Crimean campaign

Minich, leaving the Don army near Azov, by April 7 (18), 1736, reached Tsaritsynka, where he discovered that the troops were not yet ready to march on the Crimea. However, the war, too, had not yet been declared, and the battles near Azov were formally started by powers that were not at war with each other. Even when news of the siege of the Azov fortress reached Constantinople in early April, the Russian envoy Veshnyakov continued to be treated politely and, contrary to custom, they were not thrown into the Seven-Tower Castle. The reason for such "politeness" was the extremely unpleasant situation for the Ottomans on the Persian front. There, Turkey continued to suffer defeats, and the warlike and energetic Kuli Khan officially became the head of Persia, who finally removed both Shah Tahmasp and his infant son Abbas from power, and began to rule under the name of Nadir Shah.

Veshnyakov, seeing the weakness of the Ottoman Empire, continued to encourage St. Petersburg to act decisively. “I will boldly and truly convey,” he wrote to the capital, “that in Turkey there are neither political leaders nor military leaders .... Everything is in terrible disorder and, at the slightest disaster, will be on the edge of the abyss. Fear of the Turks rests on one legend, for now the Turks are completely different than they were before: how much they were previously inspired by the spirit of glory and ferocity, they are now so cowardly and timid, everyone seems to foresee the end of their illegal power .... The Tatars, knowing everything it is now, as they say here, that the loyalty of the Porte is beginning to waver. As for the Christian subjects, the Turks fear that everyone will revolt as soon as the Russian troops approach the borders. The local Greeks of Constantinople are mostly idlers, having neither faith nor law, their main interest is money, and they hate us more than the Turks themselves, but the Greeks of the region and even more Bulgarians, Volokhi, Moldavians and others care so much about getting rid of their Turkish tyranny and so strongly devoted to Russia that at the first chance of life they will not spare Your Imperial Majesty as a trusted savior. The Turks know all this.”

In early April, Minich sent a small detachment of infantry from Tsarichanka to the Samara River, led by Lieutenant Bolotov, to reconnoiter the area. The cavalry detachment of Colonel Lesevitsky received the same order. The reconnaissance detachments also had to establish "flying mail posts" and constantly report to Tsarichanka about possible enemy movements. Hurrying with the start of the campaign, the field marshal decided to lead the troops to Samara in five columns, sending them as soon as they were ready. The time factor played a big role, it was impossible to let the enemy strengthen his positions and transfer reinforcements to the Crimea.

On April 11 (22), the first column under the command of Major General Spiegel set out from Tsarichanka, it included four infantry and two dragoon regiments. The next day, on April 12 (23), 1736, Osterman sent a letter to the Turkish vizier, which read: the security of the state and subjects, are forced to move their troops against the Turks. War was finally declared.

On April 13, the Devitz column began to move with one infantry and three dragoon regiments. On April 14, a column of Lieutenant General Leontiev set off on a campaign: six regular regiments and 10 thousand people of the Land Militia. On April 17, the column of the Prince of Hesse-Homburg launched an offensive: one infantry, three dragoon regiments, field artillery, Chuguev and Little Russian Cossacks. On April 19, a column of Major General Repnin set out: four infantry and one dragoon regiments. All other regiments of the Dnieper army also had to be drawn to Tsarichanka, they were entrusted with the protection of communications and transports with provisions and other supplies. The regiments stationed on the Don and Donets were ordered to go independently to the Samara River. Four thousand Don Cossacks going on a campaign also went from the Don separately from other troops, with whom they were supposed to meet already at Kamenny Zaton.

On April 14 (25), Spiegel's vanguard went to the Samara River and built two wooden and two pontoon bridges across it. Having crossed the river, two days later, the detachment stopped, and the soldiers began the construction of two strongholds. One of them was erected at the confluence of Samara with the Dnieper, and the other - on Samara itself, on the site of the ancient Bogoroditskaya fortress. For the construction of the first, Ust-Samarsk fortification, an older fortress located here was used. It was surrounded by an extensive earthen fence, under the protection of which the barracks, officers' apartments and the infirmary were located. Two more fortifications on a height to the east of the fortress. This entire defensive system, from the Samara River to the Dnieper, which was open to enemy cavalry, had additional protection in the form of a line of slingshots and a palisade. Colonel Chicherin was appointed commandant of the Ust-Samarsk fortification. The Bogoroditsky fortress was surrounded on all sides by a high earthen rampart, and rows of slingshots were placed on the old rampart proper.

On April 19, Spiegel's column went on, and to replace it, Leontiev's columns and, a day later, the Prince of Hesse-Homburg arrived in Samara. On April 22, Repnin's column approached the river. So the columns succeeded each other and moved forward in a coordinated manner, creating strongholds and warehouses-shops along the way. With the passage through Samara, the Dnieper army entered enemy territory, so Minich stepped up his precautions. Each column had the opportunity to support the neighboring one; slingshots were always set up at the halts or a Wagenburg was built from wagons. However, initially there was no news of the enemy. The main concern of the soldiers was marching and building fortifications. Major General Spiegel reported on April 20: “And as in considerable marches, it is very difficult for people in work and crossings, because during the day they march, but at night they work and have such work that people can hardly walk even in infantry regiments.”

On April 26, 1736, Munnich personally arrived at Spiegel's vanguard, which was three days' journey from Kamenny Zaton. Gradually, other groups were drawn up. By May 4, under the command of the field marshal, on the right bank of the Belozerka River, 10 dragoon and 15 infantry regiments (more than 28 thousand people), 10 thousand people of the Land Militia, 3 thousand Zaporozhye Cossacks, 13 thousand Little Russian Cossacks, hussars, Sloboda and Chuguev Cossacks gathered . In total, over 58 thousand people. A military council was held in Kamenny Zaton, which was supposed to decide which way to go to the Crimea: directly across the steppe or along the banks of the Dnieper through Kyzy-Kermen. We chose the second option.

On May 4 (15), the vanguard of the Russian army set out from the Belozerka River on a further campaign. General Spiegel was still in command of the vanguard. The next day, the main forces under the command of the Prince of Hesse-Homburg moved forward. Field Marshal Munnich rode with them. In addition, a rearguard under the command of Major General Hein was allocated to protect the rear. A convoy was formed to deliver supplies to the army, and a large detachment of Lieutenant Colonel Frint was assigned to protect it.

On May 7 (18) the Russian avant-garde reached Kyzy-Kermen. A strong stronghold was also erected here. The soldiers built a powerful retrashement, reinforced from the side of the steppe by six redoubts, which stretched for 33 km. Ten more redoubts were built between Belozersky and Kyzy-Kermen strongholds. Each redoubt housed a small garrison of 40-50 people from sick and weakened soldiers and Cossacks who were unable to march. On the way to Kyzy-Kermen, small Tatar detachments began to appear, but they still did not join the battle. For reconnaissance of the area, Spiegel singled out from his forces a cavalry detachment under the command of Colonel Krechetnikov (400 dragoons, 150 hussars, one hundred Cossacks of the Izyum Sloboda Regiment, 500 Little Russian and "all good" Zaporozhye Cossacks). Another detachment, Colonels Witten (1200 people) and Tyutchev (1400 people), were sent to reconnaissance by Leontiev and the Prince of Hesse-Homburg. For communication between the reconnaissance detachments, two separate, small detachments were allocated under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Fermor.

Crimean Tatar archer

Witten's scouts defeated a detachment of Nogai Tatars. The captives reported that twenty miles away, near the Chernaya Dolina tract, there was a 100,000-strong Tatar army led by the khan himself. Notifying the commander, Witten connected all the reconnaissance detachments together and continued to move forward to check the words "tongues". In total, he had 3,800 cavalrymen and Cossacks at his disposal.

On the morning of May 8 (19), Witten's cavalry detachment went to a large Tatar camp. These were the advanced forces of the Crimean army under the command of the heir to the khan's throne, the kalgi-sultan. Seeing the Russians, the Tatar cavalry immediately rushed to the attack. Russian commanders began to quickly build dragoons in a square, and the Zaporozhye and Little Russian Cossacks were ordered to cover their flanks. However, at the first onslaught of the enemy, the Cossacks fled. The Tatars fell upon the unfinished square. The dragoons had a hard time: in a hurry, only one line of soldiers managed to put on the rear front of the square. Moving to help Witten with a detachment of cavalry, Spiegel was stopped by a 15,000-strong Tatar army and he himself almost got surrounded.

Seeing that a big battle was beginning, Minich rushed to Spiegel with a small convoy. He made his way to the column, which stood in a square. Then, having studied the situation, he, accompanied by only eighty dragoons and hundreds of Cossacks, rode back to the main forces. On the way, the convoy Minich was attacked by a Tatar detachment, and narrowly escaped death. The Tatar cavalry pressed on all day, trying to overturn the Russians. In the evening Leontiev's detachment approached and opened artillery fire. The Tatars, having heard the roar of the cannonade, immediately retreated, leaving more than two hundred people killed on the battlefield. Russian losses amounted to about 50 people killed and wounded, General Spiegel and Colonel Weisbach were injured.

The first clash with the Crimean horde showed the effectiveness of the dragoon regiments, their stamina and good training. The whole day they held back the onslaught of the superior forces of the Tatar cavalry. Minich showed personal courage, but showed disbelief in the abilities of his commanders, preferring to do everything himself. The Little Russian Cossacks who fled from the battlefield were put on trial.

The captured Tatars told the commander that the main forces of the Crimean horde were eighty miles from the battlefield. In addition, the Cossacks captured several Turkish messengers and found letters from them, from which they found out that the Turks would not send troops to help the khan. Therefore, the army continued the march. On May 11 (22), the army continued its journey, and, in view of the proximity of the Tatar cavalry, all the detachments lined up in one common square. The sides (faces) of the gigantic rectangle formed regular regiments that stood in four lines. The dragoons walked on foot, giving their horses to the Cossacks, who formed the fifth (inner) rank. Artillery was placed in front and at the corners of the square, and irregular troops in the center. The movement of the square required a clear coordination of actions of all military units, and was very tiring for the soldiers and officers, but this did not bother Munnich.

On May 14 (25), Minich's army approached the Kalanchik River, where they again built a fortification. Here 4,000 men joined the army. detachment of Don Cossacks. The next day, the Russian army was attacked by the Tatars. Kare met the enemy with heavy artillery and rifle fire. Minich ordered to bring carts inside the square and place Cossacks on them, who fired rifles over the heads of the soldiers standing in the ranks. A. Bayov wrote: “Tatars with wild cries and drawn sabers attacked the army from all sides. As soon as they approached, they were met with strong rifle and grape fire. The repulsed attack was repeated several more times within two hours. To put an end to these attacks, Minich moved his army forward, after which the Tatars retreated, leaving a significant number of dead in place. The Russians had no losses." Thus, the Russian army broke the resistance of the enemy. The Tatar cavalry withdrew behind the fortifications of Perekop.

Fortifications of Perekop

On May 17 (28), Minich's army approached Perekop and camped on the shores of the Rotten Sea (Sivash). For the first time since the time of Vasily Golitsyn, Russian regiments came close to the gates of the Crimean Khanate. The Perekop Isthmus, which connects the Crimean peninsula with the mainland, has been of strategic importance for centuries, and therefore was equipped with a powerful system of defensive structures. It consisted of an 8-kilometer shaft about 20 meters high, stretching from the Black Sea to Lake Sivash. There was a wide ditch in front of the rampart. All around the rampart stood seven stone towers armed with artillery. They served as additional defense nodes and were capable of flanking fire along the moat. The only passage beyond the line was protected by stone gates, located three kilometers from Sivash and seven kilometers from the Black Sea coast. These gates were armed with artillery, and immediately behind them stood the fortress of Op-Kap. It looked like an oblong quadrangle with stone walls and loopholes at the outgoing corners of the bastions. The garrison of the fortress consisted of four thousand janissaries and sipahis. In front of the gate there was a small village, covered by another low rampart. 84 guns were placed along the fortified line, concentrated mainly in towers and fortresses. The Turkish garrison was supported by numerous Tatar cavalry.

Approaching Perekop, Minich demanded that the Crimean leadership capitulate and recognize the dominion of the empress. Khan, in response, began to play for time, referring to peace with Russia and assuring that all the raids were made not by the Crimean, but by the Nogai Tatars. Not wanting to delay, the Russian field marshal began to prepare for the attack. Already on the day the army arrived, a redoubt with five cannons and one mortar was erected opposite the Op-Kap fortress, which at dawn on May 18 opened fire on the gates and the fortress itself.

The assault was scheduled for May 20. For its implementation, Minich divided the troops into three large columns (each of five plutong columns) under the command of Generals Leontiev, Shpigel and Izmailov. They were supposed to strike in the gap between the Op-Kap fortress and the Black Sea. At the same time, the Cossacks were to make a distracting attack on the fortress itself. The dragoons dismounted and joined the infantry regiments. In each attacking column, the soldiers of the third pluthong carried with them axes and horn spears. All soldiers were given 30 rounds of ammunition, and the grenadiers, in addition, two hand grenades. Minich also ordered that part of the Fusiliers be supplied with grenades (one grenade per person). Artillery, both regimental and field, was ordered to follow in columns, and the cannons mounted on redoubts were ordered to cover the offensive with their fire. In total, 15 infantry and 11 dragoon regiments with a total number of about 30 thousand people were allocated for the assault.

On May 19, General Shtofeln made a reconnaissance of that section of the fortifications that was to be attacked. In the evening of the same day, Russian troops began to advance to their original positions. On May 20 (June 1), 1736, the assault began. On a signal, the field artillery opened fire. Then the front column fired a volley of rifles and rushed forward. The soldiers descended into the ditch, and then began to climb the rampart. At the same time, slingshots were very useful to them, which the soldiers stuck into the slope and climbed up them. Bayonets also came into play. Soon, the infantrymen not only climbed the crest of the rampart, but also pulled several cannons behind them on ropes. The Tatars, who did not expect the appearance of the Russians at all in this sector of defense, panicked and fled. The steppes did not expect that such a deep and wide ditch could be crossed so quickly and at night. Already half an hour after the start of the assault, the Russian flag fluttered over Perekop.

After that, the Russian troops began to storm the towers, which housed the Turkish garrisons. The tower closest to the Russian army opened artillery fire. Minich ordered a team of sixty infantrymen, led by the captain of the Petersburg Infantry Regiment, Manstein, to attack the tower. After a fierce battle, part of the garrison was killed, part surrendered. After that, the defenders of all other towers hastily capitulated.

Read 12989 times, written on 05/04/2010 at 09:15

The assault on Perekop on November 8-10, 1920, being an event that seemed quite clear in historical terms, nevertheless gave rise to a number of myths that have been moving from textbook to textbook for more than 75 years, from one solid monograph to an even more solid one.

These myths are characterized by the following stereotypes: “The strongest fortifications made of concrete and steel, built according to the experience of the First World War under the supervision of French and English engineers, who turned the Perekop rampart into a white Verdun”, “Parts of the Red Army lost 10 thousand people only killed during the assault on the Perekop fortifications” .

How was it really? The construction of the Perekop fortifications was based on the experience of the civil war. There were no projects and leadership of the British and French. The construction was carried out by Russian military engineers who served in the White Army. The general management was carried out by the commandant of the Sevastopol fortress, military engineer General Subbotin, his construction assistant was the professor of the field fortification department of the Engineering Academy, General Shcheglov. The military engineer Colonel Protsenko directly supervised the construction. All these officers were participants in the Russo-Japanese and World War I and had extensive combat and military engineering experience.

The commanders of the sapper companies that carried out the construction were colonels. The companies themselves were half staffed with officers. With such an excess of personnel, there was absolutely no need for foreign specialists. The only thing missing was manpower, as the peasants stubbornly evaded mobilization, as well as building materials, which were rampantly plundered and sold in the rear.

The construction of fortifications began at the end of July 1919, a month after the capture of the Crimea by the Whites, and proceeded very sluggishly until early October. On October 8, 1919, construction was stopped, as the White Command expected the fall of Moscow and the final defeat of Bolshevism from day to day. A few days later, the defeat really took place, but not the Reds, but the Whites, and in December 1919 the construction of fortifications was resumed again. By this time, only a line of trenches had been built in front of the rampart on the northern side of the Perekop ditch.

In January-March 1920, when Perekop became the scene of maneuvering battles between the opposing sides, construction work was not carried out. They resumed in April and continued until the end of October 1920.

As a result, the main fortifications continued to be a shaft 8 kilometers long, 6 to 10 meters high, up to 10 meters wide, and the ditch itself 8-10 meters deep and 10-20 meters wide.

And the ditch and the shaft, we recall, were built 3 thousand years BC.

The actual defensive engineering structures were represented by a line of trenches in front of the rampart on the north side of the moat and wire barriers in 4 rows in front of them. The trenches on the shaft and in front of it were equipped with machine-gun nests and earthen shelters, behind the shaft there were artillery positions.

The passages through the Sivash, bypassing the rampart, were practically not fortified, the matter was limited to several barbed wire, several searchlights and a dozen machine guns.

Commander of the White Guard troopsin the Crimea, Lieutenant General Wrangel

The White command ignored the lessons of the assault on Perekop in April 1918 by German troops around the Sivash and a similar maneuver of the Red troops in April 1919.

This carelessness, or rather, disregard for the enemy, became the main reason for the loss of Perekop positions by the Whites in November 1920 (Karbyshev. “White Verden” - the magazine “Army and Revolution” - 1921 - No. 5 - p. 52-107.).

How did the assault take place and at what cost was Perekop taken? The first to begin the operation were units of the 15th division of the Red Army, bypassing the Perekop rampart through the Sivash. Three teams of foot reconnaissance at two in the morning on November 8, 1920 along the fords across the Sivash, indicated by local residents, reached the wire fences on the coast of the Lithuanian Peninsula and began to cut the wire, but lay down under machine-gun fire.

Commander of the Southern Front of the Red Army Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze

The operation began to drag on, and the water in Sivash arrived, flooding the fords. Decisive action was required. Therefore, the commander of the 45th brigade of the 15th rifle division went to the battlefield and raised the scouts in thick chains to attack through the barbed wire.

Thanks to the soft muddy ground, the stakes of the wire obstacles were torn out or knocked down, and parts of the 45th brigade poured into the resulting passage, and behind it other brigades of the 15th division.

Painting "Transition of the Red Army through the Sivash"

Parts of the 52nd Rifle Division went in the second echelon. By the evening of November 8, 1920, they occupied the entire Lithuanian Peninsula and went to the rear of the White divisions located on the Perekop shaft, which at that time was unsuccessfully stormed by the 51st Infantry Division.

What was happening at that time on the line of the Perkop fortifications? At 10 am on November 8, 1920, the artillery of the 51st division began artillery preparation, which lasted 4 hours.

However, the deterioration of the material part of the red artillery did not allow it to destroy not only the fortifications, but even the barbed wire in front of the moat. Therefore, having started cutting the wire at 2 pm on November 8, units of the 51st division came under heavy machine-gun fire and retreated, suffering losses.

The artillery preparation began again, which also lasted 4 hours, and at 18 o'clock on November 8, the 51st division repeated the attack, which was also repulsed.

Finally, at 8 pm on November 8, after the third attack, units of the 51st division broke through the wire barriers and occupied the line of trenches in front of the ditch and rampart, descended into the ditch, but could not climb the rampart.

At midnight from November 8 to 9, 1920, the Whites, under the threat of a blow to the rear from the 15th and 52nd rifle divisions, withdrew their units from the rampart, leaving only a cover, which at 2 am on November 9 was shot down from the rampart The 51st division, parts of which occupied Armyansk at 8 am on November 9, 1920. Thus, the first most difficult stage of the assault on the Perekop positions was completed.

Despite the fierce fighting, the losses of the attackers were relatively small. The commander of the 6th Army, August Kork, in his report “The capture of the Perekop-Yushun positions by the troops of the 6th Army in November 1920” - magazine "Revolutionary Army" - 1921 - No. 1 - p. 29.

claimed that the total losses of the army during the assault on Perekop amounted to 650 people killed and 4,700 wounded.

The 15th and 51st divisions suffered the greatest losses. 15th division - 390 killed and 2900 wounded, 51st division - 208 killed and 1300 wounded.

Konstantin Kolontaev

"Southern News"

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But the next two years of the civil war did not advance the first holder of the Order of the Red Banner. While the red marshals became famous - Tukhachevsky in the Urals "Soviet Marne", Voroshilov on the Don with the protection of the "Red Verdun", Kotovsky in the battles near St. glory did not come.

Commanding the 30th division, he fought against the Czechs on the Volga, at the head of the 51st against Kolchak in Siberia; these are secondary roles, in which Blucher showed himself to be a decisive commander. But only at the end of the civil war, when the Kremlin was left with the only internal front - the Crimea - Blucher made a noise, linking his name with the epic assault on the Perekop positions.

This was the last battle of the enemies. The main masses of the Whites have already been thrown into the Black Sea; the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the South of Russia, General Denikin, sailed across the Mediterranean to England; in Constantinople, the monarchists shot dead his chief of staff, General Romanovsky. All devastated Russia stood in red fire. And only in the Crimea did General Baron Wrangel settle down.

All on Wrangel! All to the Crimea! - and 100 thousand red bayonets and sabers moved across the steppes of Tavria.

Deprived of the support of the Entente, Baron Pyotr Wrangel feverishly fortified the narrow Perekop Isthmus - the entrance to the Crimea - making it impregnable to the enemy. For six months they dug here one line of trenches after another, installed heavy artillery, wove wire, built machine-gun nests so that there were 50 machine guns per thousand fighters; used all the technical means of the Sevastopol fortress. And when the Reds approached the Crimea, Baron Wrangel already considered Perekop impregnable.

Behind the fortification lines were the best troops - the 1st Army of General Kutepov, the 2nd General of Abramov, the Don Cossacks; the best cavalry masses drew up.

In August 1920, in the autumn steppes of Tavria, the first battles began to capture the Kakhovka bridgehead.

At the head of the 51st division, carrying out the most important task of the offensive, Blucher went on the attack at Chaplinka and Kakhovka. On a broad front, at full height, without dashes, under destructive shrapnel and rifle-machine-gun fire, dressed in red shirts, were the Blucherites; on the fly they took possession of the height at the Kulikovsky farm. Stunned by such an attack, White surrendered the high ground, but, having recovered, rushed to the counterattack. It was a terrible fight. Several times the height passed from the Blucherites to the Whites. Both the red Blucher and the white Kutepov fully appreciated each other - at night both retreated to their original positions.

It was September. Frosts have begun. It snowed. In desperate battles, the Whites surrendered position after position to the Reds who had piled on, and at the end of the month the defense of the Kakhovka bridgehead collapsed. Now the Whites offered their last resistance on the narrow Isthmus of Perekop, in terribly fortified positions.

Frosts went unprecedented, in November they were already at 20 degrees. Half-torn reds and whites wrapped themselves in all sorts of rags, warming themselves by stuffing straw under their shirts. But behind the Reds was already - northern Tavria, and breakdown and despair crept into the whites.

The Lithuanian peninsula stood out as a dark stripe from the dark waters. Here at Perekop further military glory awaited Blucher. On the 8th, on the outskirts of the Lithuanian Peninsula, the battle for the Perekop Isthmus began. Gloomy, steep Turkish rampart, rising above the plane of the sea, like a wall blocking the entrance to the Crimea. After mastering the approaches, the Reds rushed into a frontal assault on the Turkish Wall. The Reds went on attack after attack, but all attacks ended in failure.

Since dawn there was an incessant rumble of artillery. Verse in the evening. But the denouement has not yet come. The Whites pulled together everything they could, even the personal convoy of the commander-in-chief went into battle.

Night rolled over the sea, over the Sivash, over the fields strewn with corpses, over the fortifications of the isthmus. That night, Blucher moved with three divisions, machine guns, artillery along the bottom of the Sivash - to the flank and rear of the enemy.

In the cold, the Red Army men in only their tunics shivered; no fire was ordered, and the troops marched in the dark on this madness-like operation.

Blucher's troops broke away from the shore for seven miles. In the seven-verst space there is not a fold, nothing that would allow the artillery to hide or get into a closed position. You can't dig trenches on a wet bottom. Common sense said: if the troops were late, did not approach the enemy before dawn, the whites would lay down everyone at the bottom of the Sivash with machine guns. But Blucher was not only worried about the dawn.

I'm not afraid of Kutepov, - he said to the chief of staff Triandafilov. - I'm afraid of Sivash. When the water begins to rise, what then? ..

Then Wrangel will spend the winter in the Crimea, - answered the chief of staff.

When the last 459th regiment of the Blucher group set out from Vladimirovka, Blucher rode out on horseback in pursuit of the troops. Troops bogged down, hurried along the bottom, with a quick march, in order to go behind enemy lines before the matinee.

Sivash dried up, blown by the winds. There was no water yesterday or the day before. But not only Blucher, all the hurrying Red Army men, when they were already halfway, noticed that the wind had changed, it was blowing from the east. On the left flank of the parts passing the Sivash, the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov tilted - water appeared. The water was coming. The elements were against the Reds. Blucher hurried parts. Water already filled the ruts to the wheels of the guns, the wheels bogged down to the axles. And when the last infantry, having entered the peninsula, rushed to the assault, the sea stood behind the Reds.

White fire raged ahead with fiery explosions. It was the fiercest battle in the entire civil war. Seeing the Blucherites cut off by the sea, the Reds rushed from the front to the Turkish Wall, head-on. And no matter how the whites resisted, Blucher decided the battle.

In the attacks, one after another, the lines of white fell. Crimea opened. White began a hasty retreat. And the Reds, with Blucher warheads, rushed into the open defeated peninsula.

Blucher received the second Order of the Red Banner. Glory came to Blucher for the second time.

Chapter 9

So, the Germans' attempt to break into the Crimea on the move failed. Manstein decided to gather the forces of the 11th Army into a fist and on September 24 to break through the Russian defenses on the isthmus.

In order to gain enough strength for the invasion of the Crimea, Manstein had to expose his troops to the minimum on the mainland, transferring the Leibstandarte division and the 49th Mountain Rifle Corps to the peninsula. The 30th Corps of General von Salmuth, which included the 72nd and 22nd Infantry Divisions, had to hold its own in positions in the Nogai Steppe, supported only by the Romanian 3rd Army. Moreover, the 22nd Infantry Division occupied the northern bank of the Sivash to the Arabat Spit.

On September 16, the Germans occupied Genichesk and, according to a report from the commander of the naval field battery No. 127 located there, moved along the Arabat arrow with the support of tanks. However, on the same day, the gunboats of the Azov military flotilla "Doi", "Rion" (former mud scows, each armed with two 130/55-mm and two 45-mm guns) and No. 4 (armament: two 76 -mm guns 34K and two 45-mm guns) and opened fire on the German troops.

On September 17, units of the 275th Infantry Division finally cleared the Arabat Rifle from the Germans. In the following days, several ships of the Azov military flotilla were on duty at the arrow, which periodically supported our troops with fire.

But Manstein was little interested in the Arabat arrow and Sivash, he was not going to throw his soldiers into the "rotten sea". According to Manstein's plan, General Hansen's 54th Corps was to first break through the enemy's defenses on the Perekop Isthmus with a frontal attack. To achieve this difficult goal, Hansen received at his disposal the entire army artillery and air defense units. In addition to his two infantry divisions, the 73rd and 46th, the 50th Infantry Division, located a little further to the rear, was placed under Hansen's operational command. With such significant strike forces, it was quite possible to break through a front only 7 km wide.

On September 24, at five o'clock in the morning, German artillery and mortars opened heavy fire on Soviet-compressed positions on Perekop. At the same time, Luftwaffe aircraft attacked both the front line of defense and tens of kilometers inland. At seven o'clock in the morning the 46th and 73rd Infantry Divisions went on the offensive along the entire defense front of the 156th Infantry Division.

All Soviet sources speak of dozens or even hundreds of German tanks of the 11th Army. In turn, Manstein claims that he had no tanks at all, with the exception of the 190th Light Assault Gun Battalion. It consisted of 18 StuG III Ausf C / D, that is, 7.5-cm self-propelled guns on the chassis of the T-III tank. And only on November 3, 1941, the 197th division of assault guns, consisting of 22 StuG III Ausf C / D, entered the German group in the Crimea. Our generals loved to exaggerate the strength of the enemy, but the Germans were just as fond of minimizing their own strength. So the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

And Manstein really at some point could be left without tanks, and later get them. Moreover, he spoke only about the Wehrmacht and did not take into account the tanks that were with the SS (“Leibstandarte”) and the Romanians.

But back to the German offensive on Perekop. The offensive on the right flank along the Sivash quickly bogged down. Land mines were placed there in advance - naval mines of the KB type, controlled by wires. The explosion of land mines caused great damage to the enemy. Many Germans died from the fire of naval batteries No. 124 and No. 725.

On the night of September 25, the forward units of the 156th Infantry Division were withdrawn to the main line of defense: a dam, 4 km southeast of the village of Pervo-Konstantinovka, a separate house located 1.2 km southeast of mark 22. With dawn German aviation intensively bombarded the front line of our defense, the Turkish Wall and the depth of defense to the village of Ishun. At 10 a.m., the enemy, with a force of up to four infantry regiments, supported by more than 50 tanks and under the cover of strong artillery and mortar fire, went on the offensive against the main defensive line of the Perekop positions, delivering the main blow along the Perekop Bay. After stubborn fighting, our units left the city of Perekop and retreated behind the Turkish Wall, with the exception of the third battalion of the 417th rifle regiment, a sapper company and two batteries, which continued to fight north of Perekop in the Kantemirovka area.

The counterattack of 14 T-37 and T-38 tanks, attached to the 156th Infantry Division, failed. All 14 vehicles were destroyed.

By order of Manstein, the 50th Infantry Division, which arrived from the Odessa region, approached Perekop.

The stupid command of F.I. Kuznetsov and Co. should have been recognized by the Soviet historian Basov. True, he did this very delicately: “A rare situation in military practice has developed. The troops defending in the Crimea had eight rifle and three cavalry divisions. The enemy actively acted only against one of them (156th at Perekop), where he created superior forces in infantry - more than 3 times, in artillery - 5-6 times and absolute air supremacy. Two other Soviet divisions (106th and 276th) were pinned down by the German 22nd Infantry Division, which showed readiness to advance along the Chongar Isthmus and across the Sivash. Another five rifle and three cavalry divisions were in the depths of the Crimea in readiness to repel a possible landing of sea and air assault. And although these divisions were not sufficiently armed and trained, they could successfully defend themselves on pre-equipped lines.

It is worth noting that in these desperate days, when the fate of the Crimea was being decided, our admirals were still feverish with the “Italian syndrome”. So, on September 17, the People's Commissar of the Navy informed the Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet "for information that in Sofia on September 15–16, the decision of the Turkish government was expected to allow 10 warships bought by Bulgaria from Italy into the Black Sea."

That is, Bulgaria had to fictitiously buy Italian battleships, cruisers and destroyers, and those under the Bulgarian flag were supposed to enter the Black Sea. No wonder they say that history repeats itself twice: the first time as a tragedy, and the second time as a farce. In 1914, "Goeben" and "Breslau" were fictitiously bought by Turkey, and this became a tragedy for the Russian fleet, but in 1941, the Duce did not want and physically could not sell his ships to Bulgaria. It is curious who was the author of the new farce - the people's commissar himself or who advised him?

Until the spring of 1942, there was not a single German or Italian warship or even a torpedo boat in the Black Sea, and four Romanian destroyers and the Delfinul submarine never entered Soviet communications. So the escort of transports, which was carried out by most of the Black Sea Fleet from torpedo and patrol boats to cruisers, inclusive, was, as they say, in favor of the poor. But Admiral Oktyabrsky constantly complained to Moscow and the front command about the employment of ships in escorting transports: they say, there is no time and nothing to help the ground forces.

As for the air enemy, the anti-aircraft armament of the ships of the convoys was rather weak, and rather than drive them, it was easier to put in addition to the 45-mm cannons four - six 37-mm 7-K assault rifles and a dozen 12.7-mm machine guns on every valuable transport. And if necessary, it was possible in a couple of hours to rearrange the 37-mm and 12.7-mm installations from the transport that arrived at the port to another one that went to sea.

Landing fear reached insanity. So, on July 8, the command of the 157th Infantry Division, which defended the shores of the Caucasus from enemy landings, ordered artillerymen to fire at the Gromov transport, which was making a regular flight along the Tuapse-Novorossiysk route.

At seven o'clock in the morning on September 26, two German infantry divisions, supported by 100 tanks (only Soviet sources mention tanks), launched an attack on the positions of the 156th Infantry Division. By 11 o'clock in the morning, the Germans occupied the Turkish Wall and reached Armyansk. Meanwhile, General Batov, who commanded the Soviet troops on the isthmus, brought up fresh forces: the 383rd regiment from the 172nd rifle division, the 442nd regiment from the 106th rifle division, and the 865th regiment from the 271st rifle division. These three regiments counterattacked the enemy. During the day of September 26, the city of Armyansk passed from hand to hand four times. The Germans also removed some units of the 22nd Infantry Division from the coast of Sivash and put them into action.

By evening, Armyansk remained with the Germans. But on the night of September 27, the 42nd Cavalry Division broke into Armyansk. During the night battle, out of two thousand cavalrymen, 500 were killed. Early in the morning, the cavalry was supported by the 442nd Infantry Regiment and the 5th Tank Regiment of the 172nd Division under the command of Major S.P. Baranov. The enemy was driven out of Armyansk. On September 28, the 5th tank regiment, pursuing the enemy, crossed the Turkish Wall.

The success of the Soviet counterattack on Perekop was largely due to a change in the situation in Northern Tavria, where on September 26 the troops of the 9th and 18th armies of the Southern Front went on the offensive north of Melitopol.

As already mentioned, Manstein threw the best parts of his army to Perekop. The 30th German corps still somehow held on, but the 4th mountain division (the Germans sometimes called it a mountain brigade) of the Romanians rushed to run. A 15-kilometer gap was formed in the German front, which was not covered by anything. Somewhat later, the 6th mountain division of the Romanians also ran.

Manstein urgently ordered the German 49th mountain corps and the Leibstandarte, which were moving towards Perekop, to turn back. In addition, from the Dnepropetrovsk region, the 18th and 9th armies were dealt a strong blow by the 1st tank group of von Kleist.

On October 7-8, German tanks reached the coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov in the Mariupol region. Most of the troops of the 9th and 18th Soviet armies were surrounded. The commander of the 18th Army, Lieutenant General Smirnov, was killed on October 6, the Germans found his corpse. According to German data, as a result of the encirclement of the 9th and 18th armies, 212 tanks and 672 artillery pieces became their trophies, 65 thousand prisoners were taken. Soviet data on this operation is still classified.

One of the results of the operation was the ban of the Wehrmacht command on the use in the Crimea of ​​the only motorized part of Manstein - the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. "Leibstandarte" was included in the 1st Panzer Group, which moved to Rostov.

And now back to the events in the Crimea. On September 26, the Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet reported to the People’s Commissar of the Navy that “the command of the 51st Army and the local authorities are nervous, constantly demanding help ... If the enemy breaks through Perekop or Chongar, then our available forces with their weapons will not be able to delay his further advance, and all will withdraw to Sevastopol and Kerch. The Military Council considered it expedient to put, if necessary, 50,000 people, but not to leave Perekop and Chongar.

On the morning of September 26, units of the 51st Army tried to seize the initiative from the Germans. Early in the morning the 49th Cavalry Division drove the Germans out of Armyansk. By morning, units of the 172nd Rifle Division had replaced the remnants of the 156th Rifle Division and occupied the defense line from Chulga (so in the document; apparently, we are talking about the Chongar station) to Perekop Bay.

By 1730 hours the 271st Rifle Division reached the line: the southern outskirts of the village of Shchemilovka and 2 km north of Armyansk. The division lost up to 15% of its personnel, and the loss of command personnel reached 50%. By 16:00, the 42nd Cavalry Division reached the rampart 2 km northwest of Armyansk, but at 17:30, under pressure from the German infantry, supported by strong mortar and artillery fire and air bombing strikes, withdrew to the northwestern outskirts of Armyansk . The division lost up to 20% of its personnel.

The Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet ordered the commander of the Kerch Naval Base to immediately load the 54th anti-aircraft division onto railway platforms and send it to Perekop at the disposal of Lieutenant General Batov.

On the night of September 26, naval aviation, consisting of seven DB-2 bombers and twenty-four MBR-2 seaplanes, bombed the German positions at Perekop and the airfields of Berislav, Shevchenko and Chaplinka.

In the afternoon, 12 Pe-2s, accompanied by twenty-two LaGG-3s, again attacked enemy troops on the Perekop Isthmus. In the area of ​​the Turkish Wall, four guns and three vehicles were put out of action, a battery was suppressed, and three field artillery guns and up to two infantry platoons were destroyed.

The Freidorf fighter aviation group bombed and stormed the enemy troops on the Perekop Isthmus and covered our troops, making 53 sorties. 10 vehicles, a battery of field artillery, two companies of infantry were destroyed and one Yu-87 of the enemy was shot down. Our loss of 1 four aircraft did not return from the mission.

The 62nd Air Regiment was relocated from the Yeysk airfield to the Kacha airfield.

From 13:30 to 15:00 enemy aircraft bombed our Sarabuz, Kacha and Yevpatoriya airfields. At the Sarabuz airfield, 3 people were killed and 12 wounded, two hangars were slightly damaged, three aircraft engines and a water-oil tanker were disabled, one U-2 and a tractor were damaged. One MiG-3 was damaged at the Kacha airfield.

It is very difficult to write about the battles for Perekop. German sources, as well as closed Soviet army sources and the "Chronicle ..." give three different versions of the same events.

Here, for example, is the Soviet army version. “From the morning of September 28, the troops of the operational group again attacked the enemy in the Shchemilovka area and north of Armyansk. The 5th tank regiment, with its combat formations, crossed the Perekop shaft, intercepted the Chaplinka-Armyansk road, having the task of pursuing the enemy in the direction of the Chervoniy Shepherd state farm. He fought there with thirty enemy tanks, preventing the passage of enemy reserves through the Perekop rampart. Our rifle units and subunits captured part of the Perekop shaft to the west of the old fortress, but were forced to leave it. During the fighting, fresh units of the Germans were recorded: the prisoners were from the 65th and 47th regiments of the 22nd Infantry Division, as well as from the 170th Division of the 30th Army Corps. The approaching medium tanks of the enemy participated in the counterattacks. The troops of the operational group (cavalrymen, parts of Toroptsev) retreated again to Armyansk. For several hours there was a battle in the area of ​​a brick factory and a cemetery. These items changed hands. Only two guns remained serviceable in the cavalry division.

Naval variant: On September 28, “at 17:30, German aviation launched a massive raid on the advancing units of the 172nd Infantry Division and inflicted heavy damage on them. At 18:00, the enemy counterattacked our units with fresh forces (up to six battalions with tanks) in the direction of Dede and forced them to withdraw. The commander of the Task Force ordered the 271st and 172nd rifle and 42nd cavalry divisions to be withdrawn to the Pyatiozerye area and go on the defensive there.

In the memoirs of P.I. Batov, large tank formations constantly appear. Either he talks about a hundred tanks near Armyansk on October 6, then “on the evening of October 19, the German 170th infantry division, with which more than sixty infantry support tanks operated, broke out to the mouth of the Chatyrlyk.”

Alas, Pavel Ivanovich, who everywhere indicated the numbers of the German infantry divisions, nowhere indicated the names of the tank units. It is clear that the same picture is observed in other sources: G.I. Vaneeva, A.V. Basov, in the "Chronicle ...", etc. It turns out that German tanks walk around the Crimea on their own, without any organization, straying into herds of 50, 100 or more units.

Manstein claims that he did not have tanks. Indeed, by that time, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler had been transferred to Rostov, and Manstein could only attract two corps for operations in the Crimea: the 30th, consisting of the 22nd, 72nd and 170th infantry divisions, and the 54th as part of the 46th, 73rd and 50th Infantry Divisions (a third of the 50th Infantry Division was still near Odessa).

Manstein had only one division of assault guns in the Crimea. The 190th division had 24 76-mm StuGIII self-propelled guns, created on the basis of the T-III tank. Each platoon, which consisted of two guns, had one Sd.Kfz.253 armored ammunition transporter and one Sd.Kfz.252 forward artillery observer vehicle.

In September, a division of guards mortars arrived at the location of the troops of the 51st Army. The first use of "Katyushas" in the Crimea took place on September 30 between the lakes Krasnoe and Staroe. As P.I. Batov: “And so the Katyushas worked. Powerful salvo. Fire jets. Explosions. The Germans ran. Ours too. A rare sight of an "attack" when both sides run from each other!

They crossed over. It was necessary to somehow notify the front line people so that they would not be scared if something unexpected happened.

On September 30, Soviet troops left the Lithuanian peninsula, and 130-mm battery No. 124 was blown up.

On the night of October 1, 61 MBR-2 seaplanes bombed enemy troops on the Perekop Isthmus and two GTS seaplanes (a Soviet copy of the Catalina flying boat) bombed the airfield in Chaplinka.

In the afternoon, 12 Pe-2s, escorted by fourteen LaGG-3s, again bombed enemy troops on the Perekop Isthmus. According to Soviet data, more than an infantry battalion, 33 vehicles, four tanks, a three-gun field battery, an anti-aircraft gun and three gas tanks were destroyed.

From the beginning of October until October 16, the German command regrouped its troops, and a temporary lull was established on the Crimean peninsula.

Manstein managed to knock out reinforcements for himself in the form of the 42nd Corps, consisting of the 132nd and 24th Infantry Divisions, as well as two Romanian brigades - mountain and cavalry. On September 21, Manstein moved the headquarters of the 11th Army to the administration building of the Askania-Nova collective farm, which was located 30 km northeast of Perekop. The board was located in the center of a huge park with streams and ponds in which herons and flamingos nested. Deer, fallow deer, antelopes, zebras, bison, etc. grazed in the park. I note that this piece of paradise, created even before the revolution, was chosen by Frunze in the autumn of 1920 to accommodate the headquarters, preparing for the assault on Perekop.

By the beginning of October, the composition of the Soviet troops had changed little. The Ishun positions were defended by the operational group of General Batov: on the right, the 106th and 271st divisions; in the center is the 156th division of General P.V. Chernyaeva, reinforced by one battalion of Captain S.T. Rudenko from the 172nd division and one regiment of the 321st division; on the left flank - the 172nd Infantry Division.

October 3 Marshal B.M. Shaposhnikov, on behalf of the People's Commissar of Defense, ordered to speed up the equipment of the second line of defense along the Novy Bukezh - Tomashevka - Voinka line and further along the Chatyrlyk River. The first 157th Rifle Division of Colonel D.I., who arrived from Odessa, was sent there, to the Voinka area. Tomilova.

The Chief of the General Staff proposed to start building a third rear defensive line along the line of the Tuzly-Sheikh-Ali state farm - height 27.7 - Mengermen - Sargil - Taigan - Yeni-Krymchak - Andreevna - Kambary - Ashogha-Jamin - Saki. In the opinion of many fortifiers, the proposed line through the steppe part of the entire Crimea was very unfavorable for defense, especially against the German units that were superior in maneuverability to our troops.

October 9 was followed by an instruction to speed up the construction of fortifications in the mountain passes: Stary Krym, Karasubazar, Shumkhai, Bakhchisaray, Simferopol, Ak-Manai.

F.I. Kuznetsov wanted to defend the northeastern part of Crimea with the troops of the 9th Rifle Corps (as part of the 156th, 271st, 106th, 277th, 157th Rifle Divisions, the 48th Cavalry Division and a separate battalion of guards mortars of Captain Nebozhenko) under the command of Major General I.F. Dashichev.

The northwestern part of Crimea was to be defended by the Primorsky Army of General I.E. Petrov, which included the 172nd, 25th, 95th rifle divisions, the 2nd, 40th, 42nd cavalry divisions, the 51st and 265th artillery regiments and a separate division of guards mortars under the command of Captain Chernyak.

The 320th, 184th and 421st (former Odessa) Rifle Divisions, the 15th Air Defense Brigade, the 136th Reserve Regiment, the 52nd Howitzer Artillery Regiment and other small units remained directly subordinate to the commander of the Crimean troops. The army air force consisted of six regiments - the 182nd, 247th, 253rd fighter, 21st, 507th bomber and 103rd assault. The Air Force of the army was commanded by Major General E.M. Beletsky.

On October 18, at five o'clock in the morning, German artillery began artillery preparation on the Perekop Isthmus. 21-cm mortars of the 18-cm standard ... 15-cm heavy howitzers and 15-cm Nb.W.41 rocket-propelled mortars were introduced into the case. Half an hour later, the German infantry went on the offensive. The width of the isthmus allowed only three divisions of the 54th Corps to enter the battle - the 73rd, 46th and 22nd, and the 30th Corps waited until sufficient space was occupied during the offensive.

In the auxiliary Chongar direction, the Romanian mountain rifle corps (1st mountain rifle and 8th cavalry brigades) struck with the aim of pinning down the Soviet troops.

The Germans delivered the first blow to the 106th Infantry Division, but it repelled all attacks. This was followed by a strike along the Karkinit Gulf, where the 361st Infantry Regiment of the 156th Division held the defense. Behind him, in the second position along the Chatyrlyk River, the 172nd division of Colonel Laskin, numbering seven thousand people, took up defense on a wide 20-kilometer front. All three rifle regiments of the 172nd division were pulled into one line.

A grouping of five divisions (106th, 271st, 157th rifle, 48th and 42nd cavalry), located between Ishun and Chongar, could threaten the enemy who had broken through in any of two directions. In the operational summary for the first day of the battle, the Military Council of the 51st Army reported that the enemy had penetrated the front line of defense and suffered heavy losses.

Naval aviation did everything it could. On the night of October 18, 43 MBR-2 seaplanes bombed enemy troops on the Perekop Isthmus, six MBR-2 bombed enemy airfields in the villages of Novo-Pavlovka, Chaplinka and Preobrazhenka, and three GTS bombed an airfield in the village of Kulbakino, where a mine depot was allegedly blown up and a eight fires.

In the first half of the day, 23 Pe-2 aircraft, accompanied by ten MiG-3s, again bombed the German troops on the Perekop Isthmus. According to Soviet data, 10 tanks, up to five infantry platoons and one vehicle were destroyed. A German fighter shot down a Pe-2 naval bomber, which landed on fire in the location of its troops. The crew of the car remained unharmed.

On the same day, October 18, in the Balaklava area, a MiG-3 fighter rammed a Do-215; apparently a spy. Both planes crashed into the sea, but our pilot managed to jump out with a parachute and was saved.

In the afternoon, six DB-3s and twelve Pe-2s, accompanied by fifteen MiG-3s, four LaGG-Zs and nine Yak-1s, again bombed the enemy troops on the Perekop Isthmus. According to Soviet data, in the area of ​​the village of Kara-Kazak No. 3, “an estimated twenty tanks and 30-40 vehicles were destroyed. Our cover fighters shot down two Me-109s in air combat. Direct bomb hits destroyed two batteries, a 35-ton tank, two mortars and up to three enemy infantry platoons.

The Freidorf fighter aviation group made 124 sorties against enemy troops in the Perekop direction and at the airfield in the village of Chaplinka. In the air battle, six German aircraft were shot down, including three Me-109s. Our losses are three LaGG-Z.

From 10:55 a.m. to 12:10 p.m., enemy aircraft made an intensive raid on the area of ​​the village of Ishun and bombed the Dzhankoy station in groups of 2 to 15 aircraft. Fifteen Xe-111 bombed the area of ​​the village of Jaba.

On the morning of October 19, fierce oncoming battles began on the entire front of the Ishun positions. The Soviet 157th and 156th Rifle Divisions went on the offensive to regain their lost positions, and the Germans tried to build on the success they had achieved on October 18th. By the end of the day, the Germans brought the 46th Infantry Division into battle, and the 48th Cavalry Division was introduced from the side of our 51st Army.

The 106th Rifle Division entrenched itself at the turn of the northwestern and western parts of the cape with the settlement of Urzhin Severny.

271st Rifle Division - on the isthmus between the Sivash Bay and the Kiyatskoye, Krugloye and Krasnoe lakes and advanced one battalion to the village "Plot No. 9"

to secure the right flank of the 157th Infantry Division.

By the end of the day, the 157th Rifle Division held on to the line of the southern coast of Lake Krasnoe - the southern outskirts of the village "Plot No. 9" - the northern outskirts of the village of Ishun.

The 48th Cavalry Division occupied a line that ran from the northern outskirts of the village of Ishun, along the southern outskirts of the village of "Plot No. 8" to Karkinitsky Bay.

The 156th Rifle Division, having suffered heavy losses, retreated by the end of the day in scattered units and gathered in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe settlements of Ishun, Chigir and Novo-Pavlovka.

The 172nd Rifle and 42nd Cavalry Divisions remained on the southern bank of the Chatyrlyk River.

On October 20, the Germans brought the 50th Infantry Division into battle, bringing the number of divisions in the Ishun positions to four. Our sources routinely repeat the story of a hundred German tanks. Apparently, the Germans did not have tanks, however, overcoming the stubborn resistance of our 48th cavalry and 157th rifle divisions, the enemy approached the second defensive line by 15:00, and by evening occupied the village of Ishun and wedged into the second line Ishun positions. Advanced German units crossed the mouth of the Chatyrlyk River. By the end of the day, the 156th Rifle Division was practically annihilated.

In the morning of October 20, nine MiG-3 and nine LaGG-Z units bombed enemy positions on the Perekop Isthmus. Two tanks, nine vehicles, eight wagons and up to two infantry platoons were destroyed.

In the afternoon, eight Pe-2s, escorted by twenty fighters from the 51st Army, bombed enemy troops near the village of Ishun. Four tanks, seven vehicles, up to twelve wagons and up to two infantry platoons were destroyed.

The Freidorf fighter aviation group, operating against enemy troops on the Perekop Isthmus, made 104 sorties, in which up to 18 vehicles and about 750 infantry were destroyed and disabled. Five Me-109s were shot down in aerial combat. Our losses amounted to one MiG-3 and one I-5.

On October 23, at 16:30, Vice Admiral G.I. took command of the Crimean troops. Levchenko, appointed to this position by the decision of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander of October 23, 1941. By the same decision of the Headquarters, Lieutenant General P.I. Batov. Rear Admiral G.V. was appointed Deputy Commander of the Black Sea Fleet for the defense of the main base. Zhukov.

On October 24, the Crimean troops were divided into two groups: the first - the 9th Rifle Corps, consisting of the 276th, 106th, 271st and 156th Rifle Divisions and the 48th Cavalry Division; the second - the Primorsky Army, consisting of the 157th, 172nd, 95th, 25th rifle and 2nd, 40th and 42nd cavalry divisions.

In accordance with Order No. 0019 for the Crimean troops of October 23 and with the deployment of the 95th Infantry Division and one regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, the Primorsky Army at nine o'clock in the morning on October 24 went on the offensive along the entire front, delivering the main blow in the area village Vorontsovka. The task of the 9th Rifle Corps was to firmly defend its lines and counterattack to promote the advance of the Primorsky Army.

Simultaneously with the offensive of our units, the enemy also went over to the offensive. Fierce oncoming battles flared up along the entire front, proceeding with unrelenting tension throughout the day. Particularly fierce fighting took place in the areas of mark 18.2 and the settlements of Chigir, Berdy-Bulat-Nemetsky and Vorontsovka. Parts of the 9th Rifle Corps held their positions.

By the end of the day, the right flank of the Primorsky Army retreated to the northern outskirts of the village of Berdy-Bulat-Nemetsky and to the southern outskirts of the village of Vorontsovka.

The left flank of the Primorsky Army, moving forward, reached the line: a bridge 1 km southwest of Vorontsovka - 1 km south of the settlements of Biyuk-Kichkari, Boy-Kazak-Tatarsky and west to Karkinitsky Bay.

On October 25, our units continued the offensive. The Germans defended stubbornly. As a result, by the end of the day, the 172nd Rifle Division remained in its previous positions, and units of the 95th Rifle Division reached the village of Berdy-Bulat-Nemetsky on the right flank and fought for the capture of Vorontsovka until the end of the day. The 2nd and 40th cavalry divisions and two regiments of the 25th rifle division fought on their former lines.

About the events of that day, Manstein wrote: “On October 25, it seemed that the offensive impulse of the troops had completely dried up. The commander of one of the best divisions had already reported twice that his regiments were running out of strength. It was the hour that, perhaps, has always been in such battles, the hour when the fate of the entire operation is decided. An hour that should show that he will win: the determination of the attacker to give all his strength to achieve the goal or the will of the defender to resist.

By the evening of October 25, Manstein regrouped the troops of the 11th Army: instead of the bloodless 73rd and 46th divisions, he threw the 72nd, 170th and fresh 132nd infantry divisions on the offensive, a consolidated detachment of the 54th was formed from the reserves army corps. Manstein wanted to transfer the 22nd Infantry Division to his right flank, but it was pinned down by the fighting on the Sivash and was freed only on October 28th.

On the morning of October 26, the Germans went on the offensive again. The 172nd Rifle Division immediately began a disorderly retreat to the south. The 95th Rifle Division held out until 15:00, and then slowly began to retreat. The 25th Infantry Division repulsed the German attacks and remained in their previous positions.

On October 27, the Germans continued their offensive. By 18 o'clock our units remained at the turn of the southern outskirts of the village of Berdy-Bulat-Nemetsky - the village of Mangit - the village of Dyurmen - the village of Kalanchak - 1 km south of the village of Viyuk-Kichkari and west to the Karkinit Bay. All parts of the Primorsky Army suffered heavy losses in personnel. The regiments numbered from 200 to 500 people. Troop control was broken. Wandering, scattered groups of troops appeared, having no connection with the command and losing their bearings.

There was an immediate threat of a breakthrough of the front on the left flank. By order of the command of the Crimean troops, units of the 9th Rifle Corps, with the exception of the 276th Rifle Division, also began to retreat to a new line of defense, passing along the line of the settlements of Chuchak Severny, Chuchak Yuzhny, Karanki, Kerleut Yuzhny, Masnikovo, Voinka and Novo- Nikolayevka.

The 276th Rifle Division continued to remain in its former positions, south of the city of Genichesk, south of the Salkov station and along the southern coast of the Sivash Bay to the Pasurman farm.

On October 28, Soviet troops began to retreat everywhere. Already in the morning, Manstein was informed that in some areas "the enemy had disappeared." As A.V. wrote Basov: “At this time, the command post of the operational group P.I. Batov was in Vorontsovka. The communication of the operational group with the army headquarters in Simferopol was often broken. With the approach of the Primorsky Army, the Batov task force ceased to exist. The 172nd Rifle Division came under the command of General Petrov, and the rest of the divisions came under the command of the commander of the 9th Corps, General Dashichev. There was no transfer of command from Batov to Petrov. In addition, communication with the divisions was broken ...

Former commander of the 106th division, General A.N. Pervushin exclaims in his memoirs: "If at this critical moment we had at least one fresh division, at least one tank regiment! .. then the German offensive would have failed." The commander of the Crimean troops had, although not combat-ready enough, the 184th, 320th, 321st, 421st rifle divisions. On the right flank was the 276th division of General I.S. Savina, essentially unattacked and not bound by battles.

On the afternoon of October 29, the Germans bypassed the left flank of the Primorskaya Army, and by the end of the day their motorized columns reached the area of ​​the village of Aibary - the village of Freidorf, 17 km southeast of height 52.7 (right flank) and 40 km south of height 11 ,5 (left flank of the Primorsky Army).

The 7th Marine Brigade, which was in the reserve command of the Crimean troops and occupied positions on the third defensive line in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe settlements of Stary Kudiyar, Aibary, Adzhi, Atman, Totman and the Togaily state farm, unexpectedly found itself in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bmovement of German motorized units and did not was able to stop them.

In the evening, the command of the Crimean troops decided to withdraw troops to the third, partially prepared line, which ran along the Crimean foothills, through the settlements of Okrech, Tabdy, Chelle and Saki.

On the same day, the deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet for the land defense of the main base and the head of the Sevastopol garrison, Rear Admiral Zhukov, by order No. 02, introduced a state of siege in Sevastopol and its environs.

On the evening of October 30, Manstein ordered the 30th Army Corps, consisting of the 72nd and 22nd divisions, to capture Simferopol as soon as possible and then break through to Alushta in order to deprive the Soviet troops of the opportunity to take up defense along the northern spurs of the mountains. The 54th Corps (50th, 132nd Infantry Divisions, Ziegler's motorized brigade) was heading along the western part of the peninsula through the Evpatoria-Saki region, in order to then capture Sevastopol on the move. The 42nd Army Corps, consisting of the 46th, 73rd and 170th Infantry Divisions, was ordered to rapidly advance to the Kerch Peninsula in order to preempt the Soviet troops and prevent them from creating defenses in the Ak-Manai positions and ultimately capture the ports of Feodosia and Kerch. The Romanian mountain rifle corps, consisting of two brigades, moved in the second echelon.

On October 30, the organized resistance of the Soviet troops in the north of the Crimea ceased and a general flight began. To whom my words seem too harsh, I will send to the “Chronicle ...”: “According to some fragmentary information received during the day, it was known that at 11:40 45 vehicles with German infantry approached the Karagut station (10 km north of Saki) . At about 1 pm, in the area of ​​the village of Ikar (12 km north of Evpatoria), the enemy dropped an airborne assault, and 40 people of this assault were moving towards the railway station of Evpatoria.

At 13:10, on the road along the western coast of Crimea between the villages of Ivanovka (16 km south of Saki) and Nikolayevka, the movement of four tankettes was detected, and at 13:30, 12 enemy tanks passed along the road from Evpatoria to Simferopol. At 15:10, the Germans occupied the town of Saki. At 4 pm, enemy armored vehicles appeared from the village of Bur-luk on the road to the east. At 4:15 p.m., the air defense headquarters reported that the enemy had cut off the highway between Simferopol and Evpatoria at the 37th km.

On October 31, the Germans installed two artillery batteries: 2 km north of the Alma railway station and 1.5 km east of it. German guns began shelling the railroad and highway, interrupting communication between Simferopol and Sevastopol. In particular, on the night of November 1, these batteries shot down our armored trains No. 1 and No. 2, breaking through to Sevastopol.

In this regard, the command of the Primorsky Army ordered its units to break through the mountains. Upon learning of this, Manstein ordered the 132nd Infantry Division and Ziegler's motorized brigade to advance on Sevastopol, and the 50th Infantry Division to turn southeast and, in cooperation with the 30th Corps in the mountains north of Yalta, destroy the Primorsky Army.

On November 1, the advanced units of the 72nd Infantry Division entered Simferopol, and the 124th Regiment of this division began moving along the highway to Alushta. Soon the 22nd Infantry Division began to make its way into the mountains and further to the sea.

By the end of November 3, with the occupation of the villages of Shura, Ulu-Sala, Mangush, the Germans managed to intercept the withdrawal routes of the Soviet troops. The headquarters of our army at that time was in Balaklava. General I.E. Petrov on the radio ordered the commander of the 25th division, Major General T.K. Kolomiyets to lead the retreat of the army units, continue moving to Sevastopol by the shortest road through Kermenchik, Ai-Todor, Shuli, defeating enemy units if they block the path.

On November 4, at two in the morning, in heavy rain, units of the 95th Infantry Division and the advanced 287th Infantry Regiment of the 25th Division attacked the Germans in the village of Ulu-Sala. In a stubborn battle, a motorized detachment and the 72nd anti-tank artillery battalion were completely defeated, 18 enemy guns, 28 machine guns, up to 30 vehicles, 19 motorcycles were captured.

On November 4, the 421st Rifle Division, commanded by Colonel S.F. Monakhov, was driven out of Alushta by the 124th Infantry Regiment of the 72nd Infantry Division.

On November 4, the commander of the Crimean troops, by order No. 1640, in connection with the new operatives in the Crimea, created two defensive regions - Kerch (KOR) and Sevastopol (SOR).

The Sevastopol defensive region included all units and subunits of the Primorsky Army, the coastal defense of the main base, all sea and land units and units of the Air Force of the Black Sea Fleet.

The command of the ground forces and the leadership of the defense of Sevastopol was entrusted to the commander of the Primorsky Army, Major General Petrov, who was directly subordinate to the commander of the Crimean forces.

Rear Admiral Zhukov, deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet for land defense of the main base, was ordered to take command of the main base.

The structure of the Kerch defensive region included all units and subunits of the 51st Army and the land units of the Kerch naval base. The command of the units operating on the Kerch Peninsula was entrusted to Lieutenant General Batov.

On October 4, at 15:08, the patrol ship "Petrash" entered the Yalta port, having the mine layer "Hydrograph" (a former hydrographic vessel with a displacement of 1380 tons) in tow. Actually, according to the "Chronicle ...", they went to Tuapse, but for some reason they went to Yalta. After 10 minutes, the transport "Chernomorets" also came there. On the same day, Petrash towed the Hydrograph, but soon the ships were attacked by German aircraft. The Hydrograph received a hole and after some time sank 19 miles east of Yalta.

By the evening of November 6, the 1330th regiment of the 421st rifle division, the 7th marine brigade and the battalion of the 172nd rifle division entered Yalta. General Petrov ordered the commander of the Yalta combat site, brigade commander Kiselev, to immediately send one battalion of the 7th Marine Brigade to Sevastopol by car, and prepare the rest of its personnel for transfer there by sea. Have people on the pier ready for loading by 20:00. The destroyers Boiky and Izuprechny were sent to Yalta.

The 25th Rifle Division (without the 31st and 54th Regiments), the 95th and 172nd Rifle Divisions partly held back the enemy in the area of ​​the village of Kokkozy, ensuring the removal of the materiel of the army to Alupka, and part of the forces continued to move to Yuzhny coast of Crimea. The 40th and 42nd cavalry divisions were on the march, in accordance with the order of Petrov, to take up defense at the turn of the village of Savatka - height 302.8 - Mount Samnalykh and block all roads leading to the Baidar region.

The 54th Rifle Regiment of the 25th Division defended Hill 1472.6, 8 km northeast of Yalta, preventing the enemy from breaking through to the city.

On November 7, at three o'clock in the morning in Yalta, the loading of the troops of the 7th Marine Brigade onto the destroyers Boikiy and Izuprechny was completed. The ships took on board about 1800 people and left Yalta at 03:40. At dawn they arrived in Sevastopol.

On the morning of November 7, the cargo-passenger ship "Armenia" (4727 brt) left Yalta for Tuapse with five thousand refugees and the wounded. The transport was escorted by two patrol boats. At 11:25 a.m., one of two torpedoes dropped by a single Xe-111 hit the transport. Within four minutes, the transport sank, only eight people were saved.

The 421st Rifle Division, formed from the border troops of the NKVD, held Alushta for three days and retreated only on November 4th. By this time, the 48th Cavalry Division was forced to withdraw from the Karasubazar region to the coast in the Kuru-Uzen-Alushta region. Its commander decided to drive the Germans out of Alushta and break through to Sevastopol by the seaside road. However, a surprise attack on Alushta, undertaken on November 5, failed.

Speaking of the capture of the Crimea by the Germans, one cannot fail to note the inactivity of the huge Black Sea Fleet. Relatively weak German units occupy Evpatoria on the move, and then move along the coast of Kalamitsky Bay to Sevastopol - that's a tasty morsel for our fleet! German columns could be wiped off the face of the earth by the fire of a battleship, six cruisers, dozens of destroyers and gunboats! But alas, alas...

As already mentioned, several Soviet divisions withdrew to the southern coast of Crimea. From the sea, the entire South Coast is at a glance, all roads are located at a distance of 1–5 km from the coastline and are perfectly visible from the sea. The Germans, on the other hand, had practically no artillery capable of firing at naval targets at a distance of more than 4 km. The numerical superiority in fighters was on our side, and the Germans had only one air group of Xe-111 torpedo bombers.

Let's look at the map of the Crimea and the Tables of firing ship's guns. Here is the firing range of a high-explosive projectile of the 1928 model: 305-mm guns of the battleship "Paris Commune" - 44 km; 180-mm guns of cruisers of the project 26–38.6 km; 130-mm guns of old cruisers and destroyers - 25.7 km. Thus, the battleship "Paris Commune" (since May 31, 1943 "Sevastopol") could fire at Sevastopol both from the Kalamitsky Bay and from Alushta. Any point of the Crimea south of Simferopol was within the range of Soviet naval artillery. Finally, combat and transport ships and boats of the Black Sea Fleet made it possible to carry out the transfer of our units both from Sevastopol to the southern coast of Crimea, and in the opposite direction in a few hours.

Dozens of torpedo and patrol boats, tugboats, fishing seiners, etc., could easily take people directly from the unequipped coast of the southern coast of Crimea. And the temperature of the water even made it possible to swim to the ships. Let us recall the evacuation of the British army in Dunkirk, when the British threw everything that could float to the unequipped coast - from destroyers to private yachts. Let several destroyers die, but the army was saved. And here, from October 1 to November 11, 1941, not only was not sunk, but not even a single ship was damaged.

Is it really not clear to our titled military historians that it is much more difficult for tired soldiers to make their way through the mountains to Sevastopol and the coast of the southern coast of Crimea than to be taken on board ships and boats and arrive in Sevastopol in a few hours. Why were they abandoned?

Immediately after the German breakthrough at Perekop, Admiral Oktyabrsky makes an important decision. At 5 p.m. on October 28, he boards the destroyer Boyky, and 10 minutes later the destroyer under the admiral's flag goes out to sea. How not to remember Admiral Makarov, who raised his flag on the lightest and fastest cruiser Novik (slightly larger than Boikoy) and went to intercept Japanese cruisers.

And where did our admiral go? In Poti! To bypass the ports of the Caucasian coast in order to prepare them for receiving ships for basing.

The admiral returned to Sevastopol only on November 2. Rhetorical question: Couldn't a few staff officers have done this? They would have boarded GTS seaplanes or MO-4 patrol boats and carried out calm preparations. I'm not talking about the fact that it could have been done a few weeks earlier.

And right from the cabin of the Boykoy off the coast of the Caucasus, Oktyabrsky sends a telegram to the chief of staff of the fleet: “... withdraw from Sevastopol: the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna, the cruiser Voroshilov, the training ship Volga and the submarine division to Poti; cruiser "Molotov" - in Tuapse; send the leader "Tashkent" and one or two destroyers of the "Bodry" type, the destroyer "Svobodny" and two patrol ships with a group of workers from the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet to send to the Caucasus.

In Sevastopol, it was ordered to leave the protection of the water area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe main base, two destroyers of the Nezamozhnik type, two or three destroyers of the Bodry type, two old cruisers and a submarine division of the 1st brigade; leave the submarine division of the 2nd brigade in Balaklava.

And already at 23:32 on October 31, the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna, escorted by the cruiser Molotov, the leader Tashkent, and the destroyer Soobrazitelny, left Sevastopol and headed for ... Batumi.

So, the old battleship, without firing a single shot to protect Odessa and the Crimea, went to the farthest corner of the Black Sea. What for? Maybe to protect such an important port?

On November 3, the cruiser Krasny Krym, the destroyers Bodry and Izuprechny left Sevastopol for Tuapse.

On November 4, the chief of staff of the Black Sea Fleet announced to the fleet that the coast from Yalta to Cape Chauda was occupied by the enemy. Well, it would seem that the time has come for the execution of Germans and Romanians by naval artillery, squeezed on a 2-5-kilometer strip between the sea and the mountains from Yalta to Cape Chauda? Not at all. There is not a word in the announcement about the shelling of the Germans. It followed: “In view of this, all ships were forbidden to navigate between these points north of latitude 44 ° 00?. When sailing between the ports of the Caucasian coast and Sevastopol, large ships and transports had to move away from the coast up to the parallel of 43 °.

Let me remind you that until November 12, 1941, when our troops were already driven out of the southern coast of Crimea, our ships in Sevastopol and off the coast of Crimea had no losses from enemy aircraft. In Sevastopol, by this time, aircraft had sunk on August 21 the non-self-propelled barge SP-81 (1021 brt) and on October 1 the motor schooner Dekabrist (100 brt). So the presence of ships in the main base of the fleet was quite possible.

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Chapter 3 Assault and Captivity

- November, 19th 2009

At the intersection of the highway from Kakhovka to the Crimea with the Perekop shaft, a rather original monument was erected, dedicated to the three assaults on Perekop. The first assault took place back in 1920 - the Reds attack, the Whites defend, then there will be the Great Patriotic War, there will be the Red Army against the Germans and Romanians, there will be a labor assault even later, but today we are talking about the beginning of the last century.

November 8, 2010 marks the 90th anniversary of the first assault on Perekop. Of course, there were much more than three assaults in the history of the Turkish Wall. This, of course, is about those assaults, the perpetuation of the memory of which the Soviet state took care of.

The civil war, caused in the Russian Empire by the well-known events of 1917, was nearing its end in 1920. The assault on the Perekop fortifications ends the last stage of the struggle on the Wrangel Front, the last major front of the Civil War. Ukraine had powerful grain reserves. But the presence of Wrangel's troops in Ukraine and a widely developed insurrectionary movement in the Ukrainian countryside crossed out "Ukrainian bread" from the food stocks of the country of the Soviets. The proximity of Wrangel to the industrial Donetsk-Krivoy Rog region paralyzed the work of this only coal and metallurgical base at that time.

It is worth noting that already in August 1920, the Wrangel government was officially recognized by France. In September, there were already missions of all the most important capitalist states in the Crimea, including distant Japan and the USA.

The organizer of the expulsion of the troops, General P.N. Wrangel from the Crimea was the Bolshevik M.V. Frunze, commander of the Southern Front at that time. Frunze fought against the Wrangelites together with the Insurrectionary Army of Father Makhno (N.I. Makhno), with whom in October 1920 he signed an agreement on unity of action against the White troops and established good personal relations.

Since the ideas of Bolshevism, both declarative and propagandistic and factual, are well known, let us dwell on the ideas of their Crimean opponent.
On July 5, 1920, the Great Russia newspaper published an interview with the newspaper's correspondent N.N. Chebyshev with General P.N. Wrangel.

"What are we fighting for?"

To this question, General Wrangel declared, there can be only one answer: we are fighting for freedom. On the other side of our front, in the north, arbitrariness, oppression, and slavery reign. You can hold the most diverse views on the desirability of this or that state system, you can be an extreme republican, a socialist, and even a Marxist, and still recognize the so-called Soviet republic as an example of the most sinister despotism ever seen, under the yoke of which Russia, and even its new one, allegedly perishes. the ruling class, the proletariat, crushed to the ground, like the rest of the population. Now this is no secret in Europe either. The veil has been lifted over Soviet Russia. Reaction nest in Moscow. Enslavers sit there, interpreting the people as a herd. Only blindness and dishonesty can consider us reactionaries. We are fighting for the emancipation of the people from the yoke, which they have not seen in the darkest times of their history.

In Europe, for a long time they did not understand the time, but now, apparently, they are already beginning to understand what we are clearly aware of: the whole world significance of our domestic strife. If our sacrifices are in vain, then European society, European democracy will themselves have to stand up in armed defense of their cultural and political gains against the enemy of civilization inspired by success.

I yearn with all my heart for an end to the civil war. Every drop of spilled Russian blood makes my heart ache. But the struggle is inevitable until consciousness is cleared up, until people understand that they are fighting against themselves, against their rights to self-determination, until real state power is established in Russia, based on the principles of legality, security of personal and property rights, on the principles of respect for international obligations; there will never be a lasting peace in Europe, nor an improvement in economic conditions. It will be impossible to conclude even a single stable international agreement and to agree on nothing properly. The cause of the Russian Army in the Crimea is a great liberation movement. This is a holy war for freedom and right.

Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel (08/15/1878 - 04/25/1928) - Russian, general, Knight of St. George, commander-in-chief of the Russian Army in the Crimea (1920) - advocated the federal structure of the future Russia. Inclined to recognize the political independence of Ukraine. He developed a number of legislative acts on agrarian reform, including the "Land Law", adopted by the government on May 25, 1920. He recognized the seizure of landlord lands by peasants in the early years of the revolution (though for a certain contribution to the state) as legal. He carried out a number of administrative reforms in the Crimea, as well as the reform of local self-government. Promulgated a number of decrees on the regional autonomy of the Cossack lands.

Negotiations with the Bolsheviks, which the British government, which supported the Whites, insisted on, were absolutely unacceptable and even offensive to the White Command. It was decided to continue the fight to the end. Wrangel's successes in the summer of 1920 alarmed the Bolsheviks. The Soviet press sounded the alarm, calling for the destruction of the “baron who had settled in the Crimea”, to drive him into the “Crimean bottle”.

In September 1920, the Wrangel troops were defeated by the Reds near Kakhovka. On the night of September 8, the Red Army launched a general offensive, the purpose of which was to capture Perekop and Chongar and break into the Crimea.

Attack of the Perekop positions.

The battle began on November 8 at dawn on the outskirts of the Lithuanian Peninsula. Having crossed the Sivash at night, the vanguards of the 52nd and 15th rifle divisions approached imperceptibly 1 km to the Lithuanian Peninsula. Here they were already discovered by the enemy and got involved in the battle for the northern exits of this peninsula. By 7 o'clock, the Red Army soldiers had overcome the resistance of the Kuban White Brigade and occupied the entire northern part of the peninsula. At about 8 o'clock, the Reds occupied the entire Lithuanian peninsula.

By 10 o'clock, the Whites brought the nearest reserves into battle and launched a counterattack with the Drozdov brigade from Karadzhanai, and with parts of the II Corps from Karpovaya Balka to the southern exits from the peninsula. The counterattack was initially successful, the Red units were pushed back, but then the Reds restored the situation. The Turkish rampart, which is the basis of the fortification line, was under a decisive threat from the rear.

In the morning, due to thick fog, artillery could not begin artillery preparation. Only by 9 o'clock did the artillery preparation begin. By 1300, units of the 51st Infantry Division were trying to advance to the barbed wire, but the Whites' fire system was intact. Artillery preparation was extended by an hour. Meanwhile, by 13 o'clock the artillery began to feel the lack of shells. The calculation of the shooting was made up to 12 hours, but it took much longer to shoot, and it turned out to be impossible to bring the shells because of the completely open rear. Parts of the 15th and 52nd rifle divisions were pushed back by a counterattack of the whites, and on the rear they had a rise in water in the Sivash (they crossed the Sivash at low tide).

At 13 o'clock. 25 min. units of the 51st division were ordered to "simultaneously and immediately attack the Turkish Wall." At 13 o'clock. 35 min. parts of the division went on the offensive, but were repulsed by devastating machine-gun and artillery fire.

Around 22 o'clock. the attackers managed to overcome the wire barriers and reach the ditch, but here, in front of the wire, passing along the outer slope of the ditch, the attack bogged down again, despite the exceptional heroism of the Red Army. Some regiments suffered up to 60% losses.

The Red Command gathered at dawn on November 9 to resume the attack on the entire front. All arrangements for this decision have been made. But the enemy assessed the situation differently: on the night of November 8-9, he hastily retreated to his Ishun positions. His withdrawal by the Red units was discovered only on the morning of November 9th. The Turkish rampart was taken, but the enemy nevertheless left, though broken, but not broken.

Before the battles for the isthmuses of the Crimean peninsula, the number of whites, according to the intelligence data of the reds (later confirmed by battles), was 9850 bayonets, 7220 sabers.

The number of Reds (according to V. Trandafilov "Perekop operation of the Red Army") amounted to 26,500 bayonets and sabers on the Perekop Isthmus. The Whites on the isthmus had 467 machine guns against 487 Red machine guns and 128 guns against 91 Red guns.

However, ideas do not become true or false depending on the equipment of military equipment and military success.