Crimean offensive operation

As a result of the Lower Dnieper offensive operation, Soviet troops blocked the 17th German army in Crimea, capturing an important bridgehead on the southern coast of Sivash . In addition, the troops of the Separate Maritime Army during the Kerch-Eltigen landing operation seized the bridgehead in the Kerch area. The top leadership of the Wehrmacht believed that in the conditions of a land blockade, further retention of the Crimea militarily seems to be inappropriate. However, Hitler ordered to defend the Crimea to the last possible opportunity, believing that the abandonment of the peninsula would push Romania and Bulgaria to exit the Nazi block .

USSR

• 4th Ukrainian Front under the command of Army General F.I. Tolbukhin , composed of:
  • 51st Army (Commander Lieutenant General J. G. Kreiser )
  • 2nd Guards Army (Commander Lieutenant General G. F. Zakharov )
  • 19th Panzer Corps (commander, Lieutenant General of Panzer Forces I.D. Vasiliev , from April 11, Colonel I.A. Kissel )
  • 8th Air Army (Commander Colonel General of Aviation T. T. Khryukin )
• Separate Primorsky Army under the command of Army General A. I. Eremenko , and from April 15, Lieutenant General K. S. Melnik
• The Black Sea Fleet under the command of Admiral F. S. Oktyabrsky
• The Azov military flotilla under the command of Rear Admiral S. G. Gorshkov

A total of 470,000 people, 5,982 guns and mortars, 559 tanks and self-propelled guns, 1250 aircraft.

• 361st Sevastopol Separate Radio Division

Germany (Third Reich)

• The 17th Wehrmacht Army under the command of General Erwin Jeneke , and from May 1, General of the Infantry Karl Almendinger in 5 German and 7 Romanian divisions. A total of about 200,000 people, about 3,600 guns and mortars, 215 tanks and assault guns, 148 aircraft. The headquarters of the 17th Army was located in Simferopol .

In the northern part of Crimea they defended:

• 49th Mountain Rifle Corps ( 50th , 111th and 336th Infantry Divisions, 279th Assault Gun Brigade);
• 3rd Romanian Cavalry Corps (9th Cavalry, 10th and 19th Infantry Divisions).

The headquarters of the 49th Mountain Rifle and the 3rd Romanian Cavalry Corps were in Dzhankoy . Reserves in this direction were also located in the same area: the 111th infantry division (without one regiment), the 279th assault gun brigade ( Voinka ), and one regiment of the 9th Romanian cavalry division.

The western coast of Crimea from Perekop to Sevastopol was covered by two regiments of the 9th Romanian cavalry division.

On the Kerch Peninsula defended:

• 5th Army Corps ( 73rd and 98th Infantry Divisions and 191st Assault Gun Brigade),
• 6th cavalry and 3rd mountain romanian divisions.

The southern coast of Crimea from Feodosia to Sevastopol covered:

• The 1st Romanian mountain rifle corps (1st and 2nd mountain rifle divisions), the headquarters of the corps was located in Simferopol.

On April 8, 1944 , at 8:00, artillery and aviation training, with a total duration of 2.5 hours, began in the zone of the 4th Ukrainian Front . Immediately upon its completion, the troops of the front went on the offensive, striking the main blow with the forces of the 51st army from the Sivash bridgehead. On the same day, the 2nd Guards Army, acting in an auxiliary direction, liberated Armyansk .

For three days, the troops of the 4th Ukrainian Front fought fiercely and by the end of the day on April 10 broke through the enemy’s defenses on the Perekop Isthmus and south of Sivash . There was an opportunity to bring to the operational space the mobile front group - the 19th Panzer Corps , the 6th Guards. tbr , 52nd motorcycle regiment, 15th iptabr , 207th guards. Gap, 85th Guards. hap , 467th paws, 21st GMP , 166th, 169th, 297th app and 3rd guards. ingbat. To conduct reconnaissance and organize interaction with infantry, the commander of the 19th Panzer Corps, Lieutenant General I. D. Vasiliev, arrived at the observation post of the 63rd Rifle Corps of the 51st Army . There, as a result of an air raid, Vasiliev was seriously wounded and his deputy, Colonel I. A. Potseluev, took command of the corps. The mobile group entered the breakthrough in the 51st Army sector in the Tomashevka area and rushed to Dzhankoy .

On April 11, the city ​​of Dzhankoy was liberated. The rapid advance of the 19th Panzer Corps put the Kerch group of the enemy at risk of encirclement and forced the enemy command to begin a hasty withdrawal to the west.

On the night of April 11, along with the 19th Panzer Corps, the Separate Primorye Army went on the offensive, which, with the support of the 4th Air Force and the Black Sea Fleet , captured the city of Kerch by morning.

Developing the offensive, Soviet troops liberated Theodosius , Simferopol , Yevpatoria and Saki on April 13, Sudak on April 14, and Alushta on April 15, and reached Sevastopol on April 16. An attempt to take the city on the move failed, and the Soviet armies began to prepare for the assault on the city.

It was advisable to unite all the land armies under one command, therefore, on April 16, the Primorsky Army was included in the 4th Ukrainian Front, and K. S. Melnik became its new commander (A. I. Eremenko was appointed commander of the 2nd Baltic Front). From April 16 to April 30, Soviet troops repeatedly attempted to storm the city, but each time they achieved only private success. On May 3, the Wehrmacht General Erwin Jeneke , who did not believe in the possibility of successfully defending the city, was removed from his post. The general assault of Sevastopol was appointed by the Soviet command on May 5 . Having begun it according to plan, after four days of heavy fighting on May 9, front troops liberated the city.

On May 12, 1944, the remnants of the enemy troops at Cape Khersones laid down their arms. The tankers of the 63rd Taman brigade were especially distinguished on this day, having won the first and last counter tank battle during the Crimean offensive operation ^[4] .

General Kurt Tippelskirch describes the events of the last days of the battle as follows:

The remains of three German divisions and a large number of scattered groups of German and Romanian soldiers fled to the Cape of Chersonesos, the approaches to which they defended with the desperation of the doomed, never ceasing to hope that ships would be sent for them. However, their stamina turned out to be useless. On May 10, they received stunning news that the promised loading on ships was delayed by 24 hours. But the next day, they searched in vain for rescue ships on the horizon. Sandwiched on a narrow patch of land, suppressed by continuous air raids and exhausted by attacks of much superior enemy forces, the German troops, having lost all hope of getting rid of this hell, could not stand it. Negotiations with the enemy on surrender put an end to the senseless expectation of help. The Russians, who in their reports usually did not observe any boundaries of plausibility, this time, perhaps, were right in determining the losses of the 17th Army as killed and captured by the figure of 100 thousand people and reporting on the huge amount of captured military equipment.

- Kurt von Tippelskirch. The history of the Second World War. ^[3]

All the time during the operation, the Crimean partisans provided active assistance to Soviet troops. Units under the command of P.R. Yampolsky, F.I. Fedorenko, M.A. Macedonsky, V.S. Kuznetsov disrupted the enemy’s communications, raided the headquarters and columns of the Nazis, participated in the liberation of the cities.

On April 11, 1944, during the retreat of the 17th Army from Crimea to Sevastopol, one of the detachments of the Crimean partisans captured the city of Old Crimea . Thus, the road was cut off to the retreating units from Kerch of the 98th Infantry Division from the 5th Army Corps of the 17th Army. In the evening of the same day one of the regiments of this division, reinforced with tanks and assault guns, came to the city. During the night battle, the Germans managed to capture one of the city blocks (Severnaya, Polina Osipenko, Sulu-Daria streets), which was in their hands for 12 hours. During this time, German infantrymen destroyed its entire population - 584 people. Since the conditions of the battle did not allow, as was usually done, the doomed to be driven into one place, the German infantrymen methodically combed house after house, shooting everyone who caught their eye, regardless of gender and age ^[5] .

The Crimean operation ended in the complete defeat of the 17th Wehrmacht army, only irretrievable losses of which during the battles amounted to 120 thousand people (of which 61 580 were prisoners). To this number it is necessary to add the significant losses of the enemy troops during the sea evacuation, during which the Romanian Black Sea flotilla was actually destroyed, having lost кораб of the available naval composition. Thus, the total irretrievable losses of the German-Romanian troops are estimated at 140 thousand soldiers and officers ^[2] .

As a result of the liberation of Crimea, the threat to the southern wing of the Soviet-German front was removed, and the main naval base of the Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol, was returned. Having recaptured Crimea, the Soviet Union regained control of the Black Sea , which sharply shook the position of Germany in Romania , Turkey , and Bulgaria .

• Vasilevsky A. M. The Work of All Life . - M .: Politizdat , 1978.
• Vus OV Breakthrough «Chersones-Stellung»: Taman 63rd Armored Brigade in the battle for Sevastopol (April 23 - May 12, 1944) // https://aksakal.io.ua/s2659897/proryv_chersones-stellung_63-ya_tamanskaya_tankovaya_brigada_v_boyah_za_sevastopol_23_aprelya_12_maya_1944
• Grylev A.N. Dnieper - Carpathians - Crimea. - M .: Nauka , 1970 .-- 356 p. - (World War II in research, memoirs, documents).
• Zhurbenko V. M. The Liberation of Crimea // Military History Journal. - 1994. - No. 5. - C.4-16.
• Litvin G.A., Smirnov E.I. Liberation of Crimea (November 1943 - May 1944). Documents testify .. - M .: Agency "Krechet", 1994.
• Kreiser Y. G. Sivash - Sevastopol // “Military Herald”. - 1966. - No. 7 . - S. 12-17 .
• Crimean operation 1944 // "K-22" - Line cruiser / [under the general. ed. N.V. Ogarkova ]. - M .: Military Publishing House of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR , 1979. - S. 493-495. - ( Soviet military encyclopedia : [in 8 vols.]; 1976-1980, vol. 4).
• The team of authors of the Russian Federation. article “Crimean Operation 1944” // Military Encyclopedia / Chairman Sergeev I.D. - M .: Military Publishing House , 1999. - T. 4. - S. 319. - 583 p. - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 5-203-01655-0 .
• The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945 : Encyclopedia / Ed. M. M. Kozlova . - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1985. - S. 384-385. - 500,000 copies.
• Moshchansky I. B. The Battle of Crimea Crimean strategic offensive operation (April 8 - May 12, 1944) // Difficulties in liberation. - M .: Veche, 2009 .-- 230 p. - (Military secrets of the XX century). - ISBN 978-5-9533-4081-6 .
• O. Vus, V. Kornienko. The history of the Sevastopol “thirty four” // http://mil.sevhome.ru/voenistor/crimwow/oswobcrim44/o-vus-v-kornienko-lvov-istorija-sevastopolskoj-tridcatchetverki/

• Crimean strategic offensive operation of 1944 on the website of the Ministry of Defense of Russia
• 60 years of the Great Victory // victory.mil.ru
• Materials of the military-historical conference “Crimea in the history of Russia: on the 70th anniversary of the liberation. 1944—2014 ” // Encyclopedia. Portal of the Ministry of Defense of Russia.