Sevastopol, sieges of

Sevastopol, sieges of. The USSR's main Black Sea naval base was one of the world's strongest fortresses. Its site on a deeply eroded, bare limestone promontory at the south-western tip of the Crimea makes an approach by land exceedly difficult, and cliffs protect the anchorage in Severnaya Bay. The Soviet Navy maintained and modernized forts dating back to the Crimean war of 1854–6 and installed 12 naval gun batteries comprising 42 guns, varying in calibre from 152 mm. to 305 mm. (5.9–11.9 in.), in armoured turrets and concrete emplacements. In the last two weeks of October 1941, early in the German–Soviet war, Major General I. Y. Petrov and the survivors of his Independent Maritime Army, 32,000 troops, arrived by sea from Odessa. Petrov set about building three defence lines, the outermost on a rough arc about 16 km. (10 mi.) inland.

Between 26 September and 16 November Lt-General von Manstein's Eleventh Army, with the Third Romanian Army attached, cleared the Crimea except for Sevastopol. The Eleventh Army, seven divisions in all, was the smallest German army on the Eastern Front, and although the Romanians compensated for its numerical deficiency they were lightly armed, poorly trained, and badly led. Torrential downpours and jumbled terrain delayed Manstein's deployment for a month, giving the C-in-C, Black Sea Fleet, Vice-Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky, who had taken command of the fortress, time to bring in men and matériel for Petrov, who was his ground forces commander. Cruisers and destroyers could make the trip from Novorossisk overnight.

Manstein opened the attack on 17 December, sooner than Oktyabrsky, who was preparing to disrupt it by making several simultaneous landings along the coast, had thought he would. In five days, the German infantry at the point breached the first and second defence lines and in another four days they were cutting into the third line, beyond which the outer works of the fortress itself lay. Victory appeared close at hand, but only one German division and the Romanians were protecting 275 km. (170 mi.) of coast from Kerch to Yalta. On 26 December, Soviet troops took a beachhead near Kerch, and two days later a stronger force landed at Feodosiya in position to cut off the entire Kerch peninsula, which it proceeded to do in short order. Manstein then had to stop at Sevastopol and withdraw two divisions to prevent a breakthrough into the interior. In January 1942, the Soviet command activated the Crimea front under Maj-General D. T. Kozlov and ordered him to deploy three armies on the Kerch peninsula, which could be done by truck after the Kerch Strait had frozen solid.

When good weather returned in May, Manstein had to deal first with Crimea front. He deployed five German and two Romanian infantry divisions plus a panzer division (180 tanks) against Kozlov's 21 infantry divisions and 4 tank brigades (350 tanks). On 8 May, a landing executed under air cover by small craft of the type used for river crossings completely unhinged Kozlov's front, and ten days sufficed to finish the operation. More than 170,000 Red Army men were taken prisoner, largely because Stalin refused to permit a timely evacuation.

With a major offensive on the mainland in the offing, taking Sevastopol hardly seemed worth the effort. Manstein believed three or four divisions could keep the fortress under siege. The success on Kerch and another near Kharkov, however, persuaded Hitler to conduct additional preliminary operations. Moreover, at Sevastopol he had a chance to show off a spectacular array of superheavy artillery built for use against the Maginot Line which had not been needed there. The 33 pieces emplaced during April and May ranged in calibre from 280 to 600 mm. (10.9–23 in.). One, known as DORA, could fire an 800 mm. (31 in.) shell 50 km. (31 mi.).

Manstein, the master of the blitzkrieg, faced a test in positional warfare. The terrain confined the lines of approach to the north, where the first attempt had been made, and to the south-east. Oktyabrsky and Petrov had exploited their five-month respite to the full. Petrov had 106,000 troops, and more than 80,000 naval personnel manned the forts and gun emplacements. Manstein's artillery bombardment, by 600 pieces including the heaviest, began on 2 June. Four divisions attacked from the north on 7 June but failed to find a single weak spot. Three divisions on the south-east had the same experience four days later. The artillery was effective against the forts but not against the hundreds of natural and man-made caves that housed machine guns and light artillery.

After two weeks, the north group was on the shore of Severnaya Bay opposite Sevastopol, and the attack from the south-east was stalled at the Sapun Heights. Hitler had set 23 June as the terminal date for all preliminary operations, but the end was not in sight, and to have stopped then would have seemed to concede defeat. A surprise thrust into Sevastopol by boat from across the bay on 28 June finally unsettled the defence. On the night of 30 June, Oktyabrsky left to organize an evacuation—which did not materialize except for a few hundred in the upper ranks who were taken out by air. Thereafter the resistance crumbled, ending on 4 July with 90,000 prisoners counted.

In the spring of 1944 the positions were reversed. In mid-April the Seventeenth German Army, much weakened and with three Soviet armies on its heels, took refuge at Sevastopol, from which the army commander, Lt-General Erwin Jaenecke, expected it to be evacuated. Hitler, however, demanded that Sevastopol be held to prevent Soviet control of the Black Sea. The Soviet commands, treating the fortress with considerable respect, prepared thoroughly and on 5 May took the Sapun Heights in a mass assault. After Hitler approved an evacuation late on 6 May, ships from Constanta took 38,000 troops off Cape Kherson. The Soviet commands claimed 100,000 killed and captured.

Earl Ziemke

Bibliography

Manstein, F. E. von , Lost Victories (Chicago, 1958).
Ziemke, E. F. , Moscow to Stalingrad (Washington, DC, 1988).