http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/09.htm
September 9th, 1941
GERMANY: The Wehrmacht is getting help from a group of allies in its assault on Russia. Mussolini has sent an expeditionary corps, the Romanian army is engaged in the drive on Odessa, the Hungarians are supporting the thrust through the Ukraine and Franco has sent a contingent of Spanish “volunteers”. The Slovaks too, have soldiers fighting for the Germans, and volunteers from Holland, Denmark, Belgium and Norway have been formed into legions of the Wehrmacht. The Finns are a disappointment to the Germans, doing no more than holding the northern line round besieged Leningrad.
U-162 is commissioned.
U-702 chief engineer killed during an accident in Kiel. The boat was undergoing trials at the time. (Dave Shirlaw)
FINLAND: The Finnish advance in Karelian Isthmus is stopped. The troops have reached the outermost defences of Leningrad and dig into defence. Three years of trench warfare follows here, until the Soviet attack in June 1944.
Meanwhile the Karelian Army advances into eastern Karelia north of Lake Ladoga. The first signs of war weariness are already showing in the men. There have been instances of men declining to follow orders to cross the pre-1939 border; the common opinion is that the war is fought to reconquer the territory lost in the Winter War, not to annex new ‘living space’ from east. However, the majority of men are content with grumbling, and the serious cases of insubordination are few.
The official explanation for crossing the old border is to get as short lines of defence as possible. Tactically this is true, but the Finnish leadership is already discussing what shape the post-war ‘Greater Finland’ shall take. The most favoured option is the so-called ‘border of three isthmuses’: Karelian Isthmus (between Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga), Onega Isthmus (between Lakes Ladoga and Onega) and the isthmus between Lake Onega and White Sea, of which English name I don’t have a clue (”Maaseln Kannas” is the Finnish name). The status of Kola Peninsula is still unclear; whether is will be claimed by Finland or Germany has not been decided yet.
If all this sounds preposterous, well, there were also some nutcases who thought that the Ural Mountains were Finland’s ‘natural’ eastern border.
One wonders what these people (who were very few and belonged to the lunatic ultra-right-wing fringe) would have done with the 150 million-strong Russian minority... No-one in the Finnish military or political leadership entertained this notion. (Mikko Härmeinen)
U.S.S.R.: A volunteer Spanish “Spanish Division” arrives on the Leningrad Front to begin service with German forces against the Soviet Union.
Recon elements of Generalleutnant Walter Model’s 3 Pz.Div. (XXIV Pz.K.) discovered a gap in Soviet defenses between Konotop and Baturin.
ROMANIA: Marshall Ion Antonescu fires the commander of the 4th Army, General Cuiperca. It comes after the first two rounds of bloody fighting, in which the Romanians failed to completely breach the Russian defences (backed up by prodigious quantities of artillery and mortar fire) at Odessa. Cuiperca frankly reported to Antonescu that his troops lacked the strength, both physically and in terms of morale, to successfully resume the assault. Antonescu, known for his frank speaking himself in a command culture where direct talk was often perceived as impolite and insulting, did not respond well to this analysis.
Antonescu claims that Cuiperca lacks “faith in the battle capacity of the Romanian Army.” Antonescu has brought in his own defence Minister, Iacobici, to replace Cuiperca at 4th Army - a man considered one of the great academic brains of the Romanian staff. (Michael F. Yaklich)
ARCTIC OCEAN: In the Svalbard Islands in the Norwegian Sea, British, Canadian, and Norwegian troops land on Spitsbergen Island to destroy coal mines the Germans Nazis might use for fuel. (Jack McKillop)
IRAN: Tehran: Iran expels German and Italian “tourists” and diplomats. She accepts the Anglo-Soviet armistice terms. (Jack McKillop)
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: MacArthur complains to Grunert that the training of the mobilized Philippine troops is not going well.
Marshall advises MacArthur that he had “the highest priority” for supplies and for the filling of the “authorized defence reserve” of 50,000 men. (Marc Small)
CANADA: Minesweeper HMCS Port Hope laid down Toronto, Ontario.
Corvette HMCS Dunvegan commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.: The USN’s Bureau of Aeronautics requests that the National defence Research Committee and the Naval Research Laboratory to develop an interceptor radar suitable for installation in a single-engined, single-seat fighter, e.g., the F4U Corsair. (Jack McKillop)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-81 sinks SS Empire Springbuck in the 65 ship Convoy SC-42. (Dave Shirlaw)
The spearhead of the attack was formed by motor-cyclists and armored scout cars of the " Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler."
They were followed by an advanced formation of 73rd Infantry Division. Sturmbannführer [major] Meyer, who was driving with his leading company, searched the horizon through his binoculars. Nothing—no movement anywhere.
Forward. Von Büttner's motor-cycle platoon was moving along the coast towards Adamany, from where the ground should be visible to both sides of the Tartar Ditch. Suddenly, like ghosts, a few horsemen appeared on the horizon and instantly vanished again —Soviet scouts.
Caution was needed.
"Drive in open order!"
The silence was uncanny.
The riflemen in the side-cars were poised to leap out. The riders were hanging over to the side so as to jump off their machines all the more quickly.
It was shortly after 0600 hours. The motor-cycle detachment under Gruppenführer [ lieutenant-general] Westphal was carefully approaching the first houses of Preobrazhenka.
The village lay close by the main road from Berislav to Perekop. A flock of sheep was coming out of the village.
Westphal waved his arms at the shepherd. "Get your flock off the road, man— we're in a hurry!"
But the Tartar did not seem to understand. Or perhaps he did not want to? Westphal opened his throttle till the engine screamed and drove straight into the flock. The sheep scattered wildly and scampered off in panic. The shepherd shouted and sent his dogs after them. It was no use. The sheep ran off the road. A moment later the air was rent with thunder and lightning. The sheep were being blown to smithereens. The flock had run into a minefield.
As though this inferno of explosions and the bloodcurdling bleating of dying sheep were not enough, enemy artillery suddenly opened up. Shells were bursting outside and inside the village. The motor-cyclists dismounted and advanced towards Preobrazhenka along the Perekop road. Suddenly before them they saw a whole wall of fire. On the far side of the village, only a few hundred yards in front of the German spearheads, stood a Soviet armored train: it pumped its shells and machine-gun bursts straight into Meyer's and Stiefvater's companies.
The effect was terrible.
"Take cover!" The men lay pressed to the ground.
Machine-gun fire swept over their heads. But this fire was not coming from the armored train: it was coming from Russian riflemen concealed in well-camouflaged foxholes and trenches barely 50 yards in front of the Germans.
Sturmbannführer Meyer gave the order to withdraw from Preobrazhenka. His armored scout cars opened fire at the armored train with their 2-cm. guns, to enable the rest of the unit to withdraw under cover of smoke canisters. Meanwhile a 3.7-cm. anti-tank gun of Meyer's 2nd Company was hurriedly hauled forward and started shelling the train. But no sooner had a few rounds been fired than the gun received a direct hit. Bits of steel sailed through the air, and the crash of metal drowned the screams of the men.
Meyer meanwhile dodged through the village to its far end, accompanied by his runners. From there he could see the elaborate defenses of Perekop—trenches, barbed wire, concrete pillboxes. This, he realized, was not a position to be taken by a surprise coup.
Any further attempt would mean the end of his formation.
Gruppenführer Westphal, who had gone forward with him, suddenly shouted for a medical orderly. A shell had torn one of his arms off.
Scattered right and left were the dead and wounded of his group.
"We're getting out of here," Sturmbannführer Meyer repeated. He gave the signal for retreat. His runners passed on the order. Motorcycles came roaring up from behind and about-turned. Without stopping they snatched up their wounded or killed comrades into the side-cars and raced back. The scout cars put down a smoke-screen outside Preobrazhenka, to conceal the move from the enemy. Under cover of that smoke-screen Rottenführer [Non-commissioned rank] Helmut Balke made three more trips to the front to bring back the wounded. Meyer brought the last one back. He was Untersturmführer [lieutenant] Rehrl.
A shell-splinter had torn open his back. He died in the arms of his commander.
Eleventh Army's first attempt to burst into the Crimea by a coup de main with advanced units of its LIV Corps had failed.
An hour later Lieutenant-General Bieler, commanding 73rd Infantry Division, read a signal from Meyer and Stiefvater:
"Coup against Perekop impossible. Detailed account of engagement follows."
"Panzer Meyer" and Stiefvater were right. In front of the four-mile-wide exposed Perekop approach to the Crimea a system of defenses had been established in considerable depth. Its central feature was the "Tartar Ditch," a ditch 40 to 50 feet deep built in the fifteenth century, in the Turkish era, to protect the peninsula against the mainland. Five hundred years later it was to become a gigantic obstacle and dangerous trap for armor. To bypass it was impossible.
The fortifications extended from the saline swamp of the Sea of Azov on the one side to the Black Sea on the other. The door to the Crimean Peninsula was well barred.
On 17th September, when General von Manstein assumed command of Eleventh Army at Nikolayev, the great shipbuilding centre on the Black Sea, he instantly realized that with the forces at his disposal he could not simultaneously capture the Crimea and Rostov.
One or the other objective had to be set aside. But which of the two?
Manstein did not hesitate long.
The Crimea represented a permanent danger to the deep right flank of the entire German Eastern Front, since the Soviets were able to pump ever new forces into the peninsula from the south, across the sea. Moreover, in enemy hands the Crimea was also an airbase threatening the Rumanian oilfields. For that reason Manstein decided to give preference to the capture of the Crimea. On the Rostov front he merely wanted to maintain contact with the enemy forces dislodged at Antonovka.
Manstein's was a good plan. The LIV Corps under General Hansen was first of all to force the Perekop Isthmus by frontal attack. For this difficult task Hansen was assigned the entire artillery, sappers, and anti-aircraft units under Army control. In addition to his own two infantry divisions—the 73rd and the 46th—the 50th Infantry Division, a little farther to the rear, was likewise put under his command. It was a considerable striking force to tackle a defensive front only four miles wide.
Manstein, of course, was a sufficiently experienced commander to realize that with these forces he might be able to force the door to the Crimea, but not to conquer an area of 10,000 square miles, a territory nearly as large as Belgium, with its many powerful fortresses and strongpoints.
As a strategist with a regular General Staff background he therefore based the second phase of his operational plan on precision and luck. General Kübler's XLIX Mountain Corps and the SS Brigade " Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler " under Obergruppenführer [general] Dietrich were to be detached from the mainland front in the Dnieper bend the moment the break-through was accomplished and brought down in forced marches in order to advance, fan out, and occupy the whole of the Crimea.
The " Leibstandarte," magnificently equipped as it was with heavy weapons, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, self-propelled assault guns, motor-cycles, armored scout cars, and infantry carriers, stood a good chance of overtaking the retreating enemy and cutting him off from Sevastopol. It might then take this important coastal fortress in the south of the Crimea by a swift blow, before it was reinforced.
The Mountain Corps was to be employed in the Yayla mountains, which were up to 4800 ft. high; it was then to seize the Kerch Peninsula and from there, eventually, drive across the narrow space of water into the Kuban and on to the Caucasus.
This plan was not just a mirage. Manstein regarded it as realizable—provided always the enemy did not mount any surprise actions in the Nogay Steppe.
That was the risky aspect of Eleventh Army's operations. In order to concentrate his forces sufficiently for the capture of the Crimea, Manstein had to reduce his mainland forces to a minimum by detaching the " Leibstandarte " and the XLIX Mountain Corps.
General von Salmuth's XXX Corps, to which the 72nd and 22nd Infantry Divisions belonged, had to hold on its own the front in the Nogay Steppe, supported only by the Rumanian Third Army.
Manstein took this calculated risk because he had confidence in his combat-hardened divisions.
Next: The Conquest of the Crimea