The Defence of Sevastopol, 1941–1942

The Soviet Perspective

Clayton Donnell

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781783463916
• eBook ISBN: 9781473879263
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

This vividly detailed WWII history chronicles one of the hardest-fought battles of the Crimea Campaign.
In December 1941, while America was reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor and the offensives of the German Army Groups North and Center were stalled in the brutal Russian winter, the German Eleventh Army encircled the vast fortress of Sevastopol in the Crimea. The Red Army faced massive air, artillery and land attacks against their heavily defended positions in one of the most remarkable campaigns in the history of modern warfare: The Siege of Sevastopol.
Drawing on his expert knowledge of the history of modern fortifications, Donnell describes the design and development of the Red Army's formidable base at Sevastopol. He then chronicles the sequence of attacks mounted by the Wehrmacht against the city's strongpoints. The forts and bunkers had to be taken one by one in a bitter six-month struggle with sever casualties on both sides. Using documentary records and a range of personal accounts, Clayton Donnell reconstructs the events and experience of the campaign in vivid detail.

Chapter 1

The Descent into Crimea – September to October 1941

The idea of Operation Barbarossa and the subsequent invasion of Crimea began long before the generals poured over maps of the Soviet Union, planning the movement of millions of troops. It began as an idea, a mission, a duty formulated in the mind of Adolf Hitler. The exact date and time of its origin is unknown. Perhaps the idea surfaced while Hitler the Corporal served as a runner on the Western Front or while he lay in a hospital bed, blinded by mustard gas. Or perhaps it originated in the mind of a young man sitting in a Vienna coffee house mesmerised by a speaker talking about Jews and the Master Race; or while Hitler wandered the streets of a decimated, post-war, post-imperial Germany, devising in his mind a plan that would raise him up from starving artist to the most powerful man in Europe.

His mission – his ‘Struggle’ – was to cleanse the Reich and the Aryan race from the culprits who caused its humiliating defeat in 1918 – Jews, Communists and Untermenschen – sub-humans. When he took power Germany would rearm, the Western Powers would be crushed and the Germans would eradicate Communists, Slavs and Jews from Germany and then from Eastern Europe. Ukraine would be cleansed of its population to create ‘living space’ – lebensraum – for Aryan families to farm and provide food for the population of the Thousand-Year Reich.

Hitler’s concepts for racial and ethnic cleansing spilled out on the pages of Mein Kampf, a nonsensical but prophetic series of rants, written while he was imprisoned at Landsberg in Germany for his failed attempt in 1923 to overthrow the Bavarian government. To his dark credit, he told the world exactly what he was going to do and why and he then proceeded to do it. Hitler’s eastern promise of lebensraum was fulfilled through Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Barbarossa was launched on 22 June 1941, all along the 2,100km Soviet border that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The invasion force was huge, the largest ever assembled:

• Three million men.

• 3,300 tanks.

• 7,000 artillery pieces.

• 2,770 aircraft.

Hitler’s Führer Directive 21, dated 18 December 1940, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, ordered a three-pronged attack in the direction of Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. The German invasion force consisted of 136 divisions, including nineteen Panzer divisions. It was made up of the following:

• Army Group North was the smallest with thirty-one divisions. Its forces would move north-eastward from East Prussia into Lithuania, clear the Baltic States and capture Leningrad.

• Army Group Centre was the largest with fifty-seven divisions. It would attack north of the Pripet Marshes and move east in two parallel columns into Belorussia towards Smolensk and Moscow. When it reached Smolensk, it would divert its armour north to the Baltics and south to Ukraine.

• Army Group South, with forty-eight divisions, had two widely separated wings:

° The northern wing would advance along the southern edge of the Pripet Marshes into Ukraine to target the Dnieper River and Kiev.

° The southern wing with six divisions and 200,000 Rumanian troops would cross from Rumania and head towards southern Ukraine.

The Soviets had about 3.4 million troops, 22,700 tanks and 12,000 aircraft. The bulk of their equipment was outdated. The Soviets could call on a reserve of seventeen million men.

The invasion began shortly after 0300 hours on 22 June with a huge artillery barrage and bomber strikes against airfields and troop concentrations as far as 320km into Soviet territory. After that, the Panzer divisions moved forward, followed by infantry. By nightfall of the first day 1,800 Soviet aircraft were destroyed, thousands of prisoners taken and a dozen Soviet divisions encircled and destroyed. In the north, LVI Panzer Corps, led by Lieutenant-General Erich von Manstein, was moving through Latvia. He pushed his tanks 400km in just four days. The corps’ objective was to open the road to Leningrad and cut off Soviet forces south of the Dvina River. Army Group South headed towards Kiev. On the right flank, the German Eleventh Army, commanded by General Eugen Ritter von Schobert, established bridgeheads across the Prut River, stopping there to oppose Soviet counter-attacks to seize the Rumanian oil fields at Ploesti.

Manstein’s LVI Panzer Corps and General Georg-Hans Reinhardt’s XLI Corps crept slowly towards Leningrad. By mid-August they were facing stiff Soviet resistance made worse by poor roads. Manstein’s advance stalled near Luga, 140km south of Leningrad. However, the situation changed on 15 August when the Soviet Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, commander of the Leningrad Front, launched an attack with eight infantry divisions on Sixteenth Army’s X Corps. This prompted General Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group Centre, to send Manstein reinforcements that included XXXIX Panzer Corps from Hoth’s Army plus the SS Totenkopf Division. On 19 August Manstein raced southeast and struck the flank of Voroshilov’s forces, causing it to break up. By 8 September, the Germans were again closing in on Leningrad.

In the south, von Rundstedt made swift progress. Engineer and assault troops of Eleventh Army’s 22nd Lower Saxon Division completed a pontoon bridge across the Dnieper River. The LIV Corps and Rumanian Third Army crossed the river and fanned out in the direction of Rostov and the Crimean Peninsula.

In July and September two events occurred in relation to Crimea that altered the fate of both Eleventh Army and Manstein. On 9 July Soviet bombers conducted an air raid against the Rumanian oil refineries at Ploesti. The first attack had very little effect but on 13 July six bombers attacked the refinery and struck oil reservoirs at Unirea, igniting 9,000 tons of oil that burned for five days. Eight more air raids were carried out on Ploesti in the following days, destroying another 2,000 tons of oil. The aircraft took off from the Soviet naval base of Sevastopol in the Crimea. The bombing of Ploesti caused the German High Command to order the capture of the peninsula to remove the threat to the oil fields.

The second event occurred on 12 September 1941. General von Schobert boarded a reconnaissance plane to inspect the battle area. The plane landed in a field near Nikolaev Ukraine that turned out to be a minefield. The reason for the landing is unknown. The plane was destroyed and the general and his pilot were killed. About 1,600km to the north, General von Manstein’s corps was moving in the direction of Demyansk when he received a dispatch stating he had been appointed commander of Eleventh Army in place of von Schobert. Manstein quickly headed south and into history.

Historically, the Crimean Peninsula (hereinafter referred to as Crimea) had always been a key military position on the Black Sea that guarded the entire Soviet southern flank. Major sea routes were patrolled by ships and watched by gun batteries along its entire coastline. Axis ships operating in the Black Sea could be observed and interdicted from Sevastopol by aircraft, surface ships or submarines. Crimea, because of its flatness and openness, especially in the centre, was an ideal spot for air bases.

Prior to the war the Germans were aware of the geographic and military value of the peninsula, however, Barbarossa had not included Crimea as an objective. German planners assumed the area would be captured in mopping-up operations once the bulk of the Red Army was destroyed west of the Dnieper River. A supplement to Führer Directive Number 33,¹ dated 23 July 1941, stated: ‘The primary task of the bulk of the infantry divisions is to seize the Ukraine, Crimea and the territory of the Soviet Federation to the Don.’ Due to the attacks against Rumania’s oil refineries, suddenly Crimea found its way into the Wehrmacht’s operational plans.

On 12 August the supplement to Führer Directive 34 ordered Army Group South ‘to occupy the Crimean Peninsula, which is particularly dangerous as an enemy airbase against the Rumanian oilfields’. The seizure of Crimea would eliminate the threat to Rumanian oil supplies. In addition, it would deprive the Black Sea Fleet of a base from which the southern flank of German forces could be threatened. The captured ports could then be used by the Germans to resupply troops in the south and as a base from which to launch attacks. Finally, Crimea’s Kerch Peninsula was an alternative route to Taman and the Caucasus oilfields.

The High Command of the German Army – Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) – assigned Eleventh Army a dual mission: 1) push east along the coast of the Sea of Azov and pursue Soviet forces heading towards Rostov; and 2) break through into Crimea and capture the peninsula. Von Schobert knew he had to quickly seize Perekop, Chongar and Arabat, the main points of entry into Crimea, to move in behind Soviet forces and prevent them from falling back to Sevastopol. XXX Infantry Corps, commanded by General Hans Eberhard Kurt von Salmuth and the IL Mountain Corps, commanded by Brigadier-General Ludwig L. Kübler, were pursuing Soviet forces retreating east towards Rostov. LIV Infantry Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Erik Hansen, was moving south towards Perekop. The Third Rumanian Army, placed under German command, was still west of the Dnieper River, but heading east.

The Advance into Crimea

Eleventh Army’s invasion of Crimea began with the assault on the Perekop Isthmus. In 1941, there were three main highways, two railway lines and several unpaved roads that crossed over narrow isthmuses of solid land into the peninsula. The widest entry point was only 9km across at Perekop Isthmus. Seventy kilometres to the east was the Chongar Isthmus, barely 2km wide at the top. Chongar opened out further south and led to several possible crossing points over the Siwash, a large body of water about 75km long. The Siwash, identified as a large lake or small sea, ran from a few kilometres east of Perekop to Chongar. Twenty-three kilometres east of Chongar is the Arabat Spit, a narrow and easily defensible coastal strip that ran along the Sea of Azov. The Litovsky or Lithuanian Peninsula, used by Red forces to cross into Crimea in 1920, was another possible crossing point. Swamps dotted with dams and canals to control the water lay in between. The border was quite long and complex and it required a large force to defend it.

The German Eleventh Army had seven infantry divisions plus the Rumanian Mountain Corps. The Soviet Fifty-first Army had four rifle and three cavalry divisions. Soviet units were undermanned, poorly equipped and the troops were mostly raw recruits with minimal training and even less combat experience, while Eleventh Army was made up mostly of hardened veterans with two years of combat experience in Western Europe, Poland and Ukraine.

The land bridges leading into Crimea – Perekop, Chongar, Arabat. (© OpenStreetMap contributors, Author’s collection)

Before the war the 156th Rifle Division was the main Soviet force in Crimea. The 32nd Cavalry Division was relocated there in August 1940. Military forces in Crimea (excluding sailors, marines, cadets of the Black Sea Fleet’s training schools and other units located at Sevastopol) also included students from the Simferopol Quartermaster Military School, the Logistical School of Odessa Military District and the Kacha Red Army Aviation School. In May 1941 the 106th Rifle Division was transferred to Crimea from the North Caucasus, but the division arrived with only 2,500 men. These three divisions – 156th Rifle, 32nd Cavalry and 106th Rifle – were formed into IX Corps, commanded by General Ivan Batov.

On 1 July 1941 32nd Cavalry Division was moved to another sector of the front, leaving the two rifle divisions to defend the entire peninsula. The 106th defended the southwestern part of Crimea, a front of about 200km that ran from Ak-Metchet (m. Chornomors’ke) to Alma Tamak (m. Pishchane), on the border of the Sevastopol district. The division was tasked with building earthen fortifications and gun batteries along the coastline. These included Ak-Metchet, Cape Tarkhankut, Eupatoria and Mykolaivka (site of Coastal Battery 54). The 156th Rifle Division was centred on Simferopol. The Black Sea Fleet defended Sevastopol. Men of the older classes filled the ranks of about thirty-five local militia rifle divisions and construction and support units. In August 1941 the 48th Cavalry Division, commanded by Major-General Averkina, was sent to Crimea. The division had 3,000 horsemen.

The Soviet Fifty-first Army was formed on 14 August 1941 and placed under the command of General F. I. Kuznetsov. General Batov became his deputy because IX Corps units were placed under Kuznetsov’s command. The army was tasked with the defence of Crimea from attack by land, sea and air, including the prevention of amphibious landings. In September 1941, Fifty-first Army consisted of the following components:

• 106th Rifle Division.

• 156th Rifle Division.

• 271st Rifle Division.

• 276th Rifle Division.

• 40th Cavalry Division.

• 42nd Cavalry Division.

• 48th Cavalry Division.

On paper, the defences of the Perekop Isthmus sounded formidable, not only in (apparent) numbers of military units, but also in the nature and depth of both field and permanent fortifications. Unfortunately for the Soviets, the defences collapsed within hours of the first attacks. General Kuznetsov² wrote on 28 August, two weeks before the first attack, that the defences were not prepared. However, when the first German forces arrived, the construction battalions had completed three lines of defence.

The field fortifications identified as the Chervony Chabad Strongpoint began 10km north of the Turkish Wall, also called the Perekop Ditch or Turkish Ditch or Turkish Wall.³ The Chaplinka to Perekop road was blocked by a belt of anti-tank obstacles. These were made of railway track cut in pieces and embedded horizontally into the ground with remote controlled explosive charges buried throughout. From there to the east and south and west towards Siwash and Preobrazhenkia was a belt of mines, bombs and sea mines, located behind a barbed wire fence.

The second line was 5km beyond the first and consisted of a barbed wire obstacle and an anti-tank ditch 8m wide and 2–3m deep reinforced by anti-tank obstacles. Barbed wire was twisted around and between the beams. Behind these obstacles was a 15m-wide minefield with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. Beyond that was another belt of barbed wire.

German aerial photograph showing the Turkish Wall south of Perekop. (Provided by John Calvin of www.wwii-photos-maps.com, altered by the author)

The third line was 2km from the Turkish Wall. It consisted of another antitank ditch 6.5m wide and 3.5m deep with vertical scarps. Once again there were anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire. Twenty-six remote-controlled flamethrowers were placed along the line. The next obstacle was the Turkish Wall itself. Concrete bunkers were placed along its earthen escarp. There were four bunkers equipped with 76mm guns and several machine-gun bunkers. Field guns were placed behind earthen ramparts. In total there were 13.5km of anti-tank ditches, 11,441 steel beams, fourteen concrete bunkers (two were still under construction), fourteen machine-gun positions, 14km of barbed wire and six earthen field artillery positions.

In addition, eight coastal batteries were constructed 10–15km apart along the Perekop and Chong...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Author’s Notes
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Descent into Crimea – September to October 1941
• Chapter 2: The Fortress of Sevastopol
• Chapter 3: The First Assault – October to November 1941
• Chapter 4: The Second Assault – 17 December 1941 to 1 January 1942
• Chapter 5: January to June 1942
• Chapter 6: The Third Assault (1) – The Bombardment of 2 to 6 June 1942
• Chapter 7: The Third Assault (2) – 7 to 16 June 1942
• Chapter 8: The Third Assault (3) – 17 to 23 June 1942 – Fall of the North
• Chapter 9: The Third Assault (4) – 24 June to 16 July 1942 – The End of the Road
• Chapter 10: Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography