Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Petrov did commit Major Petr P. Zelinsky’s 138th Naval Infantry Brigade to try and regain some ground on the northern side of Severnaya Bay on June 18, but in typical fashion the counterattack was poorly planned. Only three of Zelinsky’s four rifle battalions had arrived near the Serpentine when the attack was ordered and almost none of his artillery. His infantrymen attacked the 22. Infanterie-Division’s combat outposts, which simply pulled back to their main line of resistance (known as the Hauptkampflinie, or HKL) and called in copious amounts of artillery fire upon Zelinsky’s naval infantrymen. All three attacking battalions were decimated and forced to retreat, leaving 400 prisoners for the Germans. This ill-advised and hasty attack crippled Petrov’s last major intact unit on the northern side of Severnaya Bay.

On June 19, two battalions from IR 97 moved southwest from Coastal Battery No. 12, with their right flank on the Black Sea. Enemy resistance was fairly light, but the German troops were increasingly wary of mines by this point and the infantry was unwilling to advance too far without engineer support. Engineers were still busy reducing Coastal Battery No. 30 as well as mopping up Battery No. 12, so only 1./Pionier-Bataillon 132 was initially available to support the advance of IR 97. By the afternoon of June 19 the German infantry came within sight of the North Fort, a large octagonal fort that was built before the Crimean War. Adjoining the west side of the North Fort was the position known as Lenin (a fortified antiaircraft battalion command post) and Coastal Battery No. 2 (equipped with four 100mm guns). Although the idea of a hasty attack was considered, the Germans decided to wait until they had sufficient artillery and engineer support to mount a proper deliberate attack on the morning of June 20. The attack began at 0900hrs, with two pioneer companies in the lead. Howitzer batteries were brought up to fire directly at the fort. It took nine hours of fighting to break into Lenin and the North Fort, but it took until 1030hrs on June 21 before these objectives were secure. The pioneers and assault guns were the key players in these mop-up battles, which tended to resemble urban warfare. Another result of these actions was that a good portion of Sevastopol’s air-defense umbrella was overrun at Lenin, Molotov, Volga, and Stalin, which allowed Fliegerkorps VIII to completely dominate the skies over the battlefield.

Once the North Fort fell, Petrov ordered all remaining Soviet troops to evacuate the north side of Severnaya Bay, and German troops reached the shoreline on June 22, more than two weeks after beginning the ground offensive. The final action was fought at Fort Konstantinovsky, another archaic relic built in 1840 that guarded the entrance to Severnaya Bay. Major Ivan P. Datsko, commander of the 161st Rifle Regiment, made it to the fort with a handful of his men, and joined up with a motley collection of sailors, engineers, and political staff for a dramatic three-day last stand against IR 97. A naval officer, Captain 3rd Rank Mikhail E. Yevseyev, was nominally in charge of the fort. The defenders did have one advantage: the fort was located at the end of a small peninsula and the Germans could only approach across a narrow 100-yard strip of land, which was covered by a ravelin. The Germans methodically brought up artillery to knock down the fort’s walls, and Stuka attacks ruined the barracks in the interior. Yevseyev’s men eventually ran out of ammunition, and the last 26 men surrendered on the morning of June 23. Sevastopol’s Sector IV had been eliminated and all that remained of Sector III was Guz’s 345th Rifle Division and the 138th NIB holding on to the Serpentine tunnel and the Martynovski Ravine at the northeast corner of Severnaya Bay. German artillery now had a clear view to shell any target in the city or harbor.

Wolff’s intelligence officers learned from prisoner interrogations that the 138th Naval Infantry Brigade’s command post and two to three battalions of Soviet troops were located in the railroad tunnel a mile south of the Mekenzievy Mountain train station. Hansen ordered Wolff to eliminate the Soviet forces in the tunnel as a prelude to moving against the remnants of the Sector III forces. On the evening of June 21, pioneers from 3./Pionier-Bataillon 22 accompanied a Stossgruppe that would attack the west end of the tunnel. Prisoners had noted that the entrance to the 400-yard-long tunnel was barricaded and protected by bunkers and trenches, so the pioneers came loaded with flamethrowers, grenades, and 50kg hollow charges. At 0230hrs on June 22 the attack on the western end of the tunnel began, but the pioneers were surprised to find the entrance unguarded. The pioneers then began moving cautiously into the dark tunnel, expecting to find hundreds of armed Soviet soldiers: