A Russian Surprise
The Soviet Armed Forces conducted numerous amphibious assaults in each of their four fleets during their Great Patriotic War and demonstrated a capability for landings that the German defenders had not anticipated. While a majority of the assaults were small raids of a tactical nature, several were large enough to be considered at the operational level.
For many days into December 1941, Krupp siege guns had been battering Sevastopol, the pivotal point in the southern area, and the only area at the time in which Hitler, after the resounding Soviet counterstrokes near the gates of Moscow, allowed offensive operations to continue. Large scale relief for the Soviet defenders would be unable to advance head-on into the port or even in its immediate vicinity; a sizable force would have to land in the rear of Erich von Manstein's 11th Army occupying the Crimea.
The Soviet High Command approved an ambitious plan for an operational-sized assault not just to repulse the Germans from Sevastopol, but also to initiate actions to liberate the entire Crimea. The Commanding General of the North Caucasus Front was put in charge of the overall operation. The command relationships of the subordinate naval and ground forces are not noted in Soviet sources. The original plan was drawn up at the end of November, but it was not finally approved by the High Command and disseminated to the forces involved until 16 December. This procrastination gave fits to the head of the Soviet Navy, Admiral Nikolai
Kuznetsov and the Navy Main Staff not allowing them what they considered a reasonable amount of time to prepare.
Kuznetsov and the Navy Main Staff not allowing them what they considered a reasonable amount of time to prepare.
Any landing forces should have, at a rough minimum, a manpower ratio of three-to-one over the defenders ashore. Anything less could be courting disaster. In late December 1941 the commander of the North Caucasus Front mustered a total of nearly 42,000 men to land on two areas over 100 kilometres apart defended by the Soviet estimate of 25,000 Germans and Romanians of Manstein's 11th Army.
Preperations begin
The operation was delayed a week to allow three cruisers to rush reinforcements from Novorossiisk to Sevastopol. The cruisers "Krasnyi Kavkaz" and "Krasnyi Krym" returned on 25 December to Novorossiisk and immediately began to load up men of the 44th Army, including a detachment of 300 marines designated as a shock group that would transfer onto two minesweepers and 12 cutters.
Surprise had been a deciding factor in the success of the Odessa landing. Surprise was lost for the Kerch-Feodosia operation before the forces had embarked. According to a former chief of the Soviet Naval Academy, the volume of radio traffic emitting from the Novorossiisk communications centre during the early December preparations alerted Manstein to the impending landings. The Germans most likely did not know in advance the exact landing sites. But the other impediments to an amphibious assault, namely choppy seas, tumbling surf, and cold, rainy weather, were waiting along the entire Crimean coast.
The operation was the largest and most complex amphibious assault conducted by the Soviets in the entire war. The main assault by elements of a division of the 44. Army landed on the port of Feodosia, which is tucked near the extreme eastern edge of the Crimean mountain chain hugging the Black Sea coast. A combination of the lack of surprise, gale force winds, and German air superiority enabled the defenders to put up a bitter defence against the landing at Feodosia. The cruisers and auxiliary craft of the Black Sea Fleet of this main assault departed Novorossiisk at midnight of 28 December.
General Sponeck Disobeys Orders
The landings commenced at 0350 under cover of darkness. It took over seven hours to land over 5400 men in the first echelon, a dismal rate of 12 men a minute according to one Soviet historian. According to a German historian, the defenders at Feodosia were spread thinly and lacked mobile motorized reserves. The commander of the forces at Kerch, General Count Sponeck, disobeyed Manstein's orders to hold fast and moved his men in the bitter cold to reinforce those at Feodosia. He was court-martialed under the chairmanship of Göring and sentenced to death. Hitler later pardoned him to six years in prison but after the attempted assassination on July 20, 1944, he was ordered to be shot by Heinrich Himmler. The barbaric verdict was fulfilled on 23 July, 1944.
The secondary assault by the Soviet 51st Army onto the steep escarpments north of Kerch on the Sea of Azov succeeded. The assault waves of three battalions of the 83. Marine Brigade, nearly 5000 men, had landed on 26 December. The marines were transported by the Azov Flotilla in a shore-to-shore movement from the port of Temryuk, approximately 60 kilometres from the landing sites. This landing began at 0630 when the temperature had dropped well below freezing. Several of the narrow beaches were blocked by ice, forcing the marines to jump out of their rowboats and wade through neck deep water to the shore. Although hit hard by German aircraft, the follow-on forces of the 51. Army were able to expand the beached and tied in with the beleaguered 44th Army that was struggling against Manstein's reinforcements from Sevastopol.
The two armies of the North Caucasus Front, then, accomplished their initial mission, drawing away Germans from Sevastopol; by 2 January the Kerch peninsula briefly returned to Soviet control. It is important to note that the two-pronged amphibious assault was entirely successful. Subsequent actions were not so. By April Manstein launched a large counterattack against the North Caucasus Front, wiping it out and taking a large number of prisoners.
