Battle of Sevastopol
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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.
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
| Crimea and Caucasus |
|---|
| Crimea (1941) – Kerch Peninsula – Sevastopol – Edelweiss – Kuban Bridgehead – Crimea (1944) |
Battle
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.
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 Cruiser "Chervona Ukraina" ("Red Ukraine"), four torpedo-boat destroyers, four cargo ships and the submarines "С-32" and "Щ-214" were lost. The soldiers manning the bunkers 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.
| World War II | ||||||||||
| Theatres | Main events | Specific articles | Participants | |||||||
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Prelude: • Causes • in Europe • in Asia
Main theatres: General timeline: |
1939: • Polish Campaign • Phony War 1940: • Norwegian Campaign • Battle of France • Battle of Britain 1941: • Operation Barbarossa • Attack on Pearl Harbor • Battle of Moscow • Siege of Leningrad • Battle of Sevastopol 1942: • Battle of Stalingrad • Operation Torch • Battle of Midway • Dieppe Raid 1943: • Battle of Kursk • Italian Campaign 1944: • Battle of Normandy • Operation Bagration • Battle of the Bulge • Battle of Leyte Gulf • Operation Market Garden 1945: • Operation Blackcock • Battle of Berlin • End in Europe • Hiroshima & Nagasaki • Battle of Manchuria • Surrender of Japan
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• Resistance • Home Front • Technology • Production • Equipment • Cryptography • Blitzkrieg • Phony War
Civilian impact and atrocities:
Aftermath:
| Soviet Union• United Kingdom• United States• China• Poland• France• Netherlands• Belgium• Canada• Norway• Greece• Yugoslavia• Czechoslovakia• Australia• New Zealand• South Africa• India• Egypt• Brazil• more...
The Axis Germany• Japan• Italy• Hungary• Bulgaria• Romania• Finland• more... | |||||||
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