Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Once in Severnaya Bay, the ships unloaded during the night and left before daylight. German artillery would fire on the harbor area when ships were sighted, inflicting some shrapnel damage, but it was too inaccurate to sink any shipping. However, the tanker Mikhail Gromov, sailing with two minesweepers, was less fortunate and was pounced on 37 miles south of Yalta by the He-111 torpedo-bombers of Major Horst Beyling’s II./KG 26. One torpedo struck the tanker’s bow at 2055hrs and set her ablaze, which caused her destruction. After this, Oktyabrsky decided not to send any more tankers to Sevastopol and instead submarines would be used to bring in small quantities of aviation fuel. Yet the loss of the Mikhail Gromov seemed like something of a fluke, since the Black Sea Fleet continued to enjoy success with using high-speed supply runs with destroyers on June 3, 5, and 6, which brought 2,500 more troops into Sevastopol without loss. Even the 4,857-ton passenger ship Gruziya, built by Krupp at Kiel in 1928, managed to slip into the port unescorted on June 7, with another 750 troops. During the first week of June, the Black Sea Fleet also managed to evacuate 1,612 wounded and 3,434 civilians. But time was running out.

Unknown to Oktyabrsky, the Axis had decided in January 1942 to transfer light naval forces to the Black Sea to assist in interdicting Soviet naval convoys. The Italian Regia Marina created a composite unit designated as the 101st Squadron with four 24-ton MAS boats and six 35-ton mini-submarines under the command of Capitano di Fregata Francesco Mimbelli. The German Kriesgmarine also decided to send the 1. Schnellbootsflottille under Kapitänleutnant Karl-Heinz Birnbacher, but his 92-ton boats were considerably more difficult to transport and had to be disassembled, then sent by barge down the Danube to Romania, so Mimbelli’s squadron arrived in theater first. Mimbelli established his squadron at Yalta and Feodosiya in mid-May, and his MAS boats and mini-submarines commenced patrolling activities off the Crimea just as Störfang was beginning.²⁰ The first two of Birnbacher’s S-Boats did not arrive at the Romanian port of Constanta until May 26, and they did not begin patrols off Sevastopol until June 6.²¹

Meanwhile, the air battle over Sevastopol rapidly turned against the VVS-ChF’s 3 OAG. Richthofen’s fighters, which now had a 3-1 numerical superiority over Sevastopol, ripped into the 3 OAG on June 7, claiming 17 “kills.” Even Captain Konstantin S. Alekseyev, the VVS-ChF’s top ace was shot down and badly wounded on June 8. His 6th Guards Fighter Regiment lost a number of other experienced pilots in the opening days of June. One German ace, Oberleutnant Anton Hackl claimed five Soviet fighters and four Il-2 Sturmoviks over Sevastopol in the first nine days of Störfang. On June 10, the 45th Fighter Regiment arrived in Sevastopol from the Caucasus with 20 brand-new Yak-1 fighters, but the pilots were mostly inexperienced, and nine were shot down in their first two days of combat. During the period June 7–12, the three Gruppen of JG 77 inflicted crippling losses on 3 OAG, which lost the ability to protect the port or shipping against large-scale Luftwaffe attacks. By mid-June, Fliegerkorps VIII was dominant over Sevastopol and the sea lines of communication were now at great risk.

As the battle for air superiority over Sevastopol was being decided, Fliegerkorps VIII began to shift its focus to severing Sevastopol’s sea lines of communications. On the evening of June 9, the destroyers Svobodnyi and Bditelny and two minesweepers were escorting the 4,727-ton transport Abkhazia into Sevastopol when they came under attack from the He-111H-6 bombers from Beyling’s II./KG 26. Over the course of two hours, the German bombers launched 24 torpedoes against the convoy, but none hit, and the ships reached Severnaya Bay intact. Normally, the convoys unloaded during the night and left before dawn to avoid becoming stationary targets for the Luftwaffe. Captain 3rd Rank P. I. Shevchenko’s destroyer Svobodnyi had unloaded its cargo of ammunition by 0430hrs, but as the sun rose on the horizon the transport Abkhazia had only begun to unload a cargo that included new trucks for Petrov’s army. Shortly thereafter, the first He-111 bombers began appearing over the port and the Soviets activated a smokescreen system used to obscure the port area.