Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Once it was clear that Sevastopol had been liberated, Tolbukhin realized that he could no longer employ all three armies against the narrowing enemy front, and he gave Mel’nik’s Coastal Army the mission of eliminating the remnants of AOK 17 in the Chersonese Peninsula. The Axis troops retreated to a final line of defense near the old Coastal Battery No. 35, where the peninsula’s neck was only 875 yards wide. Provalov’s 16th Rifle Corps could employ only the 383rd Rifle Division and 32nd Guards Rifle Division, supported by a tank brigade, against this narrow sector. Nevertheless, Tolbukhin’s artillery could strike everywhere on the Chersonese Peninsula, including the airfield. Once Soviet artillery began impacting on the airfield, the Luftwaffe decided to withdraw its last fighters from JG 52 late on May 9, thereby depriving AOK 17 of air cover. Morzik’s transports flew their last missions from Sevastopol on the night of May 9/10, and succeeded in flying out 1,000 wounded from the Chersonese.¹³ After that, the skies over the Chersonese belonged to the VVS.

Despite Hitler’s late endorsement of the evacuation option, the Kriegsmarine and Royal Romanian Navy had prepared as well as they could for this operation. Vizeadmiral Helmuth Brinkmann – who had commanded the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen during the sortie of the Bismarck in 1941 – was Admiral Schwarzes Meer, commander of all Kriegsmarine forces in the Black Sea. Brinkmann, whose headquarters had moved from Simferopol to Constanta in February 1944, coordinated with the Romanian Navy to ensure that there was more than enough merchant shipping available to evacuate 60,000 troops from the Crimea within a few days. He also put Konteradmiral Otto Schulz, nominally in charge of the Kriegsmarine coastal defenses in the Crimea, in charge of coordinating between AOK 17 and the naval forces involved in the evacuation operation. On the morning of May 9 the first evacuation convoys left from Constanta, with the Patria convoy sailing, and four more later in the day, involving 11 merchant ships and ten MFPs. It normally took a convoy 24 hours to cross the 250 miles from Constanta to Sevastopol, at an average speed of 9 knots. The Patria convoy, escorted by two Romanian destroyers, arrived off the Chersoneses Peninsula around 0200hrs on May 10 and began loading troops onto the merchantmen Teja and Totila (2,760 GRT). Small craft were used to ferry troops from the beaches out to the waiting merchantmen, while the warships kept alert for aerial, surface, and sub-surface threats. Soviet air attacks began at dawn, but did not score any hits, and the convoy set sail for Constanta at 0830hrs. Three German R-Boats escorted the Teja and Totila, which were loaded with 5,000 German and 4,000 Romanian troops. However, at 0930hrs 21 Il-2 Sturmoviks from the 8th Guards Ground Attack Regiment (GshAP) attacked and scored three hits with 100kg bombs on the Totila, which sank in a matter of minutes. The Teja and her escorts continued on, but five hours later 11 A-20G bombers from 13 GDBAP attacked and sank her. The R-Boats managed to rescue about 400 troops, but over 8,000 Axis troops were lost on the Teja and Totila.

The situation only grew worse for the other convoys approaching the Chersonese Peninsula on the night of May 10/11. Once the sun came up the VVS-ChF appeared in force, and Il-2s attacked and sank the Romanian minelayer Romania (3,152 GRT) and the freighter Danubius (1,489 GRT), while the German freighter Helga ran aground and was later destroyed. Lieutenant Commander Titus Samson’s destroyer Regele Ferdinand attempted to protect the freighters with its 40mm Bofors antiaircraft guns, but it was itself targeted by numerous air attacks. One bomb struck the hull and killed 11 crewmembers, but did not explode. A Soviet 152mm howitzer battery also engaged the Regele Ferdinand, and Samson returned fire with his 120mm guns. By 1030hrs Samson was forced to quit the area due to damage and running low on antiaircraft ammunition – Axis ships could no longer survive in daylight hours in Crimean waters. The Romanians dispatched more merchant ships from Constanta and the evacuation continued on the night of May 11/12. Soviet artillery fired illumination rounds to light up the beach areas, which were then pounded with high explosives. The Romanian destroyer Regina Maria escorted the convoys back from the Chersonese on the morning of May 12, but the merchantman Durostor was attacked by 12 Pe-2 bombers and sunk. German and Romanian soldiers on the decks of the merchantmen were exposed to strafing, bombing, and artillery fire, which caused numerous casualties.