Where the Iron Crosses Grow

In April 1942, the German anti-shipping campaign became increasingly painful for the Soviet merchant marine in the Black Sea as He-111 bombers seeded the shipping routes across the Kerch Strait with air-delivered mines. The tanker Valerian Kuybyshev, after being repaired, attempted another run to Kerch on the evening of April 2, escorted by a destroyer and two MiG-3 fighters overhead. Nevertheless, five He-111s from Beyling’s II./KG 26 swooped in low and launched torpedoes, one of which struck the tanker’s stern, turning it into a ball of flame. Soviet officials in Sevastopol had been evacuating as many civilians as possible by sea during the winter in order to reduce the logistical needs of the isolated city and to minimize casualties from a renewed German offensive in the spring. Unfortunately, the passenger ships were large targets, and on the afternoon of April 17 the 4,125-ton passenger ship Svanetia was sunk, attacked by a group of He-111H-6 bombers and struck by two torpedoes; the ship sank in 20 minutes, taking 750 of the 950 passengers and crew aboard to the bottom with her. Lacking long-range fighters that could patrol over convoys at sea, the VVS-Crimean Front commander decided to employ his handful of Pe-2 tactical bombers as “heavy fighters,” believing that they could deter He-111 attacks on shipping. They did not. Further raids on Tuapse and Novorossiysk sank two merchantmen and damaged four others. On April 28, the Luftwaffe made a maximum effort with 43 He-111s raiding Kerch and 21 Ju-88s raiding Novorossiysk, losing just one bomber to Soviet fighters.

The end result of the winter siege was that the Luftwaffe had failed to interdict Sevastopol’s sea lines of communication, which enabled Petrov’s defenses to improve considerably. On the other hand, German air attacks had cost the Soviet merchant marine losses that it could not sustain indefinitely, and the VVS had been unable to prevent the Luftwaffe from attacking shipping and ports. Sevastopol’s sea lines of communication remained intact by the onset of spring, but they were vulnerable. On the ground, both sides had used the winter months to rest and replenish their forces, as well as to improve their positions. Petrov’s Coastal Army was well suited to defending the fortified naval base, but it lacked the armor and mobile artillery to break through the German siege lines and link-up with Kozlov’s forces. Help would have to come from outside, and thus, both the Germans and Soviets looked to a decision first in the Kerch Peninsula before the fate of Sevastopol could be decided.

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Kozlov’s 44th and 51st Armies were so disorganized after the retreat caused by Manstein’s Feodosiya counteroffensive that they were incapable of offensive action for more than a month. However, reinforcements began to flow steadily into the Crimea after part of the Kerch Strait froze over on January 20 and remained frozen for three weeks. Soviet engineers built an ice road across the frozen strait, which enabled 96,618 troops, 23,903 horses, and 6,519 vehicles to cross from the Taman Peninsula to the Kerch Peninsula in this period.²⁵ A 47th Army was created at Kerch with two rifle divisions, but remained a second-echelon holding command for some time. On January 28, 1942, the Stavka rationalized the command structure in the Crimea by placing Kozlov in command of the new Crimean Front and subordinating the Black Sea Fleet and the SOR to the front. At the same time, the Stavka issued a directive for Kozlov to begin preparations for a major offensive to break out of the Kerch Peninsula and advance westward to link up with Petrov’s Coastal Army in Sevastopol. The 45-year-old Dmitri T. Kozlov, a former junior officer in the Tsarist Army, had been a decent regimental commander in the 1920s but was in over his head trying to run a joint command structure involving four armies, a fleet, and various air units. Kozlov’s staff was equally amateurish and incapable of developing anything but the most basic of plans, and were further burdened with Stalin and his Stavka representatives constantly pushing them to attack. Commissar Lev Mekhlis, the head of the Red Army’s Main Political Administration, arrived as the Stavka’s representative to the Crimean Front in late January and immediately began interfering with operational planning.