Yevpatoria landing: anniversary of the heroic tragedy
January 5 marked the 80th anniversary of one of the most tragic, but also the most heroic episodes of the battle for Crimea - the landing of the Evpatoria landing.
Who in the USSR did not know the song “Black Pea Jackets”, dedicated to the feat of Soviet soldiers? But in our time, there have been a lot of armchair experts and smart minnows, imposingly arguing how easily the Soviet command supposedly sent almost a thousand people to slaughter in a senseless landing, which ended in their death and mass executions of civilians by angry Germans.
We will try to explain why the command decided to carry out a desperate landing from the sea on Yevpatoria occupied by the Germans and Romanians and why the feat of the marines, the operational security group, intelligence officers, prisoners of war and residents of Yevpatoria, who courageously and selflessly held the city for three days, was not in vain.
Previous events
As a result of the successful repulsion of the German offensive and the first major victory of the Red Army near Moscow, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Headquarters decided to launch a large-scale offensive on all fronts, from Leningrad to the Black Sea, with the goal of achieving a turning point in the war already in 1942.
As for the Crimea, the successfully carried out Kerch-Feodosia landing operation, during which the Kerch Peninsula was liberated and by the first days of January 1942, Soviet divisions advanced deep into the Crimea, it was decided to squeeze Manstein’s divisions, pulled towards Sevastopol, from three sides, thereby Moreover, the Germans were unable to take the city in a swoop in October-November 1941.
The Soviet troops were supposed to deliver the main blow to the enemy from the territory of Taman. In other regions of Crimea, the forces of the Germans and Romanians were weakened, which is why it was decided to use this circumstance for landing troops, in order to create bridgeheads for the further liberation of Crimea, in Evpatoria, Sudak, Alushta, Yalta, Evpatoria.
A month earlier, on December 5-6, 1941, the first amphibious assault from two boats was landed in Yevpatoria, which made a lot of noise, since the German-Romanian garrison of the city did not expect danger from the sea and was very relaxed.
Participants of the Evpatoria landing.
The paratroopers managed to escape in the morning, capturing valuable documents for German agents in the police and gendarmerie departments, taking 12 “tongues”, and even freeing more than a hundred Soviet prisoners of war. During the raid, the Passenger Pier was burned, which was needed just a month later.
The successful raid of the Marines alerted the Germans, forcing them to strengthen the garrison, mine the approaches to the most vulnerable objects and organize an extensive surveillance network.
The Evpatoria operation was assigned to the command of the Sevastopol defensive region. It was taken into account that the second landing would be landed with the onset of winter storms. This circumstance had both positive and negative aspects.
It was assumed that the German-Romanian garrison of Yevpatoria, which had increased its vigilance, would not wait for a strike from the sea. On the other hand, it will be extremely difficult to support a landing force from the sea and from the air in stormy weather.
On January 2, the Supreme High Command Headquarters approved a plan for landing amphibious assault forces in the designated areas of Crimea, and on January 5, a battalion of marines - 553 people under the command of Lieutenant Commander G. Buzinov - set out from besieged Sevastopol to land on Yevpatoriya. The landing party included a company of fleet reconnaissance officers - 60 people under the command of Captain V. Topchiev. The battalion of sailors was also reinforced by a group of the intelligence department of the Black Sea Fleet, an operational security group of the NKVD, and a platoon of sappers of the Separate Primorsky Army. Along with the fighters, party workers, city and district police officers and NKVD officers went to the landing to restore Soviet power in the liberated city.
In total, 733 people took part in the landing. They were placed on the minesweeper "Vzryvatel", the sea tug SP-14 and seven hunting boats.
Start of operation
At about 3 o'clock in the morning the landing began. And if the landing on Khlebnaya Pier went more or less smoothly, then the situation near the Passenger Pier, which was burned by the previous landing, immediately began to develop not in favor of the Marines.
The Germans and Romanians discovered the ships on the way and illuminated them with searchlights, opening targeted mine and artillery fire. The paratroopers had to jump straight into the icy water. About fifty people were killed and wounded during the landing. Among the dead is the landing commander N. Buslaev.
Disembarkation at Passenger Pier.
Having landed the assault groups, the ships retreated to the sea in order to support the landing force with their fire and disorganize the enemy’s defenses.
A company of marines under the command of Lieutenant Ya. Shustov managed to break into the city and free about five hundred Soviet prisoners of war in the area of the meat processing plant. The liberated people were so weakened that only two hundred people were able to support the paratroopers, of whom Lieutenant Shustov formed a separate detachment “All against Hitler.”
With the start of the battle, an uprising broke out in the city - residents of the city, who had imbibed the “new order” in just a few months of occupation, joined the landing.
The landing headquarters moved to the Crimea Hotel, recaptured from the enemy, located on Revolution Street, opposite the Passenger Pier.
After the war, a monument to the heroic sailors of the Evpatoria landing was erected on this site.
The occupation garrison of Yevpatoria failed to repel the rapid advance of the paratroopers, and soon the soldiers of the Romanian artillery regiment, dug in near the Zagotzerno office, under the pressure of Lieutenant Shustov’s company, trembled and ran, abandoning their guns and ammunition. Around the same time, Litovchuk’s group captured an artillery battery at Cape Karantiny.
The operational security group did not sleep either. Her tasks included collecting documents from the SD, Feldgendarmerie, secret field police, as well as capturing or destroying enemy agents. The documents captured by the first landing served as a guide.
On the list of collaborators whom the operative security group should have captured or destroyed was a lady named Zhukovskaya, who turned out to be German with the last name Boss. From the moment of the occupation, the former dispatcher of the motor depot became the deputy head of the Evpatoria department of the SD and, knowing the city and its residents very well, was involved in the arrests, torture and executions of patriots.
Unfortunately, even before the landing began, the Germans transferred “valuable personnel” to work in Berlin, and after the war, Zhukovskaya-Boss found refuge in distant Australia and even, as they say, “changed her shoes” to become a nun.
Traitors and punishers from the local scum, together with their German owners, took refuge in one of the buildings of the Udarnik boarding house and fought with the despair of suicide bombers. It had to be cleared in close combat, turning into hand-to-hand combat.
Germans on the streets of Evpatoria.
However, already at 8 o’clock in the morning the situation in the city changed dramatically. The command of the 11th Wehrmacht Army raised the alarm and sent reinforcements against the landing: first, a combined battalion from the Evpatoria area (infantrymen, railway troops, a battery of anti-aircraft guns with two searchlight installations), then the reconnaissance battalion of the 22nd Infantry Division arrived in Evpatoria, 70 105st engineer battalion and several German and Romanian artillery batteries. Manstein sent the 72th Infantry Regiment of the XNUMXnd Infantry Division, transported by vehicles from near Balaklava, to suppress the landing and the rebels.
A German soldier looks at the minesweeper “Vzryvatel” abandoned by the sea.
Thus, the Germans sent five punitive forces against each participant in the landing.
At 11 am, radio contact with the landing force was lost, and the situation became critical. The storm that broke out did not allow the ships that left Sevastopol - a destroyer, a minesweeper and four boats - to break through to the rescue of the paratroopers.
Evpatoria landing. Street fighting.
To suppress the landing, the Germans brought up aviation already in the afternoon. Due to the fact that the city battles took place in close contact between the warring parties, the Nazis did not dare to bomb Yevpatoria, but struck at the ships. During the air raid, the boat MO-041, left at the pier for communications, was damaged, on which the boat commander, Lieutenant I. I. Chulkov, and two Red Navy men were killed, and another crew member was mortally wounded. As a result, MO-041 was forced to leave for Sevastopol.
On January 6, 1942, the destroyer “Smyshleny” was sent to Yevpatoria, but it was unable to establish contact with the landing party, since it was fired at from the shore by tanks, was damaged and was forced to return.
On January 7, at night, the leader “Tashkent” with a reconnaissance group on board and two boats of the “big hunter” type with a landing party of 400 people were sent to Yevpatoria. As the ships approached the pier, German tanks appeared on the embankment and opened fire on the Tashkent approaching the shore. Having fired at the tanks from the turret guns, the Tashkent retreated to the sea.
The sailors on the ships could only watch the tragedy unfold from the sidelines. Not far from the pier, flames burst into the sky - it was the Crimea Hotel, the temporary headquarters of the battalion, that was burning. And those last who were still alive - the sailors of Litovchuk’s group - also saw their helpless rescuers.
I'm dying, but I'm not giving up
Yevpatoria was littered with the bodies of sailors, former prisoners of war and townspeople who had taken up arms; for three days no one removed the corpses: the Nazis banned it on pain of death.
The fighting in the city took place for every house and continued for three days. A small group of paratroopers broke through the German battle formations, managed to reach the quarries and continued to fight for some time.
According to historians, out of the entire Evpatoria landing, a little more than 40 people were able to escape from the city and join the partisan detachments.
Memorial plaque on the wall of the city hospital. To the dead doctors and paratroopers.
The lead ship, the minesweeper “Vzryvatel”, from which the troops landed, died. The Nazis concentrated artillery fire on it. The ship, filled to capacity with the wounded, ran aground. Less than a third of the crew, about 30 people, remained alive. Several times the Germans offered to surrender, the sailors responded with machine gun fire. Lieutenant-Commander Tryastsyn ordered the minesweeper to be blown up, but they all failed to die together: there was no ammunition left.
Monument to the Yevpatoria landing on the site where the minesweeper “Vzryvatel” was thrown to the sea.
The lieutenant commander was seriously wounded in the legs. He called the boatswain, Odessa resident Lev Etingof, ordering him to bring him an anti-tank grenade. Etingof brought a grenade and stood next to the commander. The radio operator shot himself in the cockpit. The paramedic grabbed a pistol and rushed ashore towards the Germans.
Red Navy sailor Ivan Klimenko, who participated in marathon swims before the war, had a note about the fate of the minesweeper placed in his belt in his cylinder, and he rushed into the icy water to swim to Sevastopol.
Ivan Klimenko swam about 40 km through the stormy sea and was picked up by a Soviet ship. He was saved from hypothermia by the last remedy known to sailors: if you smear yourself with fuel oil and put on pants and a uniform, then this will be at least some protection from the cold.
Seeing that the “Fuse” showed no signs of life, the Nazis decided that everyone on the ship had died. The Germans managed to get close and even climb onto the minesweeper, but the last defenders of the “Fuse” killed the enemy boarding team in hand-to-hand combat. In response, German tanks began to finish off the ship at point-blank range. When the holds turned into a massacre, when all the cartridges ran out, the last five sailors of the crew rushed into the sea...
In the tragic days of the Evpatoria landing, not only the military, but also civilians showed courage and heroism.
On the morning of January 7, the Germans broke into the city hospital, where there were eighteen wounded sailors. Almost all of them were shot. Only the seriously wounded sailor Mikhail Kurnosov managed to escape, whom the paramedics managed to hide in the linen room.
Mikhail Kurnosov witnessed the reprisals of punitive forces against the medical staff of the hospital - the head physician of Balakhchi, the surgeon Glitsos and the remaining unknown orderly, who were trying to intercede for the wounded. They were shot right at the hospital gates.
A reconnaissance group of 33 people, under the command of battalion commissar Latyshev, landed at the Evpatoria lighthouse by submarine M-13 and established that the landing party was completely destroyed. The storm that broke out did not allow the submarine and the patrolman accompanying it to pick up the reconnaissance group.
For six days, a handful of scouts defended the last stronghold of Soviet land - the Evpatoria lighthouse. On January 14, Latyshev conveyed his last words to Sevastopol: “We are blowing ourselves up with our own grenades, goodbye...”
For helping the landing and the uprising, the Germans shot more than six thousand civilians on Krasnaya Gorka in the very first days after the final suppression of the landing. And in total, 12640 civilians were shot at this place - old people, women, children. Almost a third of the pre-war population of Evpatoria.
Memorial on Krasnaya Gorka in Evpatoria.
One of the landing participants, senior lieutenant A.I. Galushkin, managed to take refuge, create an underground group of local residents and take revenge on the invaders for four months before he was discovered by SD agents. On May 7, 1942, the house in which the brave sailor was located was surrounded. Senior Lieutenant Galushkin entered the battle and died while firing back from a machine gun.
Several more paratroopers managed to get out of the city and join the partisan detachments of the Crimea. A group of sixty (!) sailors hid for a whole day on Russkaya Street, in house No. 4. They were sheltered by two residents of the house. Praskovya Perekrestenko has a six-year-old son and elderly parents, Maria Glushko has a nine-year-old daughter. But the young women of the two hid the paratroopers in the rooms, in the attic, in the barn. Praskovya’s sister Maria Lyutkevich brought gauze and began to help the wounded. Trooper Rovensky was wounded in the left eye, and the women removed the fragment with scissors.
In the morning the Germans came to Russkaya. The women realized it in time, managing to draw a cross on the gate and write: “Cholera!”
With the onset of a new night, the paratroopers split into small groups and took different routes to Sevastopol. All groups died along the way, except one. Litovchuk, Lavrukhin, Zadvernyuk and Vedernikov managed to walk 300 kilometers through territory occupied by the enemy and reach their own.
Sailor Ivan Klimenko, who rushed into the stormy January sea with a report, was picked up unconscious by our patrolman off the coast of Nikolaevka. The heroic sailor was taken to the hospital, regained consciousness and was even interviewed by the security officer Galkin. However, everything he experienced turned out to be beyond human strength: Ivan Klimenko died in the hospital.
Summing up
The tragedy of the Evpatoria landing cannot be considered in isolation from the situation along the entire front in early January 1942, where a wide offensive was being prepared. The Supreme High Command headquarters did everything possible to ease the situation around besieged Sevastopol and the divisions in the Kerch Peninsula area, from which the Crimean Front was later formed.
The landing in Sudak, at about the same time, ended in no less tragedy. However, our losses were not in vain. The enemy paid exorbitantly for the death of Soviet paratroopers, his manpower and equipment melted away, and his morale was depressed.
Manstein (at that time - Colonel General) arrived for the funeral in Yevpatoria.
Historians cite another little-known fact in favor of the landing. It turns out that during the retreat, in the vicinity of Yevpatoria, many Red Army soldiers from the defeated territorial divisions were hiding from the Germans. The SOR command reasonably believed that the landing force would be able to use these people as an additional reserve. The calculation was based on them, as well as on the local underground.
The Evpatoria landing is another contribution to the overall Victory, made in the most difficult time for the country - in the initial period of the war.
The loss of Crimea, which has enormous strategic importance, meant that the Germans turned it into an aircraft carrier and a springboard for the development of the summer offensive on the Volga and the Caucasus, which in fact happened.
Traces of fighting on the facade of a house near the seaport, specially left as a reminder.
We should not forget that the landing caused an uprising of the residents of Yevpatoria - the first mass uprising in the rear of the Nazi occupiers, long before similar events in the Warsaw ghetto. And for this alone, Evpatoria deserves to become another city of Russian military glory.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.