Battle of Sevastopol
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
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| The Eastern Front at the time of the siege of Sevastopol'. (click to enlarge) | |||||||||||||||||
| Battle of Sevastopol | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | World War II | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | 16 November 1941-4 July 1942 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Crimean Peninsula | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Soviet defeat | ||||||||||||||||
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The siege of Sevastopol' was a tactical victory for Germany, and a strategic victory for the Russians. It pinned down the valuable 11th Army from the drives on Moscow and Stalingrad, and even diverted the Germans' best artillery piece.
Fall 1941
In late September, 1941, the German Army Group South sent Erich von Manstein's Eleventh Army across the Perekop isthmus to the Crimean Peninsula to begin the siege of Sevastopol. By 16 November they had captured all of the peninsula other than the ancient port of Sevastopol, on the southern tip. The Wehrmacht was just beginning to settle in to an investment of the city as the Russians launched an amphibious invasion on the other end of the peninsula, on Christmas Day 1941. However, the Germans beat this off completely by the 18th of January, 1942.
Siege of Sevastopol'
After the Kerch-Feodisiya amphibious invasion in late December 1941 was beaten off, 11 Army settled in. The garrison at Sevastopol was made up of about 106,000 soldiers, bolstered by sailors that weren't allowed to leave the port. This siege utilized massive, 400-foot long artillery guns to level Soviet structures and fortifications. The Germans moved their largest artillery piece, the 31-and-a-half inch gun Gustav Gerat, which was nicknamed "Big Dora" by the army. The Wehrmacht began a five-day artillery barrage of the city, including toxic smoke to get the Russians out of their caves and bunkers. This was one of the rare uses of Gas during WW2. Immediately after that, XXX Panzer Corps and the Rumanian Third Army launched their assault on the secondary defensive line, on 7 June 1942.
Final Days
As the German 11 Army closed in, STAVKA ordered a few important generals and admirals onto submarines to escape the city. The soldiers manning the bunkers fought on even after their installations had been ripped apart by artillery fire. Toxic smoke (one of the few chemical-warfare instances in World War II) forced the troops out into the open, where fire from Panzers and the deadly 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 Russian 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 be on its own.
