Where the Iron Crosses Grow

After mid-June, the Black Sea Fleet’s convoys became increasingly at risk from both Axis air and naval attacks. The cruisers Molotov and Bezuprechny made another high-speed run into Sevastopol on June 15/16, which delivered 3,855 troops and 442 tons of ammunition, but on June 18 the flotilla leader Kharkov was damaged en route to Sevastopol by German aircraft and forced to turn back. The 2,048-ton passenger vessel Belostok succeeded in making it to Sevastopol and, although damaged by artillery fire, left by 2130hrs with the minesweeper T-408 as escort. On its return trip, the Belostok carried 375 wounded and 43 civilians. Off Cape Fiolent, the small convoy was approached by unidentified craft. It was two of Kapitänleutnant Karl-Heinz Birnbacher’s S-Boats – the S-72 and the S-102. The Kriesgmarine had finally arrived in the Black Sea. Kapitänleutnant Werner Töniges, captain of the S-102, had started his career in the merchant marine before transferring to the Kriesgmarine. By the summer of 1942 Töniges was an accomplished ship-killer and had already been awarded the Ritterkreuz. The two S-Boats attacked individually, and the Soviet escorts failed to react in time, which enabled the two boats to fire off five torpedoes. One of Töniges’ struck the Belostok at 0148hrs, and the ex-Spanish passenger vessel sank quickly, taking 388 souls down with her.²² This was the first Kriesgmarine victory in the Black Sea and the last attempt to run slow-moving merchant ships into Sevastopol.

On June 24 the destroyers Tashkent, Bezuprechny, and Bditelny managed to bring 1,871 troops from the 142nd Naval Rifle Brigade into Sevastopol. Encouraged by this success, the Soviet destroyers quickly returned to Novorossiysk to bring the rest of the naval brigade to Sevastopol. Captain 3rd Rank Petr M. Buriak loaded 320 troops and 16 medical personnel onto his destroyer Bezuprechny and started back to Sevastopol on the morning of June 26. Eroshenko’s Tashkent followed soon after, overloaded with 944 troops. Initially, the VVS provided fighter cover over the destroyers, but by late afternoon the destroyers were on their own. Buriak’s Bezuprechny was still equipped with the obsolescent 45mm 21-K antiaircraft guns, but managed to fend off two small-scale air attacks. However, a large group of Ju-87 Stukas from II./StG 77 attacked the Bezuprechny 37 miles off the Crimean coast at 1857hrs. Oberfeldwebel Werner Haugk of 5./StG 77 scored a direct hit on the destroyer, which broke it in two.²³ Hit by two more bombs, the Bezuprechny sank in two minutes, but dozens of men made it into the water. Soon, the Tashkent appeared on the horizon. Eroshenko witnessed a huge plume of black smoke hanging over Bezuprechny’s grave and bobbing heads amidst a floating lake of fuel oil. Now the Ju-88s turned their attention to Eroshenko’s Tashkent, and he was only able to survive by high-speed turning and furiously firing off one-third of his antiaircraft ammunition. Under these conditions, he could not stop to rescue survivors. On the way into Sevastopol, Italian MAS boats ambushed the Tashkent off Cap Fiolent, but Eroshenko’s luck held, as two torpedoes passed under his bow without exploding. Eroshenko made it into Sevastopol, but only three out of 572 aboard the Bezuprechny were eventually rescued.²⁴

On the return trip, a German reconnaissance plane spotted the Tashkent at 0415hrs, and a large force of He-111s from I./KG 100 arrived overhead around 0600hrs, followed by Ju-87s from III./StG 77. The He-111 bombers employed a new tactic, attacking one after another in a shallow diving attack, rather than with intervals of several minutes between each attack. Eroshenko’s ship weaved from side to side, avoiding bombs, but his antiaircraft gunners were running out of ammunition. After more than three hours of dodging, and after avoiding 355 bombs, Eroshenko’s luck finally ran out when Feldwebel Herbert Dawedeit of 8./StG 77 dived on his ship and dropped a 250kg bomb close to the stern of the Tashkent, which disabled the destroyer’s steering and caused massive flooding.²⁵ Unable to maneuver and with speed dropping off to 14 knots, the Tashkent suffered two more near-misses and 1,900 tons of seawater poured into her ruptured hull. Amazingly, Eroshenko’s crew made emergency repairs that enabled the destroyer to keep limping eastward and survive further attacks. Eventually, Soviet fighters from Novorossiysk appeared and the attacks stopped, while other ships were sent to tow the damaged Tashkent into port. Yet the fact that even the high-speed Tashkent was no longer invulnerable indicated that Richthofen’s Fliegerkorps VIII had finally achieved their goal of isolating Sevastopol.²⁶