Invisible city
In the summer of 1942, the fate of the entire southern front of the USSR was being decided near Sevastopol. The battle unfolded around Sevastopol, a key port on the Black Sea. The attack on the city was led by one of the most talented and cruel German generals - Manstein.
He launched two terrible assaults on the resisting city. But they all failed. Sevastopol held out. From the sea, it was guarded by the power of 35 batteries. And on land, on the way of the German troops to the city was Champagne - an underground fortress city, inaccessible for penetration of German troops. The siege threatened to drag on, and this despite the complete military and numerical superiority of the Germans! But on the morning of June 28, the Champagne underground fortress took off and sank to the ground, burying a part of the SS Panzer Division under it. Soon the 35th battery also ceased to offer resistance, to which the Germans had not even been able to approach. Let Sevastopol be open. And soon the city was captured by the Germans and ruthlessly destroyed during the third and final assault.
But how and by whom was Champagne blown up? Why did the guns of the 35th battery become silent? Was it a military order or a betrayal? Sabotage or treason? What is now hidden behind the piles of twisted stone in the bowels of the Champagne labyrinths? What are the 600-meter depths of the 35th battery silent about? What did eyewitnesses of those terrible events see and observe? And why did Sevastopol fall? We will answer these and many other questions by penetrating into the very depths of the city's defensive fortresses. The program will feature unique underground and underwater filming, rare archival documents and eyewitness accounts of those terrible heroic days.
Why did Sevastopol fall from the forty-second?
Why did the Germans occupy Crimea in November 1941 in a couple of weeks, and Sevastopol fell in June 1942? Moreover, contrary to the assertions of the Sovinformburo, there was no evacuation, only the authorities flew away, and several dozen people reached the shores of the Caucasus on watercraft located in Sevastopol. About one hundred thousand soldiers were left to fend for themselves.
The answer to this question has been given in dozens of books by Soviet and Russian authors. The Germans had a colossal advantage in tanks, artillery and aviation. Monographs of venerable military historians literally dazzle with the names of infantry divisions and brigades, and the enemy's tanks, it turns out, walked across the Crimea without any organization, like buffalo, huddled in herds of 200-400 pieces.
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After "perestroika", military historians prefer to keep quiet about thousands of German tanks, but they prove quite convincingly, with numbers and names of ships, that by May 1942 the German aviation managed to actually blockade Sevastopol, the losses in the tonnage of Soviet transport ships were extremely high, and Sevastopol was left without food, liquid fuel, and most importantly - no ammunition.
And in 2005, the publishing house "AST" published a book by Alexander Shirokorad "The Battle for the Black Sea", where it was proved with figures and references to both German and previously secret Soviet documents that the Germans had no tanks in Crimea at all! Except, of course, two divisions of assault 75-mm self-propelled guns on the chassis of the T-III tank. In addition, in April 1942, the 22nd Panzer Division, consisting of 176 tanks, was delivered to the Crimea, but it operated only on the Kerch Peninsula, where the Red Army had over 500 tanks. And immediately after the capture of Kerch, the 22nd Panzer Division was sent from 21 to 24 May to the 17th Army, which was advancing in the Caucasus.
In May 1942, 1520 captured KV-1 and French S-35 tanks were sent to Sevastopol. Thus, the superiority in tanks was on the Soviet side. It was the same with artillery. The Red Army men and sailors really showed miracles of fortitude and heroism. So why did Sevastopol fall?
The fact is that since the 1920s, the core of the Soviet naval doctrine was the defense of the main naval bases from the superior forces of the Anglo-French fleet. Therefore, for almost 20 years, our fleet has been practicing combat in a mine-artillery position. Thousands of mines were to be placed around the bases, and after blowing up some of the enemy's ships, our ships and planes were to counterattack the foe.
Alas, by June 1941 there was no such enemy on the Black Sea and could not be. The operetta Romanian fleet (4 destroyers and one submarine) did not pose a serious threat and did not leave its territorial waters until the fall of Sevastopol.
The British pounded the Italians thoroughly in the port of Taranto, at Cape Matapan and in other places. British battleships shelled Italian cities with impunity. The Italian fleet, despite the help of the Germans, could not cope with the transport of troops and ammunition to North Africa, which was the main reason for the defeat of Rommel's army.
I'm not even talking about the fact that from the very beginning of the war, Turkey declared its firm neutrality and until May 1944 did not allow a single warship of the warring parties through its straits. In addition, not a single German surface ship was able to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar under the guns of a British fortress. And more than two dozen German and Italian submarines went to the bottom while trying to cross Gibraltar.
Nevertheless, the People's Commissar of the Navy stubbornly believed that the Italian fleet must invade the Black Sea. And on June 22, 1941, the Black Sea Fleet entered the battle with the Italian. In the first two months of the war, at least two dozen Italian and German submarines were sunk, our boats attacked Italian ships several times, and coastal batteries opened fire on the Italians. Alas, the Duce fleet turned out to be virtual.
Worst of all, on orders from Moscow, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Oktyabrsky, placed thousands of mines off the southern coast of Crimea, leaving three narrow fairways for the passage of his ships. It was necessary to pass along two fairways (the third was not used) only during daylight hours and accompanied by Sevastopol minesweepers.
Without mines, a cruiser or destroyer could come to Sevastopol, unload and leave in the dark, fortunately in 1941-1942. German aviation did not have onboard radars and did not act on ships at night. And because of the mines, the transit time of ships and transport vessels from Novorossiysk to Sevastopol increased 2-4 times. In some cases, in bad weather, the ships could not pass the narrow channel at all and went back. I'm not even talking about the fact that over twenty warships and transports of the Black Sea Fleet were blown up by their mines near Sevastopol.
Moreover, Admiral Oktyabrsky, again by order of the People's Commissar Kuznetsov, in November-early December 1941, removed from Sevastopol about half of the ammunition (more than 8 thousand tons), half of the anti-aircraft artillery, almost all the medical personnel, etc. According to the Naval Art Department, there was no need to export artillery ammunition. So, during the entire war, our fleet shot and lost only 20.6% of 305-mm shells, 18.6% of 180-mm shells, 25.9% of 152-mm shells for Kane's cannons from the total number of available ammunition. The rear bases were literally packed with naval ammunition. For example, the ammunition brought to Batum lay in piles on the berths right up to May 1942.
By the beginning of 1942, there really was a shortage of transport ships on the Black Sea. But why then did the command of the Black Sea Fleet take out of the game the five largest transport ships? So, at the beginning of November 1941, the disarmament of the auxiliary cruiser (former icebreaker) Mikoyan began, and at the end of the same month, Mikoyan, together with the tankers Sakhalin, Tuapse and Varlaam Avanesov, crossed the Bosphorus and went to the Mediterranean sea. The best passenger liner "Svaneti" passed the Bosphorus on June 22, 1941, returning from a passenger flight to the Middle East. And “someone” decided to turn it into a floating branch of the Lubyanka. As a result, the liner stood in Istanbul until February 21, 1942. It is curious that he went to his native shores 22 hours before the unsuccessful attempt on the life of the German ambassador von Papen by the NKVD agents in Ankara. Presumably this is a coincidence?
Naturally, Shirokorad's book aroused the anger and indignation of official historians. And so in the October issue (2007) "Voenno-istoricheskiy Zhurnal" gave birth to two fiery reviews: "Pseudoscientific studies of military operations in the Northern Black Sea region" by Lieutenant Colonel A. V. Lobanov and "Chronicle diluted with anecdotes with numerous errors and inaccuracies" by the head of the research historical group of the Navy, Captain 1st Rank E. G. Machikin.
The essence of the last review is obvious: he took, they say, Shirokorad secret chronicle of hostilities, inserted several anecdotes about the virtual Italian fleet, the removal of ammunition, etc., and that's it. Lobanov's review is much more interesting.
On a bright July night in 1941, the battleships Scharnhost, Gneisenau and the cruiser Prince Eugene stealthily left the French port of Brest from the French port of Brest, and moved to the distant African port of Dakar, where they took the French battleship Richelieu, damaged by the British, into tow, and then went back north. Without loss, they went under the muzzles of the giant cannons of the British fortress of Gibraltar into the warm Mediterranean Sea. The entire personnel of the British Navy took a month's leave on this occasion. The battle cruiser Strasbourg came out to join the squadron from Toulon. When they met the German ships, the French sailors lined up on the deck and sang in unison: "Deutschland, Deutschland Hubert Alles." Then the entire friendly company, welcomed by the Turkish authorities, passed the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus and moved to Sevastopol.
However, Admiral Oktyabrsky foresaw this action and set mines near Sevastopol. Upon learning of this, Admirals Raeder and Darlan burst into tears of grief and canceled their villainous plan of attack on our hero city.
"What nonsense!" - the reader will exclaim. Sorry, I just popularly expounded part of Lobanov's article: “Yes, there were no enemy ships near the Sevastopol Bay, but in Brest (France) there were the German battleships Scharnhost, Gneisenau and the cruiser Prince Eugen, whose breakthrough through Gibraltar into the Mediterranean the sea and further through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to the Black was by no means a fantastic option. These ships could have been supported by the battle cruiser Strasbourg, the battleship Richelieu and the heavy cruisers at the disposal of the French Vichy government."
It is good that this magazine is not read in France. There, members of the Strasbourg team are considered national heroes. They sank their ship in November 1942 at Toulon, when the Germans captured southern France. Otherwise, our diplomats would have to apologize for this passage.
It would be too silly to dispute the facts about the removal of ammunition, since the links to official sources are given. And so Lobanov began to prove that the ammunition removed from Sevastopol did not fit the guns that defended the city. In fact, standard shells were exported to the available guns, and the list of types of shells and guns is given in my book in many places. Lobanov found fault with my statement that the overwhelming majority of types of domestic shells were interchangeable. He writes with sarcasm: "Under no circumstances can 122-mm cannons use howitzer shells of the same caliber, and 122-mm howitzers cannon." But Lobanov ran into the wrong place. For many years I have been engaged in the interchangeability of domestic artillery supplies. I take from the shelf the first book I came across "152-mm howitzer-gun mod. 1937 and 122 mm gun mod. 1931/37 g. Service Manual "(Moscow: Military Publishing House of the USSR Ministry of Defense, 1957). And on page 266 in the table of standard shots for the 122-mm cannon mod. 1931/37, along with cannon shells of the OF-471 type, I see howitzer shells of the OF-462 type, and in the table of standard rounds of 152-mm howitzer-cannon arr. 1937 I see OF-540 cannon grenades and next to them - OF-530 howitzer grenades and G-530 concrete-piercing howitzer shells. And so it was with all domestic howitzers and guns. By the way, during the war, 152-mm howitzers M-10 and D-1 fired at the armor targets with 152-mm semi-armor-piercing shells mod. 1928, the same ones that fired from Kane's 152-mm cannons. Along with cannon shells of the OF-471 type, I see howitzer shells of the OF-462 type, and in the table of standard rounds of 152-mm howitzer-guns mod. 1937 I see OF-540 cannon grenades and next to them - OF-530 howitzer grenades and G-530 concrete-piercing howitzer shells. And so it was with all domestic howitzers and guns. By the way, during the war, 152-mm howitzers M-10 and D-1 fired at the armor targets with 152-mm semi-armor-piercing shells mod. 1928, the same ones that fired from Kane's 152-mm cannons. Along with cannon shells of the OF-471 type, I see howitzer shells of the OF-462 type, and in the table of standard rounds of 152-mm howitzer-guns mod. 1937 I see OF-540 cannon grenades and next to them - OF-530 howitzer grenades and G-530 concrete-piercing howitzer shells. And so it was with all domestic howitzers and guns. By the way, during the war, 152-mm howitzers M-10 and D-1 fired at the armor targets with 152-mm semi-armor-piercing shells mod. 1928, the same ones that fired from Kane's 152-mm cannons.of which were fired from Kane's 152-mm cannons.of which were fired from Kane's 152-mm cannons.
To fire shells from another artillery system of the same caliber, it was only necessary to turn the page in the corresponding Table of Shooting, approved by the GAU, and in accordance with the instructions in the tables, one should either not change anything, or, in extreme cases, remove one bunch of powder from the cartridge case and change the angle elevation for several minutes compared to the installation of a sight for a standard projectile.
From 1922 to 1941, Russian artillerymen, highly qualified people, conducted thousands of firing and compiled hundreds of firing tables, instructions and other documents in order to ensure almost complete interchangeability of shells that were in the warehouses of the Red Army and the Navy. But, unfortunately, even in 1941 we had too many incompetent lieutenant colonels. Now the problem of interchangeability of shells in the Russian army is no less acute than in 1941-1942.
The publication in VIZH is not the first abusive review of Shirokorad's books. They all flatter me in one thing: they do not point fingers at other publications. They do not fulfill the main task of the critic - "a pilot in the sea of books" - not only to point out the shortcomings of the book, but also to show the reader much more successful publications on the same topic. The essence of such reviews was expressed by one venerable military historian: "It's scary to think if Shirokorad's books fall into the hands of the reader, the reader must be patient and wait for competent authors to write ideologically literate publications."
So, the shelves of bookstores are bursting with military history literature, and I have nothing to set as an example. After that, all that remains is to say: "Thank you very much, gentlemen critics!"
Andrey Kleshnev