Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Kozlov’s forces certainly appeared formidable. In the north, Lvov’s 51st Army defended a 5½-mile-long front with eight rifle divisions, three rifle brigades, and two tank brigades. In the south, Cherniak’s 44th Army defended a much shorter sector with five rifle divisions and two tank brigades. Although both first-echelon armies had prepared three lines of defense, including an antitank ditch that bisected the entire width of the Parpach Narrows, almost all the rifle units were deployed within 2 miles of the front line. Tank brigades and cavalry were deployed further back in reserve. In the second echelon, General-Major Konstantin S. Kolganov’s 47th Army was deployed in reserve with four rifle and one cavalry division. Under pressure from Stalin to mount another offensive, Kozlov intended once again to use Lvov’s 51st Army as his battering ram and had massed the bulk of his forces in the northern salient to support this concept. Kozlov was confident that General-Major Yevgeniy M. Nikolaenko’s VVS-Crimean Front, which had 176 fighters and 225 bombers available, would continue to maintain air superiority over the eastern Crimea and that this would deter any attempt by Manstein to go on the offensive.¹ However, Kozlov failed to appreciate that Nikolaenko’s air strength was based on quantity, not quality, and that the bulk of his units were intended for close-air-support roles, not air superiority. Only the three fighter squadrons in the 72nd Fighter Division (72 IAD) were equipped with modern Yak-1 or LaGG-3 fighters; the other six fighter regiments were equipped with obsolescent I-16 fighters or I-153 fighter-bombers. Another serious but subtle weakness was that Nikolaenko had only three reconnaissance squadrons equipped with a dozen SB bombers and U-2 or R-5 biplanes.

Not surprisingly, Nikolaenko’s limited reconnaissance assets failed to note that Generaloberst Wolfram von Richthofen, commander of the elite Fliegerkorps VIII, established his headquarters at Kischlaw, west of Feodosiya, on May 1. Over the next five days, Fliegerkorps VIII brought over 400 more aircraft into the Crimean theater, thereby radically altering the air balance in favor of the Luftwaffe. In particular, the Luftwaffe fighter strength in the Crimea swelled from one Jagdgruppe with 45 Bf-109F fighters to four Jagdgruppen with 166 Bf-109E/F fighters. Many of these fighters were based at newly built airfields south of Simferopol and west of Feodosiya, which had not previously been used by the Luftwaffe. A number of Soviet reconnaissance aircraft disappeared over the Crimea in early May – the first victims of Fliegerkorps VIII in this sector – but it did not cause any undue alarm in Kozlov’s headquarters. In addition, Richthofen’s command brought German bomber strength in the Crimea up to five Kampfgruppen, with 160 bombers and all of StG 77 with 106 Ju-87 Stukas. Sarabus, the main German airbase in the Crimea, swelled from hosting about 70 aircraft to over 250 in a few days. On May 6, two Gruppen from Schlachtgeschwader 1 (SchG 1) began to arrive at an airstrip near Feodosiya; I./SchG 1 was equipped with Bf-109E-7 fighter-bombers and II./SchG 1 was equipped with 43 of the new Hs 129 B-1 ground-attack planes. These heavily armored aircraft were intended as tank destroyers and equipped with two 20mm and one 30mm cannon, as well as antipersonnel fragmentation bombs. By May 7, Richthofen had quietly assembled 555 combat aircraft in the Crimea to support Operation Trappenjagd.²