Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Although the weather over the Kerch Strait area was poor on Christmas eve, Bf-110 reconnaissance aircraft from 3.(F)/11 spotted unusual enemy naval activity and reported it to the Luftwaffe liaison officer within Generalleutnant Hans Graf von Sponeck’s XXXXII Armeekorps headquarters in Islam-Terek, located northwest of Feodosiya. Sponeck had commanded the 22. Luftlande-Division during the airborne invasion of Holland in May 1940 and was badly wounded; afterwards he was awarded the Ritterkreuz and continued to lead his division ably in the advance across southern Ukraine until promoted to command XXXXII Armeekorps in October. Now he was tasked with defending the Kerch Peninsula and much of the eastern Crimean coastline, but Manstein had stripped his corps to the bone in order to reinforce the offensive at Sevastopol. Consequently, Sponeck’s only combat units were Generalleutnant Kurt Himer’s 46. Infanterie-Division, two coastal artillery battalions equipped with obsolete artillery from World War I, a pioneer regiment and a Luftwaffe flak battalion. Himer’s division consisted of three infantry regiments (IR 42, 72, and 97) and three artillery battalions, but it was overextended and badly deployed. Oberst Friedrich Schmidt’s Infanterie-Regiment 72 had its three battalions concentrated around the old Yenikale fortress northeast of Kerch, guarding the coastline that was closest to the Taman Peninsula. Oberst Ernst Maisel’s Infanterie-Regiment 42 had just two battalions with 1,460 troops to guard a 17-mile stretch of coastline south of Kerch.¹ That left only Oberstleutnant Alexander von Bentheim’s Infanterie-Regiment 97 holding positions in depth, with one battalion at Feodosiya and two battalions near the northern coast along the Sea of Azov. The southern coast of the Kerch Peninsula was only lightly screened by Aufklärungs-Abteilung 46.² In a pinch, Sponeck could also call upon the Romanian Mountain Corps for help, which had the 8th Cavalry Brigade guarding the coast near Alushta. After receiving the aerial reconnaissance report about enemy naval activity in the Kerch Strait, Sponeck issued the Weihnachtsmann (“Santa Claus”) alarm, which put all units in XXXXII Armeekorps on alert to defend the Kerch Peninsula against amphibious landings.³