Where the Iron Crosses Grow

On the opposite side, the Black Sea Fleet was seriously hurt by the loss of its shipbuilding facilities at Nikolayev in 1941 and its main base at Sevastopol in 1942. After the loss of the Crimea, the fleet was forced to retreat to the minor ports of the Caucasus – Poti, Sochi, Tuapse, and Batumi – which had minimal repair and support facilities. These facilities had been intended to provide a support base for a few minesweepers and patrol boats, not battleships and heavy cruisers. The larger port facilities at Novorossiysk became untenable soon after the loss of the Crimea due to frequent Luftwaffe attacks, and were no longer useable. Although Oktyabrsky had succeeded in evacuating some of the stocks of ammunition, torpedoes, and spare parts from Sevastopol during the winter of 1941/42, the Black Sea Fleet lost a great deal of its material when Sevastopol fell. Without decent bases or supplies, the operational effectiveness of the remaining large Soviet warships was severely impaired. Oktyabrsky’s flagship, the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna, would spend more than a year hiding in the small port of Poti, but her 305mm gun barrels were worn out and could not be replaced.²² For the next year, Oktyabrsky’s fleet was reduced to two cruisers, eight destroyers, and 20 submarines, of which only about half were operational at any one time. The Soviet merchant marine had also been gutted trying to keep Sevastopol supplied, meaning that naval transport and supply capabilities in the Black Sea would be insufficient for the rest of the war. Instead, most of the Soviet naval effort in the Black Sea after the fall of Sevastopol focused on occasional raids by cruiser–destroyer groups against the Crimean coastline and a stepped-up offensive by the Black Sea Fleet submarine flotillas against Axis merchant traffic in the Black Sea. However, the greatest weakness of the fleet remained their vulnerability to air attack, and as long as the Luftwaffe maintained a credible anti-shipping force in the Crimea, the Black Sea Fleet could not seriously contest the waters around the peninsula.

This weakness was amply demonstrated on the night of August 2/3, 1942, when Oktyabrsky sent the heavy cruiser Molotov and the destroyer leader Kharkov to bombard the port of Feodosiya, where the Kriegsmarine was believed to be assembling an amphibious force. Although the two warships travelled at high speed, the long summer days did not give them sufficient hours of darkness to make the entire transit in one night. The Soviet warhips were spotted by German reconnaissance aircraft and the defenses at Feodosiya were forewarned. As they approached the port, the Molotov was suddenly attacked by two Italian MAS boats and forced to turn away. The Kharkov lobbed 59 unaimed 130mm rounds at the port and then fled as well. For six hours the two warships were attacked by the Luftwaffe, and an He-111H from 6./KG 26 finally scored a torpedo hit that tore off the Molotov’s stern.²³ It was a painful lesson, which sidelined one of Oktyabrsky’s best warships for more than a year.

The Kriegsmarine naval build-up in the Black Sea accelerated after July 1942, as regular supply convoys began between the Romanian port of Constanta and Sevastopol–Balaklava–Feodosiya. In addition to Birnbacher’s six S-Boats, which moved to Ivan Baba near Feodosiya, the 3. Räumbootsflotille arrived with five R-Boats and estlablished themselves in Balaklava harbor. Both the R- and S-Boats were about the same size, but they had different capabilities. While the S-Boats were built for high-speed torpedo attacks, the R-Boats were designed as coastal minewsweepers and were also useful as general-purpose escorts. No more S-Boats were sent to the Black Sea, but 12 more R-Boats were sent in late 1942. Initially, the Kriegsmarine was capable only of conducting sea-denial missions with its handful of S-Boats, but the arrival of the R-Boats enabled Wurmbach to attempt more aggressive operations. In August 1942, the Kriegsmarine launched Operation Regatta, in which a group of R- and S-Boats ran through the Kerch Straits – past Soviet artillery positions on the Taman Peninsula – to attack Soviet coastal shipping in the Sea of Azov. This operation assisted Heeresgruppe A’s advance into the Caucasus and inflicted heavy losses on Gorshkov’s Azov Flotilla.