Where the Iron Crosses Grow

While Gruppe Konrad was struggling to maintain its positions on the Perekop Isthmus, Zakharov decided to increase the pressure on the German defense by conducting an amphibious landing behind the German lines on the Black Sea. Before dawn on April 10, 512 troops from Captain Filipp D. Dibrov’s 2nd Battalion/1271st Rifle Regiment were landed on the coast. As usual, the troops landed without heavy weapons and could hold only a small beachhead. Gruppe Konrad soon counterattacked with a company of infantry and several assault guns, but the Germans could not spare sufficient troops to eliminate the beachhead. Consequently, Dibrov’s battalion was the final straw that convinced Konrad to abandon his remaining positions on the Perekop Isthmus and retreat to the second line of defense at Ishun. This retreat proved difficult, since some sub-units of Sixt’s 50. Infanterie-Division were already bypassed and a number of artillery pieces and flak guns had to be abandoned. Indeed, Gruppe Konrad put up only token resistance at Ishun for a few hours, since the breakout of the 51st Army from the Sivash lodgment threatened to cut them off. Konrad, whose headquarters was in Dzhankoy, directed his forces to pull back to the Gneisenau Line.

Hauptmann Werner Dörnbrack’s Fw-190F fighter-bombers from II./SG2 made every effort to stem the enemy breakthrough, and mercilessly attacked Soviet troops crossing into the Sivash lodgment. At 1000hrs on April 10, General-Major Nikolai V. Gaponov, commander of the 26th Artillery Division, was killed by a German air attack.⁶ Vasil’ev went forward to personally reconnoiter the route that his 19th Tank Corps would have to follow, whereupon his vehicle was also strafed by German fighter-bombers and he was severely wounded. Nevertheless, his deputy took over and moved the 19th Tank Corps into forward-assembly areas on the evening of April 10. The 19th Tank Corps was heavily reinforced for the exploitation mission, with four tank brigades with a total of 221 tanks and assault guns (including 58 T-34s, 34 TO-34 flamethrower tanks, 44 Su-76s, and 63 Valentines) at the start of the operation. At dawn on April 11, the 19th Tank Corps advanced south between two lakes and pushed against weak resistance to Tomashevka. Overhead, the 8th Air Army provided excellent close air support, despite tenacious efforts by the Experten of II./JG 52. Fearful of being outflanked, the rest of the Axis units on the Sivash line fell back, along with those units defending the Chongar sector. By 1100hrs, the vanguard of the 19th Tank Corps reached Dzhankoy, capturing Konrad’s supply dumps. It was apparent that Tolbukhin’s front had achieved a successful breakthrough. All of Gruppe Konrad was now falling back toward the Gneisenau Line, although the lack of transport and incessant Soviet air attacks caused a great deal of material to be abandoned. In particular, the 50. Infanterie-Division suffered heavy losses in the retreat, since a number of its units were already cut off. Hauptmann Karl-Otto Leukefeld, commander of I./Grenadier-Regiment 123, was captured, along with some of his troops.