This article or section should be merged with Siege of Sevastopol (1942)

Battle of Sevastopol
Conflict	World War II
Date	16 November 1941-4 July 1942
Place	Crimean Peninsula
Result	Soviet defeat
Combatants Germany Soviet Union Commanders Erich von Manstein STAVKA Strength 350,000+ 106,000 Casualties around 50,000 100,000+
Axis-Soviet War Barbarossa - Smolensk - Leningrad - Moscow - Sevastopol - Rzhev-Vyazma - 2nd Kharkov - Stalingrad - Uranus - Mars - Wintergewitter - Kursk - 3rd Kharkov - Bagration - Frühlingserwachen - Berlin - Halbe - Prague

The siege of Sevastopol' was a tactical victory for Germany, and a strategic victory for the Russians. It pinned down the valuable 11th Army from the drives on Moscow and Stalingrad, and even diverted the Germans' best artillery piece.

Fall 1941

In late September, 1941, the German Army Group South sent Erich von Manstein's Eleventh Army across the Perekop isthmus to the Crimean Peninsula to begin the siege of Sevastopol. By 16 November they had captured all of the peninsula other than the ancient port of Sevastopol, on the southern tip. The Wehrmacht was just beginning to settle in to an investment of the city as the Russians launched an amphibious invasion on the other end of the peninsula, on Christmas Day 1941. However, the Germans beat this off completely by the 18th of January, 1942.

Siege of Sevastopol'

After the Kerch-Feodisiya amphibious invasion in late December 1941 was beaten off, 11 Army settled in. The garrison at Sevastopol was made up of about 106,000 soldiers, bolstered by sailors that weren't allowed to leave the port. The Germans moved their largest artillery piece, the 31-and-a-half inch gun Gustav Gerat, which was nicknamed "Big Dora" by the army. The Wehrmacht began a five-day artillery barrage of the city, including toxic smoke to get the Russians out of their caves and bunkers. Immediately after that, the Thirtieth Panzer Corps and the Third Rumanian Army launched their assault on the secondary defensive line, on 7 June 1942.

Final Days

As the German 11 Army closed in, STAVKA ordered a few important generals and admirals onto submarines to escape the city. The soldiers manning the bunkers fought on even after their installations had been ripped apart by artillery fire. Toxic smoke (one of the few chemical-warfare instances in World War II) forced the troops out into the open, where fire from Panzers and the deadly artillery cut them down. Even with this impressive support, the Germans still took twenty-seven days to finish seizing the city proper. On 4 July, Sevastopol was secured, but Russian troops still held out in the caves around the peninsula until the ninth of July. However, this had been a great waste of time for the Germans: the assault on Stalingrad, Operation Blau, was just beginning, and the Sixth Army (under Friedrich von Paulus) would be on its own.