Battle of Sevastopol

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The Eastern Front at the time of the siege of Sevastopol. (click to enlarge)

Date	October 30, 1941 – July 4, 1942
Location	Crimean Peninsula
Result	Axis victory

Combatants

Germany

Romania

Soviet Union

Commanders

Erich von Manstein

Ivan Petrov
Filipp Oktyabrskiy

Strength

350,000+

106,000

Casualties

at least 100,000 killed, wounded or captured (Including Romanians)

95,000 captured, 11,000 killed

For the siege during the Crimean War, see Siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855).

The Battle of Sevastopol was fought from October 30, 1941 to July 4, 1942 between German forces and the USSR over the main Soviet naval base on the Black Sea during World War II.

1 Forces
2 Battle
3 Final days
4 External links

[edit] Forces

The German 11th Army was besieging Sevastopol; commanded by Erich von Manstein, it consisted of 9 German infantry divisions (including 2 received during the battle) in two corps, and two Romanian rifle corps, plus various supporting elements including 150 tanks, several hundred aircraft, and one of the heaviest concentrations of artillery fielded by the Wehrmacht.

German 54th Corps
- 22nd Infantry Division - commanded by General der Infanterie Ludwig Wolff
- 24th Infantry Division
- 50th Infantry Division
- 132nd Infantry Division
German 30th Corps - commanded by General der Infanterie Hans von Salmuth
- 28th Light Division
- 72nd Infantry Division
- 170th Infantry Division
Romanian Mountain Corps
- 1st Mountain Division
- 4th Mountain Division
- 18th Infantry Division

The defence of Sevastopol was provided mainly by the Black Sea Fleet and the Maritime Army. The city garrison numbered one brigade, three regiments and 19 battalions of marine corps (ca. 23,000 men, ~150 field and coast guns and 82 aircraft), commanded by B. A. Borisov. 82 pillboxes with naval guns, 220 machine-gun earth-and-timber emplacements and pillboxes, 33 km of tank ditches, 56 km of wire entanglements and 9,600 mines were laid to improve the defence.

Eastern Front
Barbarossa – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Belorussia – Lvov-Sandomierz – Balkans – Hungary – Vistula-Oder – Königsberg – Berlin – Prague

Crimea and Caucasus
1st Crimea – Kerch Peninsula – Adzhimushkay – Sevastopol – Edelweiss – Kuban Bridgehead – 2nd Crimea

[edit] Battle

Alexander Deyneka. Battle of Sevastopol

At the first attempt of the German assault, consisting of two infantry divisions and one motorized brigade, tried to burst into the city from the north, north-east and east. On November 7 four soldiers of the marine corps were cited for disabling ten German tanks.

On November 11 60,000 Axis soldiers launched another attack, but after ten days were forced to stop. The Germans moved in their largest artillery piece, the 31-and-a-half inch gun Schwerer Gustav. The Wehrmacht began a five-day artillery barrage of the city, which some claim included toxic gas, to get the Russians out of their caves and bunkers. There are surprisingly few sources which support such a claim, which would have been one of the few uses of chemical weapons during the war. On December 17 six German infantry divisions and two Romanian brigades with 1,275 guns and mortars, over 150 tanks and 300 aircraft launched the second attack. However by January 4, 1942 almost every Axis unit was stopped again by Soviet counter-attacks.

On May 21 the Germans launched a bombing and bombardment of the city. On June 7, 1942, XXX Panzer Corps and the Romanian Third Army successfully assaulted the secondary defensive line.

[edit] Final days

As the German 11th Army closed in, the Soviet Staff ordered important generals and admirals onto submarines to escape the city. The city fell after the defeat of the Inkerman Heights line on June 29. The light cruiser Chervona Ukraina ("Red Ukraine"), four destroyers, four cargo ships and the submarines С 32 and Щ-214 were lost. The soldiers fought on even after their installations had been ripped apart by artillery fire. Smoke, which some claim was toxic, forced the troops out into the open, where fire from tanks and the artillery cut them down. Even with this impressive support, the Germans still took twenty-seven days to finish seizing the city proper. On 4 July, Sevastopol was secured, but Soviet troops still held out in the caves around the peninsula until the ninth of July. However, this had been a great waste of time for the Germans: the assault on Stalingrad, Operation "Blau", was just beginning, and the Sixth Army (under Friedrich Paulus) would not have the German 11th Army to support them.