The Role of the VVS During the Battles of. the Crimea and Rostov

F

rom the latter half of September 1941, Luftflotte 4 became widely dispersed, engaged on four major battlefields—the annihilation battle at Kiev, the encirclement of Odessa, the offensive by the German Seventeenth Army toward the industrial center of Kharkov, and the somewhat premature offensive against the Crimea. From an operational point of view, this wide dispersement of forces was most unfortunate, but strate­gically it was inevitable.

He who controls the Crimea is master of the Black Sea. It was mainly from the Crimea that the Soviets launched their most disturbing air raids against the Romanian oil fields. Even if these raids had been carried out by weak forces, the threat remained that a reinforce­ment of the units allocated to the air offensive against Romania could lead to severe and lasting damage to the

Romanian oil fields, the main fuel source of the entire Wehrmacht.

As soon as he arrived from the Leningrad sector to assume command of the German Eleventh Army on September 18, General Erich von Manstein attempted to launch a surprise strike against the Crimea, but his air support proved to be totally inadequate. The only Luftwaffe unit fully assigned to support the initial drive toward the Crimea, KG 27, was at one-third of its origi­nal operational strength. The Ju 88 crews of KG 51 were divided among missions against shipping in the Black Sea, against Odessa, and against the Perekop Isthmus. In the chronicle of the latter unit, Wolfgang Dierich wrote: “The weak forces—the Staffeln seldom possessed more than three or four planes—were spread out against numerous targets and with only limited results. . . .

Missions were carried out against road intersections, road junctions, rail lines, and troop columns.”40

Despite heavy losses during the past three months, the Soviets were able to concentrate strong forces in the area fac­ing von Manstein’s force. The units of VVS-Southern Front, and particularly VVS-Black Sea Fleet, would play a deci­sive role in this sector during September and October 1941. On September 18 the Zveno fighter-bombers of 32 IAP/ChF destroyed the Dnieper bridge at Zaporozhye, thus cutting off the Wehrmacht supply lines to the. front, which in turn delayed a German flank­ing attack from the north.

As the spearheads of the Eleventh Army entered the Perekop Isthmus, which connects the Crimea with the mainland, they were subjected to intense air attacks by the 200 fighters and 130 bombers of 62 IAB and 63 BAB of VVS-ChF that were stationed in the Crimea. On September 21 alone, one of the divisions of the Eleventh Army was forced to withstand twenty-two air attacks. Moreover, the He 11 Is of KG 27, committed to difficult low-level attacks against the Soviet ground fortifications, were opposed by aggressive Soviet fighter attacks. I.(J)/LG 2, 11. and IIl./JG 77, responsible for the fighter protection, became involved in large daily air combat. On September 21, twelve Soviet aircraft were claimed shot down, mainly fighters and fighter-bombers.

Contingents of StG 77 were brought in from the Kiev sector, and these wrought havoc on the defense positions on the Perekop Isthmus. But heavy VVS attacks prevented the German ground troops from tak­ing any advantage of this development.

On September 24 the Soviet Ninth and Eighteenth armies opened a counteroffensive with strong air sup­port against the left flank of the German Eleventh Army- northeast of the Perekop Isthmus. All attempts by Gen­eral von Manstein to seize the Crimea in a swift strike failed. Only with difficulty could he prevent his army from being sealed off.

Having fought back the Soviet counterattack, von Manstein made yet another attempt to seize the Perekop Isthmus, on September 26. On that day, German fighter
pilots in this area claimed twenty-seven Soviet aircraft shot down, five of them by Oberfeldwebel Heinrich Hackler of IIl./JG 77. On September 30 the deputy’ com­mander of 11 IAP/ChF, Kapitan Ivan Volosevich, who was credited with four aerial victories, was shot down by a pilot of JG 77 on Volosevich’s sixty-ninth combat sortie.

Participating in the aerial clashes on September 30 was Kapitan Ivan Lyubimov’s 5 Eskadrilya/32 IAP/ChF, which was equipped with by far the best Soviet fighter plane of the time, the Yak-1. Upon intercepting a pair of Bf 109s from 4./JG 77 Herzas over the Crimea, Kapitan Lyubimov scored decisive hits on the Messerschmitt of Unteroffizier Julius Dite. Then one of Lyubimov’s pilots, Starshiy Leytenant Mikhail Avdeyev, closed in to deal the final blow. Avdeyev, who would develop into one of the major aces of the VVS-ChF, recalls: “1 approached the descending, burning Me 109 from the side. 1 decided to wait and see if the Fascist would jettison his canopy and bail out. But to my astonishment, having jettisoned the canopy with ease, he pulled up his aircraft slightly and then pushed his stick forward. The machine banked downward. I saw the pilot—tall and slim, dressed in gray overalls—pop out of the cockpit. Hastily, he opened his parachute.”

Julius Dite was taken prisoner and handed over his

Mikhail Avdeyev is one of the most renowned Soviet naval fighter pilots of World War II. Having earned his wings in 1934, Avdeyev was one of the most experienced pilots of the VVS-ChF as the War with Germany broke out. He proved to be an excellent marksman and a most talented unit leader. Piloting a Yak-1 of 32 ІАРЛ/VS-ChF, Starshiy Leytenant Avdeyev was one of the toughest opponents to the Luftwaffe in the air over the Crimea. By the end of the war he had flown 498 sorties, taken part in 141 aerial combats, and earned credit for 17 kills. Avdeyev died on June 22. 1979. (Photo: Seidl.)

pistol, which bore an inscription telling that this was an award for his distinguished feats during the capture of Crete, to his captors. On February 3 this young Austrian perished in a Soviet POW camp. His pistol, however, remains on display in the Central Navy Museum in St. Petersburg.

On October 1, JG 77 took revenge on 32 I. AP/Y’VS – ChF. A large formation of Bf 109s intercepted a ground – attack formation consisting of I-15bis and I-16s from 3 Eskadrilya/32 IAP, led by Kapitan Konstantin Denisov, and the 11-2 Shturmoviks of Kapitan Aleksey Gubriy’s 46 OShAE. Ten Yak-ls of 5./32 IAP, which were pro­viding escort, turned into the Messerschmitts. An uneven combat followed. The Yakovlevs managed to escape without suffering any losses-Starshiy Leytenant Mikhail Avdeyev even managed to shoot down a Bf 109— but they could not prevent the Herzas aces from tearing up the formation of ground-attack aircraft. 3 Eskadrilya/ 32 IAP lost three l-16s, all three Ishaks credited to fighter aces of III./JG 77: Oberleutnant Kurt Lasse, scoring his thirty-eighth victory; Oberleutnant Kurt Ubben, scoring his thirty-ninth; and Feldwebel Robert Helmer, scoring his seventeenth. 11./JG 77 claimed two of 46 OshAE’s Shturmoviks.

Both sides leaped from one crisis to another, continously utilizing their air forces as the decisive fac­tor. Supported by the bulk of Fliegcrkorps V, Panzergruppe 1 turned to the southeast from the area east of Kiev, toward the Sea of Azov, during the last week of September. The plan was to surround and de­stroy the Soviet Southern Front north of the Sea of Azov, between the northern tip of the Crimea and the city of Rostov. Next, Rostov would be captured, opening the gates to the Caucasus oil fields. This sudden armored strike from the north compelled the Soviets to withdraw forces facing the northern flank of the German Elev­enth Army, which in turn enabled the Germans to con­quer most of the Perekop Lsthmus. Nevertheless, further intensified Soviet air attacks halted the Eleventh Army’s advance. The TB-3s of 63 BAB even undertook some Zveno missions in this area. During an attack by 1-16 fighter-bombers launched from two TB-3s escorted by three I-15bis fighters of 8 IAP/VVS-ChF, three German artillery batteries were destroyed.

The entry of Panzergruppe 1, advancing rapidly from the north, created an entirely new strategic situation. A new’ encirclement battle unfolded to the north of the Sea of Azov. The Soviet Ninth and Eighteenth armies found themselves threatened w’ith being sealed off in the Mariupol area, betw-een the Sea of Azov and the Dnieper bend, so all units of VVS-Southem Front were immedi­ately throw’n into action against the spearheads of Panzergruppe 1. Even though VVS-Southern Front could muster only seventy-nine operational fighters, forty-two bombers, and thirteen Il-2s by October 1,41 it managed to use these scarce resources effectively. On October 5, the German High Command noted: “Heavy air attacks against Panzergruppe 1. Reconnaissance missions can only be undertaken with strong fighter escort.”

Although Luftflotte 4 had been released from the Battle of Kiev, its operational area was too vast for the limited available air units. With I. and II. Gruppen pulled out of combat due to severe losses, III. Gruppe of KG 51 was nevertheless still divided among operations over Odessa, over the Black Sea, and against Perekop and the battlefield to the north of the Sea of Azov. KG 55 was concentrated to support the offensive against Kharkov, in the north; and KG 27 was covering the Crimea and the northern shore of the Sea of Azov. The Ju 88 crew’s of KG 54 Totenkopf w’ere rushed between both flanks of Army Group South, used as a flying fire brigade.

Nevertheless, the German tactic of reconcentrating
air units in one area after another provided excellent results. Heavy air raids virtually paralyzed Soviet troops at Dnepropetrovsk and on the railway line from Dnepropetrovsk to Stalino, which removed the threat against the northern flank of Panzergruppe l. Air attacks against the rail lines leading north from Mariupol, Taganrog, and Rostov further delayed the transfer of Soviet troops and materiel.

On October 5 the German ground troops reached Mariupol, where considerable portions of VV’S – Southern Front were stationed. Leytenant Aleksandr Pavlichenko of 210 BBAP describes the panic-stricken situation from the Soviet point of view:

A staff aircraft landed at our airfield and a Polkovnik jumped out, crying: “You who are sit­ting here. The Germans have broken through and are only six kilometers (four miles] away! Hurry up and depart or destroy your planes!" Everybody was up on і heir feet and started running. All ser­viceable aircraft started taking off. Since our Su-2 was damaged I rom a combat mission on the previ­ous day. I helped pilots from other regiments try to set fire to unserviceable planes. But we didn’t know how to do it. Then one soldier put two barrels of gasoline under the w ing of our plane. He opened the barrels and then we threw a torch at the fuel.

The panic was awful. We made it to the main­tenance base at Krasniy Luch. We found several aircraft parked there, mostly U-2 liaison planes, We were informed of the whereabouts of our 210 BBAP and reached our new base in a U-2. We received a warm welcome. Everyone had expected that we had been killed

The Bf 109s of l.(J)./LG 2 and II. and IH./JG 7 shifted to the battle area north of the Sea of Azov, inte fered violently against Soviet aircraft in this area. Starsh Leytenant Aleksandr Pokryshkin of 55 IAP had a ma unpleasant encounter with some of these lighters о October 6. During an armed reconnaissance mission і the company of wingman Leytenant Stepan Komta in MiG-3s armed with RS-82 rockets, Pokryshkin wa bounced by a Schwarm from 1L/JG 77. One of theBi 109s aimed at Komlcv’s MiG, but Pokryshkin cametc his assistance and fired one RS-82 at the enemy plane, This Messerschmitt broke off to evade the rocket, but the German wingman continued the attack on Komley. Without taking notice of the remaining enemy Rotte, Pokryshkin fired his second rocket, which also missed, and then gave the Messerschmitt on Leytenant Komlevy tail a long burst with his machine guns. At that moment a well-aimed burst hit Pokryshkin’s plane.

Aleksandr Pokryshkin managed to bring down his

badly damaged MiG-3 in a no-man’s-land. He was terri­bly shocked and blinded in one eye, but he managed to get out of the cockpit seconds before the Messerschmitt came down to rake the wreck with machine-gun fire. There followed the most terrible week in “Sasha” Pokryshkin’s life. Trapped in the vast no-man’s-land, he managed to join some Soviet soldiers of the scattered Eighteenth Army who planned to reach the Soviet lines in a truck. The fighter ace persuaded them to load his damaged MiG-3 on the truck during the following night. After playing cat-and-mouse with Romanian and Ger­man ground units for several days and nights, the dismal group finally managed to reach Soviet-held territory. Aleksandr Pokryshkin returned to his regiment, but his nerves were in such a bad shape that he was taken off front-line duty for a month.

Support from the Luftwaffe enabled troops from the SS Brigade Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler on October 6 to capture most of the staff of the Soviet Ninth Army. The army commander was able to escape in an aircraft at the last moment. On October 7 the Soviet Eighteenth Army was sealed off north of the Sea of Azov. Three days later, that army ceased to exist. Another sixty-five thou­sand Soviet soldiers marched into German confinement.

Even before this battle was settled, Ill./JG 77 was hurriedly shifted back to Chaplinka and the Perekop area, where the VVS had increased its activity. The
pilots of this unit were immediately involved in large – scale combat with determined Soviet airmen. On Octo­ber 8, Oberleutnant Kurt Lasse, with forty-one victories to his credit and thus the top ace of JG 77 Herzas, was killed in combat with two MiG-3s over the Perekop Isthmus.

On October 9, Soviet airmen made repeated attempts to destroy the Chaplinka Airdrome. This cost them dearly. At the end of the day, Ill./JG 77 had claimed fourteen victories. Oberleutnant Kurt Ubben ran his personal score up to forty-five by shooting down four Pe-2s. The largest air combat of the day resulted in, according to German figures, the destruction of at least nine Soviet aircraft without any German losses. In this battle, 5 Eskadrilya/’ 32 1AP, ChF, suffered heavily; two of its aces, Kapitan Ivan Lyubimov and Mladshiy Leytenant Allakhverdov, were counted among those shot down. With the engine in his Yak-1 hit by a well-aimed burst from a Bf 109, Kapitan Lyubimov belly-landed in friendly territory. But the victorious Bf 109 pilot was determined to finish his kill. The German strafed the downed Yak-1, and a machine-gun round tore off one-third of Lyubimov’s left chin.

In his combat report from this day, Serzhant Nikolayev of 5./32 IAP, ChF (who also was shot down by a Bf 109), described how Mladshiy Leytenant Allakhverdov was lost: “Having belly-landed in the Munus-Tatarskiy region, I saw three Me 109s chasing
my flight commander, Allakhverdov, at treetop level. In the air above Kir-Aktachi his aircraft burst into flames. He made a vertical climb, fell down over the wing, and tore into the ground. Both man and machine perished in the flames.”42

At this point, the commander of WS-Southern Front directed the bulk of his units, including two 11-2 regi­ments, 4 ShAP and 210 ShAP, to attack the left flank of the newly redesignated First Panzer Army. After the disastrous annihilation of the Soviet Eighteenth Army, there were only weak and dispersed Red Army units available to defend the road to Rostov. The Soviet air­men were called in to delay the advance of the German tank army while a new defensive position was being established along the Mius River west of Rostov.

On October II, at least three hundred sorties were carried out against the SS Brigade Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. Intercepting these raids, II./JG 77 claimed four Soviet bombers and one MiG-3, but Oberfeldwebel Rudolf Schmidt was shot down and wounded shortly after achiev­ing his thirty-third kill.

The next day, the bombers of Fliegerkorps IV mounted an extensive series of raids against Soviet air­fields north of the Sea of Azov and in the Crimea. At just one Crimean air base, the Luftwaffe bombers reported twelve aircraft destroyed on the ground.

Even if pressure from the air was mounting, adverse weather conditions became the main obstruction to the German offensive toward Rostov. Heavy rain showers suddenly turned the roads in the area into quagmires. What the Luftwaffe had carried out against the Soviet supply system was dealt to the Germans by the weather. The columns transporting supplies to Army Group South hundreds of miles on nothing but dirt roads were succes­sively stuck in deep mud. With inadequate supplies and while sustaining intense pressure from the air, the ad­vance of the First Panzer Army slowed to a snail’s pace.

Shortages in fuel and spare parts caused the number of sorties by Luftwaffe units in this area to plummet. These shortages particularly affected the twin-engine bomber units.

Despite the weather and the shortages, the few avail­able fighters in the Jagdgruppen committed to the Mius – Rostov area—I.(J)/LG 2 and II./JG 77—nevertheless took a heavy toll on the raiding Soviet aircraft. On October 14 the Germans reported sixteen Soviet aircraft downed, plus seven by AAA.43 Counted among the Soviet victims

Gordon Mac Gollob is one of the most controversial unit leaders of the German Fighter Arm in World War II. He was known as a harsh commander and was not popular among all his subordinates, but in contrast to other ambitious fighter aces who cared little about their wingmen, Gollob only lost one wingman—without any personal fault—during all of his 340 combat missions. On September 18, 1941, he was awarded with the Knight’s Cross for forty-two victories, and by the time he received the Oak Leaves on October 26, his tally had risen to eighty-five. Ten months later Gollob became the first fighter pilot to reach the 150-victory level. Following that achievement, Gollob served in staff positions and ended the war as the third and last inspector of the Fighter Arm. Gordon Gollob passed away in Solingen, Germany, on September?, 1987. (Photo: Gollob.)

were the commander of an Eskadrilya in 551AP, Starshiy Leytenant Konstantin Ivachyov, and his wingman. The next day, the two Jagdgruppen claimed thirteen Soviet aircraft, without loss.44 During a single combat with a Bf 109 Rotte near Taganrog on October 15, 55 IAP lost yet another of its veterans, Leytenant Kuzma Seliverstov, credited with five personal and two collective victories. Farther to the west, in the skies over the Perekop Isth­mus, Oberleutnant Wolf-Dietrich Huy, the Staffelkapitan of 7./JG 77, scored his twentieth victory on October 16 when he downed two 1-153s and a DB-3.

The disturbing Soviet dominance in this area com­pelled the Germans to shift air units from other sectors.

Il./JG 3, commanded by an ambitious fighter ace, Hauptmann Gordon Gollob, was moved from the cen­tral combat zone to cover renewed attacks on Perekop on October 18. Gollob had made his reputation during the July-to-September air battles over the Ukraine, in which he raised his score from seven to forty-eight. Known as a hard-core Nazi and a harsh commander, Gollob was quite unpopular. Even if some of his subordinates thought he was “picking mainly easy targets” in the air, Gollob alone would play a significant role during the battle for air superiority over the Crimea.

At dawn on October 18, Hauptmann Gollob shot down two MiG-3 fighters, his personal victories sixty – two and sixty-three. Again, at about 1000 hours, he claimed five MiG-3s in a single combat. And finally, in the afternoon, he destroyed two more MiG-3s, a total of nine MiG-3s for the day. In total this day, Il./JG 3 and HL/JG 77 claimed eighteen aerial kills. While the fighter pilots sent one Soviet aircraft after another burning to
the ground, bombers and dive-bombers from both Fliegerkorps IV and Fliegerkorps V fell upon the Soviet ground positions and supply lines in the Crimea.

Withal, the Luftwaffe’s considerable efforts in the southern regions proved to be inadequate. While some Soviet bomber and fighter-bomber formations were ripped apart by Bf 109s, others slipped through and forced the attacking ground troops to keep their heads down. The Soviet airmen even managed to strike hard against the Jagdgruppen themselves. During the dark hours early on the morning of October 19, a Pe-2 regiment, heavily laden with bombs, took off from its airfield. The Petlaykovs flew at treetop level straight toward Chaplinka, north of the Perekop Isthmus, where they carried out a surprise attack just before sunrise. The falling bombs were con­centrated across the runway. Partly as a result of this telling raid, the Red fliers were in almost total control of the air over Perekop for the next two days.

Drawing a conclusion on the first phase of the Battle of the Crimea, Oberst Hermann Plocher, of Fliegerkorps V, wrote:

The Russians employed their air forces—actually for the first time in a point of main effort—over the narrow, completely level, steppelike isthmus. The treeless and bushlcss terrain offered no cover for the attacking troops of the Eleventh Army against the continous attacks by very strong Soviet bomber and ground-attack units. General von Manstein, commanding the Eleventh Army, stated that the Soviet Air Force dominated the sky, and with its bombers and fighters attacked every target sighted….

Low-level attacks by Soviet ground-attack planes, and medium-level attacks by Soviet con­ventional bombers, were carried out around the clock against German infantry, which was wearily fighting its way through the numerous, fortified defense lines. At night, Soviet air attacks succeeded in penetrating far behind the German front lines.45

During an entire month, the weakened Soviet Army and Navy air forces had shown evidence of an effective striking capacity for raiding German ground troops. Soviet sources claim 104 tanks, 700 trucks, fifty-four armored cars, eight infantry battalions, ten motorcycle columns, ten bridges, forty’ artillery pieces, and twenty – four antiaircraft guns destroyed by the air forces in the southern sector during twenty days in October 1941. Nevertheless, the price paid for these achievements had been extremely high. Even if reinforcements poured in from all sides, the WS units in the region were worn down at a frightening pace.

With increasing demands from the Moscow sector, where the new German offensive had created a serious crisis, the defense of the Crimea lost out in priority. In mid-October it was evident that the Crimea could not hold out much longer. Hence, preparations for the de­fense of the vital port of Sevastopol were strengthened.

To Hitler and his generals, it was evident that they had miscalculated, not least about Soviet endurance and the geographical and nature-related limitations on war­fare in the Soviet heartland. Problems related to both these factors would grow to immense proportions dur­ing the following months.