7th June 1942
The Panzer General scenario is titled "Final Assault" and is dated 7th June 1942. The Germans called this final determined effort to take the city Operation Sturgeon.
The battle/siege of Sevastopol lasted 250 days, from 30th October 1941 to 4th July 1942, when the city finally fell to the combined German and Rumanian assault forces.
The Russians defended the city throughout with fanatical determination. Stavka had decided that if the city was to fall it would tie up as many German resources for as long as possible and be as costly as possible. The Russian commander, Admiral Yumashev exhorted his men "If Sevastopol is destined to fall it has to cost the Germans 100,000 men. If you force them to pay that price, your sacrifice will not be in vain".
Sevastopol was no easy city to take, being widely regarded as one of the strongest fortress cities in the world at the time. The Russian defenders had three lines of defence with the outer most being 6-8 miles from the port, consisting of a belt of strong points and minefields. The second line was peppered with multiple machine-gun nests and was anchored on steel and concrete fortifications. The final line utilized wide antitank ditches and yet more pillboxes.
The terrain was ideally suited to the static defences and additionally the Russians had several heavy forts along their lines. The biggest of these being the Gorky 1 which was 300 yards long and 40 deep and had 1000 men and women defenders in its 3 stories. It mounted 12 inch guns and posed a serious threat to the German forces. In addition the Russians had several large warships which provided ranged fire from their main armament. The Soviet battleship Parishskaya Kommuna was moored at the main port facility and proved to be a major thorn in the Germans side. The Germans were unable to sink her here but did manage to sink by air attack the Russian destroyer Svobodny on the 10th June and also repeated aerial attacks on the cruiser Kominten damaged her beyond repair.
In order to take the city the German commander, General von Manstein, had massed a huge assault force including a big concentration of artillery : 208 batteries with some 1300 guns in all. One of these was the huge rail gun nicknamed 'Dora' by the Germans. It had a total crew including security of 4120 men. The 1500 man gun crew took 20 minutes to reload the 31.5 inch monster which fired 5 ton HE shells and 9 ton AP shells. One AP shell took a lucky hit on an underground Russian ammunition depot. The shell bored through 90 foot of solid rock before exploding and leveling the depot!!
On 2nd June the Germans commenced their assault on the city with around the clock artillery and Luftwaffe bombing which lasted for 5 days. Von Manstein hoped this assault would crush many of the entrenched Soviet defences and clear the way for his follow-up ground assault expecting to meet weakened initial resistance only. However the Russian defenders were very much still in existence and gave the Germans a severe mauling.
The battle raged on with the Germans making slow progress having to deal with fanatical defenders who refused to give ground or surrender preferring to die taking as many Germans with them as possible.
An example of this was when the Germans finally knocked out the Maxim Gorky's 12 inch guns on the morning of the 17th June. The 1000 defenders fought on regardless and forced the Germans to root them out. The fight lasted all that day until late in the evening the remaining defenders sent a message to Soviet battle headquarters. It read simply "We're getting ready to blow ourselves up. Farewell". They did just that. By the time the Germans had cleared the complex there were only 50 Russians alive, all too severely wounded or unconscious and unable to move.
The German assault continued with the fall of the other remaining forts and the German forces closing on the last line of the Russian defences. Preparatory to the final drive von Manstein was determined to flatten every last building hoping to show the enemy that ".... they can not expect to exact a further toll of blood from us in house to house fighting".
The German guns opened up again and leveled all but a handful of buildings in Sevastopol forcing the remaining defenders to fall back to landsend on the Khersones Peninsula where many of the remaining defenders fought and died for the lost cause before the Germans finally eliminated all resistance and took the city on 4th July.
Stuka