resistance in the Crimea, employing General Hansen’s 54th Corps. This was vital to prevent the Red Air Force using its Crimean air bases from which they could attack Romania’s vital oilfields. Once Crimea was secured those forces detached from 11th Army were expected to cross the Straits of Kerch to support the offensive beyond Rostov.

Despite a major concentration of Red Air Force units in the region, Soviet air attacks were little more than a nuisance. The Soviet intention was to draw enemy aircraft away from the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and Uman. To this end by 9 July 1941 they had conducted over 5,000 sorties in the Romanian border area. Luftwaffe units in Romania shot down 143 aircraft between 22 June 1941 and 21 October, half of which had been caught by anti-aircraft guns. When six Soviet bombers did reach the Romanian oil refineries on 13 July only two returned home, showing that there was no urgent need to redeploy German or Romanian fighter units from the front line.

The German 22nd Infantry Division had forced a crossing of the Dnieper at Berislavl in early September 1941, which meant splitting 11th Army’s resources by pushing both southward and eastward. The Sivash, or ‘Lazy Sea’, separated the Crimea from the mainland; this was largely too deep for infantry to cross but too shallow for assault boats. The only land approaches from the north were by the Perekop Isthmus to the west and a strip of land running west of Genichesk to the east of the sea. The latter was a narrow causeway linked by numerous bridges and wholly unsuitable for an attack. The Perekop was less than five miles wide and well defended by field works ten miles deep and the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Photograph Sources
• Chapter One: The Road to Sevastopol
• Chapter Two: Sevastopol Besieged
• Chapter Three: Battle of the Kerch Peninsula
• Chapter Four: Hero City
• Chapter Five: Kerch-Eltigen Operation
• Chapter Six: Perekop and Kerch Offensives
• Chapter Seven: Crimean Dunkirk
• Chapter Eight: Death in Khersones