Siege of Sevastopol (1941–1942)
Based on Wikipedia: Siege of Sevastopol (1941–1942)
By the time the Germans finally took Sevastopol in July 1942, only eleven buildings in the entire city remained undamaged. The Luftwaffe had dropped more than twenty thousand tons of bombs on the port in June alone—an intensity of aerial bombardment that exceeded anything previously unleashed on Warsaw, Rotterdam, or London. The German 11th Army had fired nearly forty-seven thousand tons of artillery ammunition at the defenders. And yet it had taken 250 days to capture a single city on a rocky peninsula jutting into the Black Sea.
This was not the lightning war that Germany had promised itself. This was something older and more terrible: a siege.
The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier
Adolf Hitler had a gift for the memorable phrase, even when describing military problems. He called Crimea an "unsinkable aircraft carrier," and events in the summer of 1941 proved him right. Soviet bombers flying from the peninsula struck Romania's oil refineries, destroying twelve thousand tons of oil—fuel that Germany desperately needed for its mechanized armies racing across the Soviet Union.
The problem was that Crimea had never been part of the original plan. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union launched on June 22, 1941, assumed that the bulk of the Red Army would be destroyed west of the Dnieper River. The Crimean peninsula, dangling off southern Ukraine like an appendix, would simply be mopped up afterward. But the Red Air Force kept bombing Romanian oil fields, and suddenly Hitler's "unsinkable aircraft carrier" became an urgent military objective.
At the southwestern tip of this peninsula sat Sevastopol, home to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and one of the most heavily fortified naval bases in the world.
A Fortress Built by Nature and Armored by Engineers
Sevastopol's defenses began with geography. The city sits on a limestone promontory, deeply eroded over millennia into a maze of cliffs and ravines. High cliffs overlook Severnaya Bay, making an amphibious assault from the sea extremely dangerous. Approaching by land meant threading through narrow valleys easily covered by defensive fire.
The Soviet Navy had improved upon what nature provided. Heavy coastal batteries protected the harbor—not with ordinary naval guns, but with 180-millimeter and 305-millimeter weapons originally designed for battleships. These massive guns could fire inland as easily as out to sea, turning the entire defensive perimeter into a killing ground. The gun emplacements themselves sat behind reinforced concrete fortifications, their turrets protected by armor nearly ten inches thick.
The Germans would eventually designate one of these positions "Fort Maxim Gorky I," naming it after the Soviet writer. When its 305-millimeter guns opened fire on advancing German troops on November 1, 1941, they announced that taking Sevastopol would be no simple matter.
The General Who Would Try
Erich von Manstein arrived to command the German 11th Army on September 17, 1941, just as the battle for Kiev was reaching its climax. Within a week, he launched his forces at Crimea. The offensive that followed demonstrated both Manstein's tactical skill and the sheer difficulty of the task ahead.
The Crimean peninsula connects to mainland Ukraine through a narrow corridor of land, bottlenecked at two points: Perekop and Ishun. Manstein's LIV Corps broke through at Perekop in six days of fierce fighting, suffering 2,641 casualties. But before he could exploit the breakthrough, Soviet forces counterattacked his flank near Melitopol, forcing him to redirect troops to deal with the threat.
By the time Manstein had destroyed the two attacking Soviet armies, the Red Army had established a new defensive line at Ishun. This time his assault faced Soviet air superiority and armored reserves—and attacking forces that were actually outnumbered by the defenders.
They broke through anyway.
On October 22 and 23, German fighter squadrons—Jagdgeschwader 3, 52, and 77—swept the skies over Crimea, destroying 33 Soviet aircraft while losing only one of their own. Over the following days, 140 Soviet planes fell. With air superiority established, German bombers and dive-bombers pounded Soviet positions, and by October 27, the entire Crimean front collapsed.
By mid-November, Manstein's forces had cleared the peninsula. They captured the capital, Simferopol, on November 1. Kerch, the last major city in eastern Crimea, fell on November 16. Only Sevastopol remained in Soviet hands.
The Defenders Dig In
Even as German forces swept across Crimea, Major General Ivan Yefimovich Petrov was preparing Sevastopol's landward defenses. His Independent Coastal Army—32,000 men—had arrived by sea from Odessa, evacuated after heavy fighting further west. Petrov knew what was coming.
He established three defensive lines in arcs around the city, the outermost stretching sixteen kilometers from the port. When Vice Admiral Filipp Oktyabrsky assumed overall command on November 4, 1941, the city's civilian population of 111,000 was already at work digging trenches and fortifications.
The Black Sea Fleet proved essential for defense. Soviet warships ran a gauntlet of German air attacks to bring in reinforcements from the Caucasus. By November 9, Petrov's army had been augmented to 52,000 troops, supported by ten T-26 tanks, 152 artillery pieces, and 200 mortars. The heavy cruiser Krasny Kavkaz, light cruisers Krasny Krym and Chervona Ukraina, and seven destroyers stood ready to provide naval gunfire support.
Sevastopol would not fall easily.
First Assault: The Autumn Offensive
Manstein faced an immediate problem: his 11th Army was the weakest on the entire Eastern Front, initially containing only seven infantry divisions. The Romanians contributed substantial numbers but lacked heavy equipment. And autumn rains had turned roads to mud, delaying the buildup of supplies.
The first probing attacks began in late October. On November 1, Battery 30's massive coastal guns opened fire on the German 132nd Infantry Division, announcing that the fortress could bite back. Manstein halted to bring up reserves.
While German forces regrouped, the Luftwaffe harassed Soviet positions and shipping. On November 7, Heinkel He 111 bombers from Kampfgeschwader 26 sank the liner Armeniya, which was evacuating soldiers and civilians. Only eight of the five thousand people aboard survived. Five days later, Stuka dive-bombers sank the cruiser Chervona Ukraina.
But the Luftwaffe couldn't stay. Units were being pulled away for other sectors—particularly the Battle of Moscow, where Germany was making its final desperate push to capture the Soviet capital before winter. As air strength diminished, the Soviets regained local air superiority with 59 aircraft, 39 of them combat-ready.
Manstein launched his main assault on December 17, after the weather finally cleared. Rather than attacking the heavily defended northern approaches, he struck at the center and southern defenses. For days, German infantry pushed forward through ravines and fortified positions, taking horrific casualties.
They failed.
The first assault on Sevastopol ended without taking the city. Manstein would have to try again.
The Kerch Diversion
In late December 1941, the Soviets launched an amphibious counterstroke. Red Army forces landed on the Kerch peninsula at the eastern end of Crimea, establishing a bridgehead that forced Manstein to divert troops from Sevastopol to deal with this new threat.
For months, the situation in Crimea hung in an awkward balance. German forces couldn't take Sevastopol. Soviet forces couldn't break out. Both sides dug in, shelled each other, and waited.
In May 1942, the Germans finally eliminated the Soviet bridgehead at Kerch. Now Manstein could concentrate everything on Sevastopol.
Operation Störfang: The Final Assault
The operation's name translated to "Sturgeon Catch"—an oddly whimsical codename for what would become one of the most brutal urban assaults of the war.
By June 1942, the forces assembled against Sevastopol were formidable. The German 11th Army now contained nine infantry divisions organized in two corps, plus a Romanian mountain corps. The Luftwaffe had dispatched its 8th Air Corps—600 aircraft organized in nine Geschwader, or wings, under the command of Generaloberst Wolfram von Richthofen, a cousin of the famous Red Baron from the First World War.
Even the Italians contributed. The 101st Squadron under Francesco Mimbelli brought four motor torpedo boats, five explosive motorboats, six midget submarines, and various smaller vessels—the only Axis naval force deployed during the siege. This was notable: the Germans almost never requested Italian military assistance during the war. That they did so at Sevastopol spoke to the difficulty of the task.
On June 2, 1942, Störfang began.
A Month of Annihilation
The bombardment that followed defies easy description. In June alone, the Luftwaffe flew 23,751 sorties—combat missions—and dropped 20,528 tons of bombs on the defenders. For context, during the entire eight-month Blitz against London, the Germans dropped approximately 18,800 tons of bombs.
Sevastopol received more punishment in one month.
On the ground, German artillery added its own contribution: 46,750 tons of ammunition expended during Operation Störfang. Soviet positions were not just suppressed—they were obliterated. Underground positions, tunnels, and cave networks offered some protection, but there are credible allegations that German forces used poison gas against Red Army holdouts in these subterranean refuges, as they had earlier on the Kerch peninsula.
The Black Sea Fleet tried desperately to evacuate troops and bring in supplies. The Luftwaffe hunted the ships. Most evacuation attempts failed. Soviet submarines and fast transports running at night had some success, but it wasn't enough.
The defenders fought with extraordinary determination. The Black Sea Fleet had sent 49,372 personnel to fight as infantry—sailors who had never trained for ground combat, pressed into service because there was no one else. Naval infantry brigades were organized with four to six battalions of 4,000 men each, deliberately large so they could absorb heavy casualties and keep fighting.
They absorbed those casualties. And they kept fighting.
But it couldn't last. Petrov's army lacked tanks. It lacked anti-aircraft guns to challenge the constant air attacks. It was running out of food and mortar ammunition. Communications between headquarters and the front lines were poor, making it difficult to respond quickly to German attacks.
One by one, the fortifications fell. The massive coastal guns were destroyed or overrun. The defensive lines contracted toward the city center.
The End
On July 4, 1942, the remaining Soviet forces surrendered.
The numbers tell part of the story. The Soviet Separate Coastal Army was annihilated. In the final assault alone, 118,000 men were killed, wounded, or captured. Total Soviet and Black Sea Fleet casualties throughout the siege reached 200,481.
German and Romanian losses during the 250-day siege numbered approximately 70,000, including 2,000 officers. Of these, 25,000 German soldiers were killed in action. The Störfang operation cost 35,866 Axis casualties—27,412 German and 8,454 Romanian.
Sevastopol was a ruin. Only eleven undamaged buildings remained in a city that had housed 111,000 civilians before the siege.
Victory and Its Costs
With Sevastopol finally in German hands, the Axis could turn to their major summer objective: Case Blue, the advance toward the Caucasus oilfields that Germany so desperately needed to fuel its war machine.
But the 250 days at Sevastopol had consumed resources that couldn't be replaced. Divisions had been worn down. Ammunition had been expended at prodigious rates. Time had been lost. The enormous cost of the Sevastopol campaign reduced German capabilities for Case Blue "at a critical time," as one assessment put it.
Case Blue would reach Stalingrad—and there, in another city on another body of water, the Germans would learn what it meant to be on the receiving end of a siege.
The Meaning of Sevastopol
What does the siege of Sevastopol tell us about war?
First, that fortifications matter. Despite Germany's revolutionary mobile warfare doctrine—blitzkrieg, lightning war—Sevastopol proved that prepared defenses, courageously held, could absorb and delay even the most powerful offensive. The 250 days that the siege consumed were days Germany didn't have to spare.
Second, that geography is destiny. Sevastopol's position made it nearly impregnable from the sea and deeply challenging from the land. The limestone promontory that had attracted the original fortress builders centuries earlier proved its worth again.
Third, that desperate defenders, however outmatched, can exact a terrible price. The sailors-turned-infantry who fought in Sevastopol's ruins were not trained for the work, but they died where they stood.
And fourth, that some victories cost too much. Germany took Sevastopol. It then proceeded to lose the war.
The ruins of Sevastopol would change hands again. In 1944, Soviet forces would recapture the city in a campaign that took only five weeks—a grim commentary on how far German power had fallen since 1942. The fortress rebuilt itself. The Black Sea Fleet returned.
Today, Sevastopol remains a naval base, still strategically vital, still contested. The limestone promontory still overlooks Severnaya Bay. The cliffs still stand. Some things, it seems, do not change.