Black Sea operations

Black Sea operations (see Map 17). Germany did not move any warships to the Black Sea before its invasion of the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA) as it did to the Baltic. However, during the course of the German–Soviet war, several hundred small ones were subsequently transported there. They included six submarines and Italian Tenth Light Flotilla units, which mostly had to be shipped by rail or road and reassembled at Romania's principal naval base, Constanţa, or brought down the Danube. They were needed, for Romania possessed only four destroyers, three submarines, three minelayers, and some torpedo and gun boats, and, apart from one Romanian submarine, these were all employed defensively to escort convoys. All Axis ships were commanded by the German Admiral, Black Sea.

Opposing these Axis naval forces was the Soviet Black Sea fleet of one old battleship, 6 cruisers, 21 destroyers, 84 MTBs, 47 submarines, a variety of small craft, and an air arm of 626 aircraft. It was commanded first by Vice-Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky and from May 1943 to March 1944 by Vice-Admiral Lev Vladimirsky. Their command included flotillas based on the Volga and Don rivers, the Caspian Sea, and the Sea of Azov. Though more powerful than the Axis forces, at no time did the Soviet Black Sea fleet dominate. Its submarines were not very effective, and when German bombers sank three of its destroyers in October 1943 Stalin banned the employment of its larger units altogether. Its smaller ships bombarded German positions, harassed Axis convoys, laid mines, ran in supplies and reinforcements to the beleaguered Red Army ashore, and mounted numerous hit- and-run raids, but the fleet's main offensive role was to support the Red Army with amphibious warfare.

The Soviet fleet's first amphibious operation took place on 22 September 1941 when it landed 2,000 naval troops behind the Romanians besieging Odessa. Co-ordinated with a small parachute drop, it forced the Romanians to abandon the positions from which they were bombarding the port. But the city still had to be abandoned and between 1 and 16 October the fleet, in a notable operation, ‘itself a small Dunkirk’ ( J. Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad, London, 1975, p. 211), evacuated 86,000 soldiers, 15,000 civilians, and on the final night took off more than 1,000 lorries, 20,000 tons of ammunition, 400 guns, and 32,000 men of General I. Petrov's Independent Maritime Army, all needed to try to prevent the capture of Sevastopol by General von Manstein's forces.

Also successful in the short term were Soviet landings on the German-occupied Kerch peninsula in the Crimea to try and relieve Sevastopol. On the night of 25/26 December 1941 there were 25 separate landings in 10 different areas, and though only four succeeded these were soon reinforced. Then on 28 December Feodosiya on the Crimea's southern coast was stormed and by 31 December more than 40,000 troops had been landed, forcing the German evacuation of the peninsula. But the Soviet execution of the land battle was poor and Feodosiya was soon recaptured; by May the peninsula had been cleared of Soviet troops by the Germans.

The Kerch landings probably extended Sevastopol's resistance by as much as six months, but it fell in July 1942, and in early September the Germans crossed the Kerch strait on to the Taman peninsula in small vessels. They surprised the defenders and quickly occupied the peninsula. Novorossisk fell on 7 September, and an amphibious operation two weeks later failed to recapture it, but the German offensive petered out before the fleet's remaining Caucasian bases were reached.

In February 1943 a more powerful Soviet naval force made two landings near Novorossisk. The larger was wiped out but a smaller one succeeded. It was quickly reinforced and all German attempts to dislodge it failed. But the port was held by the Germans until the night of 9/10 September 1943 when 130 small boats of the Soviet fleet entered it and landed troops. This landing, and several others which followed, drove the Germans out. Soon afterwards they began withdrawing from the bridgehead they had formed the previous year and which the defeat at Stalingrad in January 1943 had made untenable. Several courageous attempts were made by the fleet to establish and maintain bridgeheads to hinder their retreat. Nearly all ultimately failed, though one on the Kerch peninsula at Eltigen held out from October until December 1943. Less impressive were the fleet's efforts to prevent more than 250,000 German troops of Kleist's Army Group A, their transport and supplies—and 27,000 civilians—being ferried back across the Kerch strait in September– October 1943, an operation completed with few losses.

It was now the turn of the Germans to defend Sevastopol and their ships helped supply and reinforce it. Hitler, after ordering it to be held, approved its evacuation of 6 May 1944, but the reprieve came too late and ships taking off troops from the beaches of Cape Kherson were heavily bombed and attacked by Soviet torpedo boats and submarines. During the last days of the evacuation 27 ships and barges were sunk and 8,000 men drowned, and though 130,000 German and Romanian troops were saved about 78,000 men were killed or made prisoners-of-war. If Stalin had allowed the Soviet fleet's larger units to operate the casualties would have been far higher; but, apart from two final amphibious landings behind German lines, made in August just days before Bulgaria and Romania capitulated, only Soviet submarines operated offensively in the western Black Sea that summer.

The Germans say they lost 50 vessels, the Soviets claim 191. Soviet Second World War naval losses have not so far been published but German estimates are 103 ships, including a cruiser and 3 destroyers, 191 aircraft, and 86 merchantmen.