War on the Black Sea

"Senior Red Navyman Krapin pressed the button, as ordered, and the mighty gun salvo shook the air. The ship trembled slightly, momentarily careened to portside. The guns were immediately loaded again. Boatswain Kutsev was ready for the next shot two and a half seconds before the appointed time," reported The Voice of Fighting Russia on the Soviet Union's late-June 1941 diversionary attack on the Rumanian port of Constanza . What they failed to mention was the Russian's loss of the destroyer Moskva in that attack. But still the action was unique in being one of the few times the Russians risked their larger surface units in an offensive action in the western Black Sea.
In August 1944, the Reds would return to Constanza; only this time it would be the Soviet army, not the navy, leading the attack. For three years the Germans and Russians had fought for control of the Black Sea, in a naval war driven by the land war, so it was fitting that the Black Sea campaign should end with a land battle.
German Navy Group Command South, based in Sofia, was not even informed of the June 22, 1941 invasion of Russia until after the fact . As a result,the naval actions that developed seemed almost an afterthought. From the German point of view, it was a serious failure in planning for the Black Sea was home to one of the Soviet Union's major fleets.
There were several reasons for Hitler failing to take the Kriegsmarine into his confidence. First was that the invasion of Russia was foremost a land operation; the resulting naval actions would only be side shows at best. The Soviet Union had the largest fleet in the Black Sea, thus there was little reason to expect the German Navy and its allies to overpower it on the high seas. So the less they knew about the upcoming invasion, the less they could let slip to enemy spies. Finally, Hitler never understood the uses of naval power and had a distaste for activities associated with the navy. All these factors came together to spell doom to the Germans on the Black Sea.
"We are creating a powerful navy," stated a 1936 report to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR giving a taste of what was to come. "We first concentrated our efforts primarily on the development of our submarine fleet, but in the future, in addition to building submarines, we shall steadily develop our surface fleet."
By June 1941 the Soviet's Black Sea Fleet had grown to a considerable force. It consisted of the Parizhskaia Kommuna, an old battleship, the Voroshilov and Molotov, two modern cruisers of 8,800 tons and capable of making 33 knots, the Krasny Kavkaz, Chervonaia Ukraina, Krasny Krym and Komintern, four old cruisers of 6,500 to 7,400 tons. It also included ten old and twenty-seven new destroyers and other auxiliary craft. Other capital ships, which would make it an even greater force to consider, were on the stocks at Nikolaev nearing their dates of completion.
Sixty-six submarines formed the backbone of the Black Sea Fleet. Sixteen of those were "Shch" class subs that displaced 580 tons surfaced and were armed with 6 21-inch tubes and a 45-mm deck gun. Another 28 were "Malyutka" class boats. Built in sections (much like the Germans produced U-boats later in the war) these small craft, depending on the series, came in four, six or seven sections. They were often disassembled and shipped overland by rail and canal wherever they were needed.
The Germans Advance: 1941-1942
Sevastopol was among the first Russian stations to report the outbreak of the war. At 3:15 AM, Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky, Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, called Moscow to report that the Germans were bombing his facilities.
Georgi Malenkov, Stalin's secretary soon telephoned Sevastopol to confirm what Naval Commissar, Admiral Nikolai G. Kuznetsov had passed on. Bombs were exploding in the background as Malenkov talked with Admiral Oktyabrsky. After the phone call, an aide said, "In Moscow they don't believe Sevastopol is being bombed."
When the campaign opened the Germans had no naval forces on the Black Sea and were forced to rely entirely on their allies; Bulgaria, who had a few obsolete torpedo boats, S-boats (German motor torpedo boats) and patrol boats, and Rumania. The Rumanian navy included four destroyers, three torpedo boats, three gunboats, eight s-boats, three minelayers and two submarines (both non-operational).
Once the invasion was underway, the Germans were quick to transfer reinforcements into the Black Sea. First, the Danube Flotilla (some river minesweepers, a tender, a repair ship and river tugs) was pulled down to the Black Sea. Other forces moved into the theater from overland. They included Siebel ferries (craft built for the invasion of England), S-boats, minesweepers, and 6 Type II U-boats. All-in-all the Germans transported around 500 boats overland into the Black Sea by the end of the conflict .
The Italian Navy was also brought into the conflict, in fact, the Black Sea was one of the few operations that the Germans "invited" the Italians to take part in . For its part, the Italians assigned 6 motor torpedo boats and five 30-ton submarines to the Black Sea. After transporting the vessels overland to the Black Sea they went on to conduct some two hundred war missions until May 1943 when they left the war. In return for the loss of two torpedo boats and one submarine, the Italians were credited were the sinking of two Russian destroyers, two submarines and three supply ships .
As the campaign got underway, it was not important for the Germans and their allies to match the Russians on the Black Sea. "Sudden blows from the air were to have destroyed the main forces of our fleets, while the surviving warships were to have been bottled up in their harbors by minefields and U-boats until all the Soviet bases had been captured by the German army," noted Soviet Admiral of the Fleet I.S. Isakov in 1948. "In this theatre such a plan was comparatively reasonable since the enemy had but limited naval forces at his disposal and could not challenge the Soviet Black Sea Fleet in action."
But the Germans were unable to keep the Russian fleet trapped in its harbors. In the early months of the war, Russian surface units were very active covering the retreat from the Germans. To harass the Germans and assist their forces fighting along the coast, the Russians formed the North-West Command. Made up of the cruiser Komintern, destroyers Nezamozhnik and Shamyan, the minelayer Lukomski and several gunboats. In the weeks that followed the North-West Command took the war to the Germans shelling Rumanian and German positions threatening Nikolaev (Nokolayev), Odessa and Ochakov buying time for the Russian defenders to get organized and staging evacuations as needed.
"Particularly grieved were the Black Sea sailors when they had to abandon Nokolayev [Nikolaev]," reported Isakov on the fall of that port to the Germans in August, "under fire of the German batteries, they were compelled to blow up ships under construction,
However, he never mentioned the extent of the loss. On the stocks at the Marti yard was the 45000 ton battleship Sovetskaya Ukraina, heavy cruiser Ordzhonikidze, flotilla leaders Perekop and Ochakov, two destroyers and three submarines. Towed away from the scene by the Russians before they could be captured or destroyed was the cruisers Fruze and Kuibyshev, flotilla leaders Svobodny, Oqnevoi and Ozornoi, five submarines and the ice breaker Mikoyan.
The first major battle along the Black Sea coast was for the port of Odessa. For 73 days the Russians battled the Rumanian army for control of the city. The Red navy, led by Vdovichenko's squadron, took an active part in the defence of Odessa. In late-September, it made an amphibious landing behind the 13th and 15th Rumaninan Infantry Divisions' lines to support an airdrop by Russian paratroops. Lost to Stukas during the landing was the Russian destroyer Frunze while she went to the assistance of a gunboat . To keep Odessa supplied the Russians made use of a convoy system involving 27 ships protected by the cruisers Krasny Krym and Krasny Kavkaz and four destroyers.
But by October, the situation around Odessa was hopeless. Starting on the 8th, the Russians began slipping their heavy equipment, rear services, party organization and labor forces out of the port. The final evacuation came on October 16 when in four hours the Red Navy managed to stage the withdraw of 35,000 men from the city. As they left, the Russians made sure Odessa would be unusable for several months.
A part of Odessa that was quickly returned to operational status, but not in Odessa was the city's trolley system. As soon as the shooting stopped the Rumanians uprooted the entire system and reinstalled it in the Rumanian city of Craiova
The Russian withdraw from Odessa became a victory along the lines of the British evacuation of Dunkirk. "The Evacuation of the Soviet Troops from Odessa organized by the Red Army Command during the past eight days has been wound up on time and in perfect order. The troops, having completed their task in the district of Odessa, were transferred by the fleet to other sectors of the front in exemplary order and without losses," reported the Soviet Information Bureau . But the operation had not been without costs for the Black Sea Fleet. Constantly under the threat of German air attack, the Russians paid a heavy price for their active defense. Their battleship and a cruiser were heavily damaged in the fighting along with five destroyers and several other auxiliaries.
Gaining control of Odessa and other ports along the northern shore of the Black Sea was important to the Germans. Once they controlled the coastline, they could use the Black Sea and the rivers flowing into the interior as a secure line of supply to the infantry. After establishing flanking minefields, organizing air units for their protection, and shore batteries, supply convoys protected by torpedo boats and other armed craft started a run from Constanza and Ochakov on the Dnieper.
Russian submarines and torpedo boats attacked these convoys directly and by laying mines across their routes with some notable successes. On October 25, the first German convoy lost four tugs to mines. The second convoy lost its flagship, an S-boat and another craft sent to its rescue. Although they faced heavy losses, they never reached a degree the Germans could not withstand.
But it was not a year-round supply route. The supply convoys ceased running after Christmas 1941 when it became too difficult for the Germans, Rumanians and Bulgarians to operate in the winter conditions on the Black Sea. Their crews were not adequately protected from the elements and the ships were not suited for operations covered with ice.
General Winter may have shut down German supply operations to the west, but it did not detract from the epic battle being waged for control of Sevastopol, the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
The battle for Sevastopol was for the Russian navy much like the battle of Stalingrad would become for the Red Army. Sevastopol was important to the Russian navy for another reason. It was quickly becoming of the few remaining suitable places the fleet could operate from. As the German campaign ground on, the Russians were losing harbor after harbor.
Twenty thousand of the initial troops fighting in the trenches around the city were Russian marines or naval infantry units made up from ships' crews . When they could, Russian ships in the harbor provided artillery support to the ground units.
"The military and political signifance of Sevastopol's defence in the Patriotic War of the Soviet People cannot be overestimated," stated the Soviet Information Bureau in July, 1942. "Engaging vast forces of the German and the Rumanians, the defenders of the city have tangled and disrupted the plans of the German Command. The iron stamina of Sevastopol's fighting men was one of the main reasons for the failure of the fanfared German "spring offensive." Detained here, the Nazis lost time, the tempo of their movement was lowered and they sustained enormous losses in manpower."
The Soviet garrison at Sevastopol totaled seven rifle divisions, three marine brigades and other mixed units. As the battle continued more Russian troops were brought into the city by a naval sea lift. In one case 8000 troops were collected from units that had been encircled on the Tendra Peninsula and other pockets along the coast and shipped into Sevastopol.
The Germans pressed their attack with seven German and two Rumanian Infantry divisions supported by 700 guns. Fourteen air groups flew in support of the Axis.
For 250 days the Russians tenaciously fought to keep the Germans and Rumanians out of Sevastopol. Extraordinary sacrifice became the order of the day for the Russian defenders. In one instance five marines, out of ammunition, threw themselves under attacking tanks, armed with only hand grenades, to blunt an Axis attack. To provide the defenders with some much needed firepower, the main batteries of several scrapped Tsarist era battleships were salvaged and pressed into service. Only direct hits from the German siege guns around the city managed to silence them .
Until the Luftwaffe drove them away, Russian warships operated an extensive supply operation for Sevastopol hauling supplies in and taking wounded men out. "There were times when ships headed for Sevastopol were attacked by as many as ninety aircraft dropping up to 300 bombs. Approaching the Crimean shores, the blockade runners entered the patrol zones of the enemy's small submarines and torpedo boats....On the last lap, the ships had to run the gauntlet of the enemy's 150mm long-range guns which covered the entrance to Sevastopol Bay....The systematic sorties through the blockade" were "among the most arduous and gallant actions of the Black Sea Fleet in this phase of the war, " noted Admiral Isakov.
When it became impossible for surface units to perform such operations, submarines kept up the work. Again, there were costs to be paid for such operations. In November the crusier Chervonaia Ukraina was sunk after taking three bomb hits. Her guns were later salvaged and taken ashore. Other Russian naval losses through the siege was three destroyers, two subchasers and several patrol boats. The destroyer Tashkent, which had survived more than 40 supply runs into Sevastopol was sank the day after Sevastopol's surrender outside of the Black Sea's new main base, Novorossiisk.
Between December 26 and 29 the Russians staged the largest amphibious operation they would attempt in World War Two when they launched a planned ten landings on the Kerch Isthmus. Had the weather and luck been their side, they might well have succeeded in cutting off and destroying a large body of German troops, breaking through to Sevastopol and perhaps changing the course of the war in southern Russia.
To support the operation, the Russians assigned the cruisers Komintern, Krasny Krym, and Krasny Kavkaz to the invasion task force.
However, in the face of unexpectedly stiff German resistance and poor weather only four bridgeheads were actually established. The only real success came with the capture of the port of Feodosiia .
Poor planning was listed as one cause of the attack's failure; few landing craft were used to transport troops to the invasion beaches, in many cases troops had to land from fishing cutters or patrol boats. Some people looked to the weather as a factor. While it was poor in the early going, it was as much a help as a hinderance. But successful bridgeheads had been established in the teeth of the bad weather, so that couldn't be blamed entirely. Finally, the poor weather was hoped for by some commanders, the Krasny Kavkaz was badly damaged by the luftwaffe which until then had been grounded by the weather .
A prime reason for failure seems to be the presence of Deputy Defense Commissar L.Z. Mekhlis, who was also Chief of the Political Directorate, or secret police, at Kerch as a representative of the Moscow. Nikita Khrushchev remarked that Mekhlis had been little more than a "political" general and that "there is no means of determining whether he caused more death and suffering by deliberate action in the purge years and thereafter or by sheer incompetence during the war." At Kerch his actions interfered with several attacks leaving some Soviet commanders on the scene to consider him guilty of treason.
Afterwards Stalin ordered him lowered in rank and telegraphed: "You maintain the strange position of a mere onlooker who bears no responsibility for the affairs of the Crimean Front. This position may be very comfortable but it is often rotten to the core....If you had used assault aircraft not for auxiliary purposes but for against the enemy's tanks and infantry, the enemy would not have broken through the Front and the tanks would not have gotten through. One does not have to be a Hindenburg to understand this simple fact."
The Kerch operation, and the other amphibious landings that followed it, were costly failures for the Russians. In the end they lost around 170,000 men who could have been used to much better effect elsewhere. But their sacrifice did force the Germans to devote several weeks and troops they could have used to greater effect at Sevastopol to pushing them back into the sea .
The Russians held out at Sevastopol for as long as humanly possible. By the time the Soviet Command had issued orders for the evacuation of Sevastopol the only vessels capable of performing the task were submarines. Only a few small units were rescued before 95,000 prisoners and the prime port on the Black Sea went into the German bag in July 1942 .
When it rained, it poured for the Russians. In July, the Komintern was heavily damaged in a bombing attack on Poti . In August, the cruiser Molotov, in an attack on the Bay of Feodosia, was attacked by Italian motor torpedo boats and had twenty yards of it's bow blown off .
In the meantime the Black Sea Fleet went back to doing what it was best at. Operating out of Novorossisk, which was quickly invested by the German army, the Black Sea Fleet began a series of hit and run raids against Rumanian port facilities, conducted troop ferrying missions and took on shore bombardment missions to assist the beleaguered troops. Before Novorossisk was overrun, the Russians managed to stage another successful withdraw, snatching away several thousand troops and their equipment for use on other fronts.
After Novorossiisk, the Russian Fleet fell back to Poti and Batum, ports that before the war had served only for loading oil and manganese ore.
It was the end of the line for the Russians. If they lost those bases, they had nowhere else to go. Luckily for them the German land offensive ground to a halt at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus Mountians.
The Russians Advance: 1943-1944
"The Turkish Press began to prophesy the fate of the Black Sea Fleet and could forecast but two alternatives; the Soviet warships would either be interned in the Turkish ports or be sunk by their own crews, " said Admiral Isakov of this time following the loss of Sevastopol and Novorossiik.
It seemed the Turks might have been on the right track when in late-November 1941 the Soviet tankers Avanesov, Tupapse, Sakhalin and the ice breaker Mikloyan (a former auxiliary cruiser) traversed the Bosphorous for the Far East. The operation went perfectly, for the Bosphorous were international waters for unarmed ships , with only the Ananesov being lost to German U-652 off the Turkish Coast in December in the Mediterranean .
The Turkish press notwithstanding, the Soviet government had negotiated an agreement with the Turkish government that would have allowed the Black Sea Fleet to withdraw through the Bosphorous if it had to do so . But the withdraw was never necessary.
As the new year opened the Russians launched a new naval operation west of Noborossiisk. Beginning in late-January, 150 patrol and motor boats, supported by the Russians few remaining operational major fleet units, landed about 17,000 troops. But, like many other Russian amphibious assaults, the operation was a failure. By late-February all the bridgeheads had been eliminated. However, the operation had been useful for the Russians in that it kept the pressure on the Germans who were staging their own withdraw from the Caucasus towards Kerch.
Present at this operation was a young political commissar of the Eighteenth Shock Army named Leonid Brezhnev. "We put out a newspaper, held party meetings and attended lectures," Brezhnev recalled later of his days on the Black Sea. "We even organized a chess tournament."
There were also times when Brezhnev found himself in the fighting. Once he had been standing beside the pilot of a small transport that hit a mine. "The explosion shot us both into the air," he wrote. Under fire, Brezhnev boosted several soldiers into a motorboat before he was pulled to safety. "Not a single one of them had abandoned his weapons," Brezhnev noted.
The Germans kept up a bridgehead across the Kerch Strait to deny the Russians an easy entrance into the Crimea and the Sea of Azov. In late-March, they found themselves with more forces than they needed to hold the defensive positions they had created, so they staged a successful evacuation of 105,000 troops, 45,000 horses, 7,000 vehicles and 12,000 horse-drawn vehicles across the Kerch Strait into the Crimea . All while combating another Russian naval landing, this time northwest of Novorossiisk.
In October, the Russian army reached the Dnieper River, cutting the German forces in the Crimea off from the rest of their army. On September 9, the Russians made a major amphibious assault directly into Noborossiisk. This time they used naval landing craft and in the first wave placed 2,000 troops ashore in the first wave. By the middle of September they had drove the Germans from the port breaching the German lines defending the Kerch Strait.
But the Germans were already in retreat. Starting on September 12, they launched Operation Brunhild. Using every plane and ship they could lay their hands on, about 240 vessels in all, the Germans spent the next 34 days creating another miracle. They moved 39,669 troops, 16,311 wounded men, 27,456 civilians, 115,477 tons of supplies, 21,230 vehicles, 27,741 horse-drawn vehicles, 1,815 guns, 74 tanks, 74,657 horses and 6,255 head of cattle across the kerch Strait into the Crimea and Sevastopol .
It was about this time that the Russians suffered their greatest naval loss of the entire year. On the night of October 5/6, the destroyers Kharkov, Boiky and Sovbrazitelny had just completed a bombardment of German positions at Yalta when they were delayed withdrawing by a motor torpedo boat attack. The morning found them within range of German land-based aircraft. All three ships were sank . Following their loss, Stalin ordered that the commitment to battle of any ship from destroyer upwards could only be made with his permission .
The year 1944 brought a new crop of disasters for the Germans. The Russians staged more successful landings in the Crimea making the German's defence of that region even more costly. In March, Nikolaev and Ochakov were recaptured denying the Germans use of those ports as nearby locations to evacuate the remaining troops in the Crimea and Sevastopol. In April, Odessa fell, but not before 90,000 persons were evacuated.
Finally, in May, the evacuation of Sevastopol was permitted by Hitler. The cost in naval units were high as troops were loaded under constant air attack, but up to two-thirds of the remaining garrison (about 130,000 German and 21,457 Rumanian troops) were pulled out to Constanza. The official Russian claim was that 37,000 German and 5,000 Rumanian troops were left behind. But other sources place the number closer to 78,000.
The Germans took terrible losses in the evacuation. Among the ships lost was the transport Janina was sunk at Sevastopol. The Teya and Totilla carrying some 8,500 men were lost at sea on May 10. Of about 130 ships taking part in the evacuation, around 50 were lost in the operation.
"The Promontory was litterly littered with German tanks, vehicles, and mortars," wrote a Russian general afterwards. "....All kinds of stores had been abandoned in the ravines and on the steep slopes leading to the shore. The human corpses had been cleared away, but a nauseating stench still hung in the air. As far as the eye could scan, the sea was covered with swollen carcasses of horses that were slowly rolling over in the waves and bursting in the heat."
In August, 600 small craft landed Russian troops behind the German lines around the mouth of the Danube. Before that route of escape was cut off several Axis naval units fled up the river to carry on the fight.
The same month, a coup in Rumania took the Rumanians out of the war as Germany's ally. Russian Army units quickly occupied Constanza and its port facilities after a devastating air attack by the Russian air force destroyed many of the German naval units still based there.
The Germans now faced the situation the Russians had been looking at just over a year before; lack of facilities from which to operate from. With the fall of Rumania, the Germans no longer welcome at any port on the Black Sea. On the night of August 29/30 approximately 200 Kriegsmarine craft were sent to the bottom by their crews off Varna outside Bulgarian territorial waters.
Many naval units fought on until their fuel and ammunition run out. The Germans made an effort to sell their remaining submarines in the Black Sea to the Turkish Navy, but the deal never went through and the subs, after they were out of fuel and ammunition, were scuttled in Turkish Waters.
In the end it turned out to be the Axis and not the Russians seeking interment by the Turks.

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