Battle of the Cities by Anthony Tucker-Jones

Author:Anthony Tucker-Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / General
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2023-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Part III

Lifting the Nazi Yoke

Chapter 12

Sevastopol, 1944

With the Red Army advancing back into western Ukraine in early 1944, General Erwin Jaenecke’s 17th Army, cut off in the Crimea by the 4th Ukrainian Front and North Caucasian Front, faced almost certain destruction. The fate of his command was a repeat of the 6th Army’s at Stalingrad. Despite the strength of their formidable defences, the prospect for the German and supporting Romanian forces, totalling around 195,000 men, equipped with 215 assault guns and self-propelled guns, 3,600 guns and mortars and 148 aircraft, was little short of grim.

After clearing the Black Sea coast to the mouth of the Dniester river, the Red Army was well placed to liberate the Crimea. Common sense would have dictated that it was a good time to evacuate Jaenecke’s command before the inevitable blow fell. Instead Hitler was adamant that holding the Crimea was necessary to safeguard Romanian oil and to keep Turkey neutral. This left General Jaenecke in an unenviable position. Hitler wanted Sevastopol held as a fortress but the city’s inner defences had remained in ruins since the 1941–1942 campaign. Jaenecke had been at Stalingrad and understood perfectly well what happened when a surrounded and unsupported army was ordered to hold its ground to the last. But he had not been idle and his troops had done all they could to reinforce their outer defences. He had confidence in the fortifications behind which his eleven divisions held Perekop, Kerch, the Ak-Monai positions and Sevastopol itself. The lagoons of the Sivash Sea had not frozen and they seemed to present the Red Army with a considerable obstacle. The Romanians left only a covering force to screen the salt flats and marshes, and dug in on the nearby high ground.

The German 49th Mountain Corps, commanded by General Rudolf Konrad, defended the northern Crimea, with the German 50th Infantry Division blocking the Perekop isthmus and the German 336th Infantry Division and the Romanian 10th and 19th Infantry Divisions south of the Sivash Sea. In reserve, supporting these units, were the German 111th Infantry Division and Mountain Regiment Krym. General Karl Allmendinger’s 5th Corps, consisting of the German 73rd and 98th Infantry Divisions and the Romanian 3rd Mountain and 6th Cavalry Divisions, was deployed to the east at Kerch. The Romanian 1st Mountain Corps was on coastal defence and anti-partisan duties.

The Red Army planned a two-pronged assault in the spring of 1944. Tolbukhin’s 4th Ukrainian Front attacking from the north and Yeremenko’s Separate Coastal Army striking from the eastern end of the Kerch peninsula could field 470,000 men, 559 tanks and self-propelled guns, and almost 6,000 field guns and mortars. General K.A. Vershinin’s 4th Air Army assigned to Yeremenko and General T.T. Khryukin’s 8th Air Army assigned to Tolbukhin, with a total of some 2,255 aircraft, backed the ground assault. The Germans claimed 604 Soviet aircraft shot down over the Crimea in the six months leading up to their evacuation, with one Luftwaffe pilot remarkably claiming 247 of the kills!

Tolbukhin planned to strike across the Perekop and the Sivash lagoons, employing G.

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