Crimean Offensive

Crimean Offensive Part of the Eastern Front of World War II Soviet soldiers crossing the Sivash Bay into Crimea Date 8 April – 12 May 1944 Location Crimea, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union Result Soviet victory Belligerents  Soviet Union  Germany  Romania  Bulgaria[1] Commanders and leaders Fyodor Tolbukhin Filipp Oktyabrskiy Erwin Jaenecke Horia Macellariu Strength 462,400[2][3] 560 tanks and assault guns 6,000 guns 1,200 aircraft 255,970[3] 1,815 guns Casualties and losses 84,819 17,754 killed or missing 67,065 wounded or sick 171 tanks 521 guns 179 aircraft[2][3] Losses at sea: 1 submarine 1 motor torpedo boat 12+ aircraft 96,700[4] 31,700 killed or missing 33,400 wounded 25,800 killed or missing 5,800 wounded Losses at sea: 4 submarine hunters 5 cargo ships 1 tanker 3 tugs 3 lighters 3 motorboats 3 cargo ships

Eastern Front Naval warfare Baltic Sea Black Sea Arctic Ocean 1941 Barbarossa Brest Białystok and Minsk Raseiniai Brody Bessarabia Smolensk Uman Odessa 1st Kiev Tallinn disaster Leningrad Sevastopol Rostov Gorky Moscow Finland Chechnya 1942 Lyuban Rzhev Toropets and Kholm Demyansk Kholm Rzhev, Summer 1942 2nd Kharkov Case Blue Caucasus Velikiye Luki Stalingrad Uranus Mars Winter Storm Little Saturn 1943 Tidal Wave 3rd Kharkov Kursk Destroyed of GAZ 2nd Smolensk Lower Dnieper 2nd Kiev 1944 Dnieper and Carpathian Leningrad and Novgorod Narva Hube's Pocket Crimea Jassy–Kishinev Karelia Bagration Lvov and Sandomierz Doppelkopf 2nd Jassy–Kishinev Baltics Riga Tallinn Moonsund Memel Debrecen Dukla Pass Belgrade Petsamo and Kirkenes Courland Hungary Budapest 1945 Vistula and Oder Poznań East Prussia Königsberg Heiligenbeil Samland East Pomerania Kolberg Solstice Silesia Breslau Lake Balaton Vienna Berlin Czechoslovakia German capitulation Crimea and Caucasus 1st Crimea Kerch Peninsula Adzhimushkay Defense Sevastopol Caucasus Kuban bridgehead Kerch–Eltigen Operation Crimean Offensive (1944) Stalin's ten blows Leningrad Dnieper–Carpathian Crimea/Odessa Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Belorussia Lvov–Sandomierz Jassy–Kishinev Baltic Petsamo–Kirkenes Budapest/Belgrade Romanian military actions in World War II Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina Treznea As part of the Axis (1941–1944) Bucharest Constanța München Uman Odessa Sevastopol Kerch Azov Rostov Kharkov Blue Edelweiss Stalingrad Uranus Winter Storm Little Saturn Tidal Wave Donbass Kerch-Eltigen Lower Dnieper Dniepr–Carpathian Uman–Botoșani 1st Jassy–Kishinev Crimea Lublin-Brest 2nd Jassy–Kishinev As part of the Allies (1944–1945) Turda Păuliș Debrecen Budapest Bratislava-Brno Prague

The Crimean Offensive (8 April – 12 May 1944), known in German sources as the Battle of the Crimea, was a series of offensives by the Red Army directed at the German-held Crimea. The Red Army's 4th Ukrainian Front engaged the German 17th Army of Army Group A, which consisted of Wehrmacht and Romanian formations. The battles ended with the evacuation of the Crimea by the Germans. German and Romanian forces suffered considerable losses during the evacuation.

Map of Crimea

Prelude

During late 1943 and early 1944, the Wehrmacht was pressed back along its entire front line in the east. In October 1943, the 17th Army withdrew from the Kuban bridgehead across the Kerch Strait into the Crimea. During the following months, the Red Army pushed back the Wehrmacht in southern Ukraine, eventually cutting off the land-based connection of 17th Army through the Perekop Isthmus in November 1943.

The Wehrmacht was able to successfully hold on to the Crimea even after it had been cut off by land due to their ability to supply it via the Black Sea. Holding the Crimea was considered important as its loss would negatively affect the attitude of Turkey and put Romanian oilfields under risk of Soviet air attacks. Aside from Soviet landings across the Kerch Strait and in the north-eastern sector near Sivash at the end of 1943, the Soviet Army largely ignored the Crimea for the next five months.

Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist was removed from the command of Army Group A in March 30, 1944. He was succeeded by Ferdinand Schörner.

Progress of the battle

An assault across the Perekop Isthmus was launched on 8 April by elements of the 4th Ukrainian Front's 2nd Guards and 51st Armies.^[5] The 17th Army defended but was unable to stop the advance. Kerch was reached by the Separate Coastal Army on 11 April; Simferopol, about 37 mi (60 km) northeast of Sevastopol, followed two days later. The 17th Army was retreating toward Sevastopol by 16 April,^[5] with remaining Axis forces in the Crimea concentrating around the city by the end of the third week of April.

The OKH intended to hold Sevastopol as a fortress, as the Red Army had done during the first Crimean campaign in 1941–42. However, the fortifications of the city had never been restored and Sevastopol was not the strong defensive position that it had been in 1941. Fighting broke out in the city outskirts towards the end of April and the city fell on 9 May, less than a month after the start of the offensive. The Axis sea evacuation to Constanța was attacked by Soviet land-based bombers.^[5]

On 18 April, the Soviet Leninets-class submarine L-6 was twice attacked with depth charges and damaged by the Romanian gunboat Ghiculescu, before being finished off by the German submarine hunter UJ-104.^[6][7]

During the night of 27 April, a convoy escorted by the Romanian gunboat Ghiculescu, the German submarine hunter UJ-115, one R-boat, two KFK naval trawlers and 19 MFPs (including the Romanian PTA-404 and PTA-406) engaged the Soviet G-5-class motor torpedo boats TKA-332 and TKA-334, after the two attacked and damaged the German submarine hunter UJ-104. Ghiculescu fired tracer rounds from her 88 mm gun, enabling the entire escort group to locate the two Soviet MTBs and open fire. TKA-332 was hit and sunk.^[8][9]

Over 12 Soviet aircraft were also shot down during the operation, including two by the minelayer Amiral Murgescu.^[10][11]

The last Axis pockets in the Crimea were destroyed on 12 May. The last Axis warship to leave the peninsula was the Romanian minelayer Amiral Murgescu, carrying on board 1,000 Axis troops, including General Walter Hartmann.^[12]

Consequences

In a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden, Jaenecke had insisted that Sevastopol should be evacuated and his cut off Army of 235,000 men withdrawn. After the loss of the Crimea, he was held responsible, arrested in Romania and court-martialed. Only the intervention of Heinz Guderian saved his life. He was dismissed from the army on 31 January 1945.

The German and Romanian formations suffered the loss of 57,000 men, many of whom drowned during the evacuation. The sinking of the Totila and Teja on 10 May alone caused up to 10,000 deaths. In total, the German losses at sea amounted to five cargo ships, one tanker, three tugs, three lighters, three motorboats and four submarine hunters, while the Romanians lost three cargo ships.^[13][14] The partially successful evacuation of Axis troops from the Crimea earned the commander of the Romanian Navy, Rear Admiral Horia Macellariu, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.^[15] The table below is based on information from Glantz/House When Titans Clashed.:

Land formations and units involved

Red Army Offensives during 1943–1944

Soviet

• 4th Ukrainian Front
  • 2nd Guards Army
  • 51st Army
  • 4th Air Army
• Black Sea Fleet
• Separate Coastal Army
• Soviet partisans

Axis

German

• Army Group A
  • 17th Army

Romanian

• Romanian Mountain Corps
  • 1st Mountain Division
  • 2nd Mountain Division

Citations

Bibliography

• Clodfelter, M. (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492-2015 (4th ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0786474707. 
• Pickert, W. Vom Kuban-Brueckenkopf bis Sewastopol – Flakartillerie im Verband der 17. Armee'
• Glantz, David M. & House, Jonathan (1995). When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-0899-0.
• Ziemke, E.F. 'Stalingrad to Berlin'
• Müller, Rolf-Dieter. Der letzte deutsche Krieg 1939–1945. Stuttgart 2005. ISBN 3-608-94133-9

External links

• Operation "60,000" – 1944