Almost simultaneously, in May 1942, two catastrophes occurred on the Soviet-German front: the defeat of the Soviet armies near Kharkov (Barvenkovsky cauldron) and the defeat of the Crimean Front. If the first is described in detail, then they try not to remember the second, as if there was nothing terrible there.
Unsuccessful defense of Crimea in the fall of 1941
The forerunners of this catastrophe were not entirely successful events in the defense of the Crimea in the fall of 1941. For the defense of Crimea in August, the 51st Army was formed under the command of General Kuznetsov, and the 11th German Army opposed it on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front, under the command of General Manstein.
The only place for the invasion of Crimea was the Perekop Isthmus, only 7 km wide. The attack on it could only be carried out frontally. The isthmus was well equipped for defense with field-type structures. The entire width of it was crossed by the ancient "Tatar ditch" up to 15 m deep.
The 51st Army included eight rifle and three cavalry divisions. Four divisions were located on the coast to fight amphibious assault forces, three cavalry divisions in the center of the peninsula to repel airborne assault forces, and one in reserve. One division defended the Perekop Isthmus, one Chongar and the Arabat Spit, and one stretched out on the coast of the Sivash Bay. That is, more than half of the 51st Army was not where the German offensive began. Manstein believed that given the terrain
"Even the stubborn defense of three divisions was enough to prevent the 54th Army Corps from invading Crimea."
On September 9, the German troops went on the offensive on September 16 to the Chongarsky bridge and on September 26 broke through the Soviet defenses, took Perekop and overcame the "Tatar ditch". After that, they stopped the offensive on the Crimea, as they had to transfer part of the troops to other sectors of the front. Having taken Perekop, the Germans had to overcome the even narrower Ishun Isthmus (3-4 km wide).
On October 18, by the beginning of the second offensive, the German troops numbered six divisions. They were opposed by 12 rifle and four cavalry divisions. These forces were quite enough for a solid defense of the Crimean isthmuses. The Soviet troops had an advantage in manpower and a significant number of tanks, the Germans did not have one tank, but had an advantage in artillery.
However, the command of the 51st Army scattered its forces throughout the peninsula. Three rifle and two cavalry divisions provided coastal protection, two rifle and one cavalry divisions were in reserve. Four rifle divisions were deployed in one echelon to defend the isthmus at Ishun positions, and one more division was deployed on the Chongar Peninsula.
On October 20, the Germans managed to take the Ishun fortifications, during three days of fierce fighting, break through the defenses of the Soviet troops to their entire depth, reach the operational space and begin an offensive on the Kerch Peninsula. Troop control was lost, General Kuznetsov was removed from command. As a result of the October offensive, the German divisions defeated the superior 51st Army, leaving behind the retreating scattered and demoralized remnants of the troops.
The approaching units of the Primorsky Army began to retreat south towards Sevastopol, whose garrison at that time was very weak, and the remnants of the 51st Army to Kerch. Soviet troops in the Crimea were divided into two parts and lost general control.
Despite sufficient forces, the command failed to organize the defense of the Kerch Peninsula, by November 16 the last units of the 51st Army were evacuated to the Taman Peninsula, part of the troops went to the Adzhimushkay quarries and continued to fight there. According to modern data, the losses in the Crimean defensive operation amounted to 63 860 people, German sources say about the capture of about 100 thousand prisoners. As a result, the entire Crimea, except for Sevastopol, fell into the hands of the Germans, only part of the Soviet troops managed to escape, having lost all their heavy weapons.
Kerch-Feodosia landing operation in December 1941
The loss of the Crimea complicated the position of the Soviet troops in the Kuban and the North Caucasus, as well as the defending Sevastopol in the ring. To restore the situation, the Soviet command in December 1941 decided to carry out the Kerch-Feodosiya landing operation, using for this and all the power of the Black Sea Fleet. A landing party landed near Kerch on December 26. On December 30, in the Feodosiya port, as well as on January 5, 1942, a Marine battalion landing was carried out in the port of Evpatoria, but it was completely destroyed by the Germans. The troops were tasked with encircling and destroying the enemy's Kerch grouping, then unblocking Sevastopol and completely liberating Crimea.
The main attack in the area of Feodosia was delivered by the 44th army, and the auxiliary, in the area of Kerch, by the 51st army. The group consisted of 82 thousand people, 43 tanks, 198 guns, and supported the landing of more than 700 aircraft. Three rifle and one cavalry divisions were in reserve at Taman. More than 200 ships of the Black Sea Fleet were used for the landing. In 8 days of fighting, the Red Army advanced 100-110 km and liberated the entire Kerch Peninsula.
The commander of the 42nd German corps, General Sponeck, fearing encirclement, ordered the troops to withdraw from the Kerch Peninsula, Manstein canceled the order, but he did not reach the troops. German troops, abandoning heavy weapons, retreated, for which General Sponeck was put on trial and sentenced to death.
Despite the success of the Soviet troops in this operation, General Manstein, nevertheless, wrote in his memoirs about the unsuccessful actions of the Soviet command. Instead of sending the forces of the 44th Army, which has a triple superiority, to destroy the communications of the 11th German Army, and the forces of the 51st Army to seize the Simferopol-Dzhankoy railway, which could really lead to the defeat of the 11th Army, they acted indecisively and solved only the tactical task of encircling the Kerch group of Germans.
Taking advantage of this, the Germans, having transferred part of the troops from Sevastopol, launched a counteroffensive in the Vladislavovka area on January 15 and recaptured Feodosia on January 18. Soviet troops withdrew 15-20 km to the east and took up defensive positions in the narrowest part of the peninsula at the Ak-Monai positions.
A special feature of individual Soviet formations should be noted. They were mainly formed from the inhabitants of the Transcaucasus. The 63rd Mountain Rifle Division was officially Georgian, and the 396th Division was Azerbaijani. These units were characterized by poor discipline, poor training, low morale, in the 63rd division there were massive desertions to the side of the Germans and the murder of commanders.
The 63rd division was involved in the Feodosia area and became famous for the mass surrender at all stages of the operation. Manstein, in his memoirs, gives an example of how, in a camp for Soviet prisoners of war near Feodosia, during the Soviet offensive, the camp's guards fled, and the prisoners in the amount of 8,000 people in a formation without guards headed not towards the Soviet positions, but towards Simferopol to the Germans.
In subsequent battles, the 63rd Division was in the first echelon, and the 396th was in the second. At the first approach of the Germans, they fled, opened the front and surrendered, both divisions were defeated in May and then disbanded.
Unsuccessful actions of the Crimean Front in February-April 1942
For the liberation of Crimea at the end of January, the Crimean Front was formed under the command of General Kozlov and reinforced by the 47th Army. In order to strengthen the command of the Crimean Front in March, the Army Commissar of the 1st rank Mehlis was appointed the representative of the Headquarters, whose role in the defeat of the front was quite significant. Arriving at the front, he immediately developed a stormy activity, dismissed the chief of staff of the front, General Tolbukhin, and replaced him with General Vechny, who had been brought with him, and then began to sort out relations with the front commander, the weak-willed General Kozlov. Mekhlis took over the command of the front and actually replaced the front commander, intervened in the command and control of the troops, not being an expert in military affairs.
Naturally, all this affected the combat readiness of the front. The troops of the front were seriously replenished and were constantly in tense readiness for the offensive, but it was postponed over and over again. At the same time, the command stubbornly refused to give the order to strengthen the defense, fearing to reduce this "offensive spirit" and weaken the soldiers. A nervous atmosphere and a feverish senseless bustle reigned both in the headquarters and on the front line.
In February-April 1942, the Crimean Front attempted an offensive three times, but achieved nothing and suffered heavy losses. On February 27, simultaneously with the offensive of the troops of the Sevastopol defensive region, parts of the Crimean Front, consisting of eight divisions and two tank battalions, with artillery support from the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, tried to break through the German defenses near Ak-Monay.
The German defense on the Yaila - Sivash coastline turned out to be dense, because of the narrowness of the front, the attackers could not use their overwhelming numerical superiority. The losses were very large (only 32 thousand killed and missing). German aviation dominated the sky, not allowing the supply of troops. The beginning of the spring thaw and swampy terrain did not allow the offensive to develop. The troops advancing from Sevastopol also did not achieve success. The offensive on March 19 was stopped.
The command of the front, in the conditions of muddy roads, abandoned attempts to advance through the swamps along the coast of the Sivash. On April 9, the offensive began on the southern face with the aim of capturing Koi-Assan with a subsequent exit to Feodosia. This offensive by the fleet was no longer supported and again did not bring results. Since April 12, the troops of the Crimean Front have ceased all active operations
Manstein's May Offensive
By the beginning of May, the troops of the Crimean Front had seventeen rifle and two cavalry divisions, three rifle and four tank brigades with a total strength of three hundred thousand people (with three hundred and fifty tanks). They were opposed by only seven infantry, one tank division and one cavalry brigade of General Manstein's 11th Army, numbering about one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. Five divisions of the German army were left at Sevastopol.
Despite the serious superiority, the position of the Soviet troops turned out to be rather shaky. The main strike grouping of the 47th and 51st armies was concentrated in a ledge in the northern sector of the front. They were tasked with occupying Koy-Assan and developing an offensive in two diverging directions: to Feodosia and Dzhankoy. The formations, having reached an unprecedented density of troops, huddled on a narrow isthmus, the width of which in this place did not exceed 20 km.
The possibility of an enemy offensive by the front command was not considered at all. The troops were lined up in two echelons, but the second echelon did not have defensive positions, the leadership of the armies was preparing to enter it into battle immediately after the breakthrough of the enemy's defenses by the divisions of the first echelon.
Three armies occupied zones of 8-10 km, the bulk of the troops of 12 rifle divisions were in the first zone of defense. The 44th Army's defense sector was extremely weak, the second line of defense actually merged with the first. Front reserves were located at a distance of 15-20 km from the forward edge. The first line of defense was poorly prepared and did not have a developed network of trenches. It consisted of separate rifle cells, trenches, dugouts, sometimes not even interconnected by communication passages, although an anti-tank ditch was dug in front of a part of the first line of defense. Troop reserves were located as close as possible to the front line.
The rear defensive position of the front ran along the Turkish shaft - a chain of old fortifications located on the hills in the eastern, widest part of the peninsula. They were not equipped, no one was preparing for defense here at all. The command posts of the armies were located close to the front, there were no spare command posts, and when the front was broken through, command and control of the troops was immediately lost. Antiamphibious defense of the coast was not organized, and there was practically no camouflage of troops and command and observation posts. Despite the protests of the front commander, Kozlov, Mehlis forbade digging trenches in order "not to undermine the offensive spirit of the soldiers." Going over to the defensive, the front retained its offensive grouping, 19 out of 21 divisions, 5 were located near the front line.
The Black Sea Fleet did not take any part in the planned operation. He was inactive all spring (until the last battle for Sevastopol). Meanwhile, in the depths of the enemy defense there were many places convenient for the landing of an assault force that could strike into the rear of the German defense and deep into the peninsula; the Germans simply did not have serious forces to strengthen these points. And the point here was no longer in Mehlis, commanders of all levels did not perform their duties properly, the troops were practically doomed.
At dawn on May 8, the Germans launched an offensive, which came as a complete surprise to the front command. As a result of artillery and air raids, the work of the headquarters was paralyzed, communications and command and control of troops were disrupted. The main blow was delivered in the south against weak positions occupied by the 63rd Mountain Rifle Division of the 44th Army, and amphibious assault forces were unhindered in its rear. German aviation dominated the battlefield, and Soviet aircraft hardly appeared.
Despite the fact that the German group was 2 times inferior to the Soviet one in men, 1, 8 times in artillery, 1, 2 times in tanks, and surpassed the Soviet only in aircraft 1, 7 times, Manstein with a decisive blow broke through the defense, the command front lost control, disorganized troops surrendered and fled towards Kerch.
Tanks entered the breakthrough, only briefly detained by an old anti-tank ditch. On the morning of May 10, the Stavka ordered the withdrawal of the troops of the Crimean Front to the Turkish Wall, but by this time the German units had turned north and reached the area where Soviet reserves were stationed. The reserves were defeated, and without deploying into battle formations, some of them hastily retreated to the east, and some found themselves in a dense encirclement on the coast of the Sivash.
The fleet remained practically inactive. The enemy advanced along the coast in dense formations, against which the fleet could easily deliver a massive artillery strike, but nothing was done. On the morning of May 13, the rear position was broken, the next day German troops reached the outskirts of Kerch.
A hasty evacuation of the city and the remaining troops began through the strait to Taman, which was under constant attacks by German aviation. Kerch fell on May 15, the remnants of Soviet troops retreated to the peninsula east of the city and on May 18 ceased resistance. The evacuation of the remnants of the troops from the peninsula continued until May 20. Units of about fifteen thousand people who did not have time to evacuate left for the Adzhimushkay quarries.
The total losses of Soviet troops in May 1942 on the Kerch Peninsula amounted to about 180 thousand people killed and captured, as well as 258 tanks, 417 aircraft and 1133 guns. About 120 thousand servicemen were evacuated to the Taman Peninsula until May 20. According to German data, their losses amounted to 7,588 people.
In terms of the number of total losses of Soviet troops, this defeat was similar to the one that broke out a week later and the much more famous Kharkov disaster.
The defeat of the Kerch group of Soviet troops allowed the Germans to free up troops for the final assault on Sevastopol, which fell in July, and for a summer offensive in the Caucasus.
The main culprit of the disaster on the Kerch Peninsula, Stalin declared Mehlis, front commander Kozlov and chief of staff of the Eternal. They were demoted in ranks and positions. On June 4, 1942, the Stavka directive stated that they, as well as the army commanders, "discovered a complete lack of understanding of the nature of modern warfare" and "tried to repel the attacks of the enemy strike forces with a linear defense formation - the consolidation of the first line troops by reducing the depth of the battle formations of defense."
The inept actions of the Soviet command could not oppose anything to the well-calculated steps of one of the best generals of the Wehrmacht.
