Against the Defenders of Crimea
Text: Jan Bobek
Illustrations: Piotr Forkasiewicz
Cat. No. 7478
By autumn 1941, Nazi Germany’s leaders realised that the invasion of the USSR was not following Operation Barbarossa’s original plan. They had intended to capture Leningrad, Moscow and Ukraine and advance towards the Caucasus by year’s end, ultimately occupying Soviet territory as far as the Arkhangelsk–Astrakhan line.
Despite heavy initial losses, Soviet forces often resisted tenaciously. As late as August 1941, Army Group South, supported by Axis satellite forces, was still trying to cross the Dnieper east of Kherson, while Odessa and Kyiv remained unconquered. This slowed the advance towards Crimea and the Donbas and delayed the later drive on Stalingrad. Kyiv fell in late September and Odessa in mid-October.
In the south, Soviet commanders aimed to defend Crimea - an unsinkable aircraft carrier containing the Sevastopol naval base - for as long as possible, while delaying the enemy’s advance towards Taganrog so its industrial plants could be evacuated and emptied of their machines and material to be relocated further to the east.
The German 11th Army and Romanian 3rd Army advanced along these two axes, supported from the air by IV Fliegerkorps. Its principal fighter units were II. and III./JG 77; I.(J)/LG 2, later redesignated I./JG 77, was also under JG 77 command. Its other forces included five bomber Kampfgruppen, mainly from KG 27 “Boelcke,” and several smaller air units.
In early September, the Germans consolidated positions on the Dnieper’s southern bank near Beryslav and advanced south despite fierce Soviet counterattacks. In mid-September, 11th Army commander Generaloberst Eugen Ritter von Schobert was killed when his Storch made an emergency landing in an enemy minefield. Erich von Manstein succeeded him, and on 24 September 1941 his formations attacked the Soviet defensive line on the Perekop Isthmus in northern Crimea.
The fighter units II./JG 3 and III./JG 52 also briefly took part in the fighting over Crimea, as did additional bomber formations, including the Stukas of St.G 77. German bomber crews succeeded in sinking the light cruiser Chervona Ukraina at Sevastopol. However, the properly marked hospital ship Armenia also fell victim to them during evacuation mission. More than 5,000 passengers, including many civilians, were killed in the disaster, making it the third-deadliest maritime disaster in human history. Only eight people survived the sinking.
Soviet air units of the VVS Southern Front and the Black Sea Fleet’s VVS opposed the German aerial onslaught. They were gradually reinforced by units including veterans of the fighting against Japan. Consequently, besides the older I-15, I-153 and I-16 aircraft, the Germans over Crimea and along the Sea of Azov mostly encountered modern types, particularly the MiG-3, Yak-1, LaGG-3 and Il-2.
On some days, Soviet airmen achieved air superiority in the region, causing serious difficulties for Axis ground forces. Soviet air raids sometimes continued uninterrupted for 30 minutes without a single German aircraft able to help. Some smaller German airfields were protected by only a handful of anti-aircraft guns.
German fighter pilots experienced considerable difficulty against the heavily armoured Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik ground-attack aircraft. The problem was so serious that Oberst Werner Mölders, then coordinating fighter and ground-attack units in Crimea, personally sought a solution. Despite being strictly prohibited from flying combat missions, Mölders joined operational sorties to demonstrate how to attack the aircraft effectively. His method involved firing into the cockpit from the rear hemisphere at an angle of approximately 30 degrees. Flying with III./JG 77 on 8 November 1941, he achieved one such kill, although it is not included among his officially claimed victories.
At the time, III. Gruppe was commanded by Oberleutnant Kurt Ubben, since September 1941, until then, he had served as commander of its 8. Staffel. His new command aircraft is depicted on the box art in combat at the beginning of November. Before the invasion of the USSR, III./JG 77 had been credited with 41 victories during the campaigns in the west and the Balkans. Interestingly, it had originally been intended to operate as the fighter unit aboard the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin. By the end of 1941, this Jagdgruppe had been credited with more than 540 victories. Apart from Sevastopol and the Kerch bridgehead, the whole of Crimea was then in German hands. Nevertheless, the Soviet airmen who had resisted the enemy invasion of Crimea made a significant contribution to slowing the enemy advance and enabled Sevastopol’s defenders to strengthen their defensive preparations. Neither Sevastopol nor Kerch fell into enemy hands until the middle of 1942.