Campaign #4 Battle #8 "Operation Störfang and Trappenjagd, Crimea, May 8th, 1942"
***Friday June 16th, 20.00 BST - 02.00 BST ***
Report after Battle 7
The silence is absolute, bar the howling wind. Darkness has fallen upon the land. The Allied and Axis armies have met again, this time near the town of Okorovovo. Upon a mountain of stone and soil sits a castle, its inhabitants long since fled, leaving it to the vines and wildlife. In the valley small hamlets dot the landscape, their dwellers cowering in fear. And along the water lays the port city, with a industrial complex.
Slowly the sun rises, warm rays of light spill out onto the land, and the sky lights up with a brilliant shade of orange. The winds and snow have ceased, leaving only wet men in their wake. As the sounds of groaning and the cracks of stiff joints fills the air officers begin to bellow out orders. Hurriedly men of both sides gather their weapons and mount up on their vehicles. The time of battle is upon them.
The Nazi army sallies forth across the only bridge out of town, crossing the freezing river below them. The Soviets likewise pour from their camp in the foothills. The lines are drawn quickly, with the Soviets taking control of the hamlet, industrial storage facility and decaying castle. Not to be outdone the Axis army takes control of the main industrial complex and bridge crossing. Roaring steel rides out from the Nazis and strikes the unprepared Soviet army with the white hot fury of a thousand suns. The Soviets howl in defiance as the two sides meet. Bullets zing through the air, burning across the frozen landscape. Along the frigid river the Axis send out quickly constructed wooden boats to watch the shores. Soviet spies in the Nazi camp cause mayhem and destruction. However the Soviets are quickly pushed out of their control points. Rockets roar down from the sky, turning men into ash, tanks into twisted scrap heaps and hopes into dreams.
The tides have shifted, and the once white landscape runs red with blood. The Soviets have been crushed. What once was can never be again, and this once peaceful land has tasted blood. It’s a taste that will not soon be forgotten…
As a final note an entire company of Nazi troops was captured in the Russian retreat. They have been re-educated to fight for the Soviet cause now. On the flip side a Soviet captain and his lieutenant were also captured, and have decided to fight for the Nazis. How will this affect the war? Only time will tell.
Battle #8 Map info
Battle 8: Operation Störfang and Trappenjagd, Crimea, May 8th, 1942
The Black Sea port of Sevastopol was a heavily defended fortress on the Crimean peninsula. German and Romanian troops had advanced to the outskirts of the city from the North and launched their attack on 30 October 1941. Having failed to take the city, Axis forces began a siege and heavy bombardment. A second Axis offensive against the city, launched in December 1941, failed as well, as the Soviet army and navy forces continued to fight fiercely. In addition to Sevastopol's defenders, three Soviet armies with seventeen rifle divisions, two cavalry divisions, three rifle brigades and four tank brigades barricaded the narrow, eighteen kilometer Parpach Isthmus, the access road from the Crimea to the Kerch Peninsula.
Kerch on the other hand was a springboard across to the eastern Black Sea coast and thus to the approaches to the Caucasus. Each kilometer of this vital bridge was defended by about 10.000 Soviet soldiers, ten men to every meter. When one is facing an enemy three times as strong in a clever defensive position, one can only prevail with courage and cunning, and Manstein and his Axis forces proved to be up to the task.
Aftermath: By May 16 three Soviet armies, 170.000 soldiers had been smashed in eight days by a half-dozen German divisions. Before them lay the sea, the Straits of Kerch, and beyond, not twenty kilometers away, the shore of the Taman Peninsula, the approach to Asia, the entrance to the Caucasus. Manstein's victory had kicked open the backdoor to Stalin's oil paradise. Following on from this, the city of Sevastopol was taken in June 1942. It was liberated in bloody fighting in May 1944. Sevastopol was awarded the title Hero City in 1945.
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