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| Crimean offensive | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of theEastern Front ofWorld War II | |||||||
 Soviet map of the Crimean offensive | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Soviet Union |  Germany Romania | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Fyodor Tolbukhin Filipp Oktyabrskiy | Erwin Jaenecke Horia Macellariu | ||||||
| Units involved | |||||||
 Black Sea FleetPartisans | |||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 462,400 men[1][2] 560 tanks and assault guns 6,000 guns 1,200 aircraft |
| ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 84,839 17,754 killed or missing 67,065 wounded or sick 171 tanks 521 guns 179 aircraft[1][2] Losses at sea: 1 submarine 1 motor torpedo boat 12+ aircraft | 96,700[4] 31,700 killed or missing 33,400 wounded 25,800 killed or missing 5,800 wounded[citation needed] Losses at sea: 4 submarine hunters 5 cargo ships 1 tanker 3 tugs 3 lighters 3 motorboats 3 cargo ships | ||||||
TheCrimean offensive (8 April – 12 May 1944), known in German sources as theBattle of the Crimea, was a series of offensives by theRed Army directed at the German-heldCrimea. The Red Army's4th Ukrainian Front engaged the German17th Army ofArmy Group South Ukraine, which consisted ofWehrmacht andRomanian formations.[5] The battles ended with the evacuation of the Crimea by the Germans. German and Romanian forces suffered considerable losses during the evacuation.[6][7]
The Germans took control of the Crimean Peninsula after theCrimean Campaign in 1942.
During late 1943 and early 1944, the Wehrmacht was pressed back along its entire front line in the east. In October 1943, the 17th Army withdrew from theKuban bridgehead across theKerch Strait into the Crimea. During the following months, the Red Army pushed back the Wehrmacht in southernUkraine, eventually cutting off the land-based connection of 17th Army through thePerekop Isthmus in November 1943.
The Wehrmacht was able to successfully hold on to the Crimea even after it had been cut off by land due to their ability to supply it via the Black Sea. Holding the Crimea was considered important as its loss would negatively affect the attitude of Turkey and put Romanian oilfields under risk of Soviet air attacks. Aside fromSoviet landings across the Kerch Strait and in the north-eastern sector nearSivash at the end of 1943, the Soviet Army largely ignored the Crimea for the next five months.
Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist was removed from the command of Army Group A (from April 2: "Army Group South Ukraine"[8]: 450 ) on March 30, 1944. He was succeeded byFerdinand Schörner.
An assault across the Perekop Isthmus was launched on 8 April by elements of the4th Ukrainian Front's2nd Guards and51st Armies.[9] The 17th Army defended but was unable to stop the advance.Kerch was reached by theSeparate Coastal Army on 11 April;Simferopol, about 37 mi (60 km) northeast of Sevastopol, followed two days later. The 17th Army was retreating towardSevastopol by 16 April,[9] with remaining Axis forces in the Crimea concentrating around the city by the end of the third week of April.
TheOKH intended to hold Sevastopol as a fortress,as the Red Army had done during the first Crimean campaign in 1941–42. However, the fortifications of the city had never been restored and Sevastopol was not the strong defensive position that it had been in 1941. Fighting broke out in the city outskirts towards the end of April and the city fell on 9 May, less than a month after the start of the offensive. The Axis sea evacuation toConstanța was attacked by Soviet land-based bombers.[9]
The evacuation of the Crimea in April–May 1944, under thecode name Operation 60,000 after the estimated number of Romanian soldiers in Crimea (around 62,000-65,000),[10] was the most complex and extensive operation of theRomanian Navy during the Second World War. From 15 April to 14 May, numerousGerman and Romanian warships escorted many convoys between Constanța and Sevastopol. The scale and importance of the operation can be attested by the usage in combat of all four Romanian destroyers, the largest Axis warships in the Black Sea. The last phase of the evacuation (10–14 May) saw the fiercest combat, as Axis ships transported, under constant attacks from Soviet aircraft and shore artillery, over 30,000 troops. Of these, 18,000 were transported by Romanian ships. On 11 May, the German tankerFriederike was torpedoed and heavily damaged bySoviet submarine L-4, preventing her participation.[11]
In total, Romanian and German convoys evacuated over 113,000 Axis troops from the Crimea, most of them (over 63,000) during the first phase of the evacuation (15–25 April). No Romanian Navy warships were lost during the evacuation, however the destroyerRegele Ferdinand came close to being sunk. She was struck by a large aerial bomb, which fell in her fuel tanks, but failed to detonate. The bomb was extracted several days after the end of the operation. Two naval actions involving the Romanian Navy took place during the second phase of the evacuation (25 April–10 May), near Sevastopol. On 18 April, the SovietLeninets-class submarineL-6 was twice attacked with depth charges and damaged by the Romanian gunboatGhiculescu, numerous bubbles emerged from the depths after each attack, before being finished off by the German submarine hunterUJ-104.
During the night of 27 April, a convoy escorted by the Romanian gunboatGhiculescu, the German submarine hunterUJ-115, oneR-boat, two KFKnaval trawlers and 19MFPs (including the RomanianPTA-404 andPTA-406) engaged the SovietG-5-class motor torpedo boatsTKA-332,TKA-343 andTKA-344, after the three attacked and damaged the German submarine hunterUJ-104.Ghiculescu opened fire with tracer rounds, enabling the entire escort group to locate the two Soviet MTBs and open fire.TKA-332 was hit and sunk. Over 12 Soviet aircraft were also shot down during the evacuation, including two by theminelayingdestroyer escortAmiral Murgescu. The last Axis pockets in the Crimea were destroyed on 12 May. The last Axis warship to leave the peninsula wasAmiral Murgescu, carrying on board 1,000 Axis troops, including the German GeneralWalter Hartmann.[12][13][14]
In a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden, 17th Army commander Erwin Jaenecke had insisted that Sevastopol should be evacuated and his cut off Army of 235,000 men withdrawn. After the loss of the Crimea, he was held responsible, arrested in Romania and court-martialed. Only the intervention ofHeinz Guderian saved his life. He was dismissed from the army on 31 January 1945.
The German and Romanian formations suffered the loss of 57,000 men, many of whom drowned during the evacuation. The sinking of theTotila andTeja on 10 May alone caused up to 10,000 deaths. In total, the German losses at sea amounted to five cargo ships, one tanker, three tugs, three lighters, three motorboats and four submarine hunters, while the Romanians lost three cargo ships.[15][16] The partially successful evacuation of Axis troops from the Crimea earned the commander of the Romanian Navy, Rear AdmiralHoria Macellariu, theKnight's Cross of the Iron Cross.[17]
Between April 14 and May 13, 1944, a total of 120,853 men and 22,548 tons of cargo were evacuated by sea from the Crimea:
- 36,557 Romanians, of whom 4,262 were wounded
- 58,486 Germans, of whom 12,027 were wounded
- 723 Slovaks
- 15,391 Soviet volunteers
- 2,581 prisoners of war
- 7,115 civilians[10]
In Soviet propaganda, this offensive was listed as one ofStalin's ten blows.
The table below is based on information from Glantz/HouseWhen Titans Clashed.[citation needed]:
Axis losses German: Romanian: Total: | Soviet losses Killed and missing: 17,754 Tanks: 171 |
