Where the Iron Crosses Grow

In the meantime, IR 72 had moved with I. and II./IR 72 and crushed the Soviet beachhead at Cape Khroni. At dusk on December 28, a Soviet follow-on convoy approached Cape Khroni with reinforcements and observed German troop activity all along the coastline. One Soviet officer and 11 men managed to swim out through the frigid waves to a patrol boat, where they revealed that the beachhead had been destroyed. There were still pockets of resistance inland to be mopped up, and over 1,000 troops were still ensconced on the shore of Bulganak Bay, but by late on December 28, Himer and Sponeck had reason to be satisfied – over 1,700 prisoners had been taken and the bulk of the Soviet landing forces had been defeated. The Soviets had gained a sizeable lodgment at Kamysh Burun, but IR 42 had them surrounded and they could be dealt with as soon as IR 72 and IR 97 completed their mop-up operations. If the storms over the Kerch Straits had remained for another day or so, a significant German tactical victory would have been in hand, but the weather began to subside on the evening of December 28/29 and the Soviets were now ready to spring the second phase of their invasion upon Sponeck.

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At 1300hrs on December 28, two assault regiments from General-Major Aleksei N. Pervushin’s 44th Army began loading aboard an invasion fleet at Novorossiysk comprised of two light cruisers, eight destroyers, 14 transports, and numerous small craft. Four and a half hours later, the advance elements steamed out of Novorossiysk aboard the light cruiser Krasny Kavkaz; the elderly Fidonisy-class destroyers Shaumyan, Zhelezniakov, and Nyezamozhnik; and a group of patrol boats and coastal minesweepers. The weather improved briefly, allowing the flotilla to travel at 16 knots for most of the way, until the destroyer Sposobnyi struck a mine and suffered 200 casualties. Many of the troops spent the whole voyage on exposed, ice-crusted decks, and were frozen and seasick after a few hours. Off the port of Feodosiya, two Soviet submarines waited on the surface, ready to mark the harbor entrance with lights when the assault force approached.

Inside Feodosiya, which had a pre-war population of 28,000, the German garrison was not expecting action, since Sponeck had dispatched the only infantry unit, II./IR 97, to support the battle around Kerch. The main units left defending the port of Feodosiya were II./AR 54 (equipped with four 10cm and 11 15cm howitzers of World War I-vintage) and I./AR 77 (equipped with six captured Czech 15cm howitzers). Both artillery battalions were deployed in coastal-defense positions around the port, but had limited transport and means of ground defense. Also available in or near Feodosiya were 700–800 engineers from Oberstleutnant Hans von Ahlfen’s Pionier-Regimentsstab z.b.V. 617 (two assault-boat companies, one Brücko B bridging company, and Landungs-Kompanie 777), although they were equipped only with light small arms. Ostensibly, the harbor entrance was protected by a raft boom, preventing enemy access.

Once the Soviet 51st Army began landing on the Kerch Peninsula, Sponeck ordered the Romanian Mountain Corps to send first its 8th Cavalry Brigade then its 4th Mountain Brigade to reinforce Himer’s 46. Infanterie-Division, leaving only the 3rd Rosiori motorized Cavalry Regiment near Feodosiya. By the evening of December 28, the bulk of Colonel Corneliu Teodorini’s 8th Cavalry Brigade had marched halfway to Kerch, but Brigadier-General Gheorghe Manoliu’s 4th Mountain Brigade and General-Major Gheorghe Avramescu’s Mountain Corps headquarters was still located at Stary Krym, 14 miles west of Feodosiya.