Further north along the Kuban, the German 257th Division pushed over the crossing sites at Labinsk, and a small bridgehead was obtained near Kazanskaya, about 10 kilometers west of Kropotkin. These attacks were meant simply to draw the interest of any reserves the Orenburg 3rd Army might have deeper in the Maykop Zone. The real action was to the northeast, where the 57th Panzer Korps launched its attack through Novo Alexandrovka towards Stavropol. It would fall upon the 3rd Kazakh Army, a much less capable formation than the regular army units in the Maykop District. Three of the five rifle divisions on the line withdrew, and of the two that stood their ground, the Timur Rifles took 40% casualties. Further north, the Amir Guard Division was surrounded by 29th Motorized Division and tried to fight its way out of the trap.
The Germans had only hit the outer shell of Volkov’s defense in that sector. Anticipating an attack along the lines of what Manstein had ordered, Volkov sent his 7th Regular Army to Stavropol, and they were now hastily marshaling to arms along an inner defense line that stretched from Stavropol to the north. Other measures saw the massive silver behemoths of the Southern division airships climb high to avoid German fighters, penetrating deep behind German lines. They would then descend to deploy their small airmobile company, with a mission to interdict the vital rail lines that would sustain the German offensive.
One landed north of Tikhoretsk, causing a good bit of damage before the Ersatz Battalion of the Grossdeutschland Division surrounded and destroyed the raiders. A company off the airship Krasnodar made good on its name by raiding the rail line northeast of that city. It, too, would meet a sad fate when found by the German 503 Heavy PzJag Battalion that had been moving up the road to the crossing bridgehead at Labinsk. A 3rd Company off the airship Kungur struck the auxiliary rail line running from Rostov to Salsk.
While this effort was made to interdict German rail lines, Volkov made good use of his own. The last four rifle divisions of his 7th Army moved all day and night, down along the Volga to Astrakhan and then on down the Caspian shore towards Groznyy. This route would eventually turn west to take them up towards Nevinomyssk and Armavir, where Volkov determined the Germans would come.
So in these initial days, and in spite of his foreknowledge of how the old Operation Edelweiss had ended, Volkov chose to backstop his forward lines in the effort to hold as much territory as possible. He was perhaps making a grave mistake in choosing to fight for every mile of ground, rather than adopting the strategy the Russian Armies had used in the old history. There they had made a hasty withdrawal, even uprooting and shipping all the oil rigs and equipment at Maykop. They would delay on the line Pyatigorsk, Mineralne Vody, Georgievsk, and then fall back on the Terek River. (See Map of Manstein’s drive into the Caucasus)
In the Maykop Zone, it seemed that Volkov’s strategy was working. His 3rd Army was fighting hard, and its reserve Mech Corps had come forward to deliver some sharp counterpunches against 17th Army. Beyond Hill 69 with that nascent oil field, there was heavy woodland that had stopped Volkov’s troops when defended by stalwart Soviet troops. Now they hoped to use that terrain to their own good advantage, and it was slow going for the infantry attacks, particularly since the Germans had already been fighting for a month.
It was the German bridgehead over the Kuban at Labinsk near Kropotkin that became the major problem. The Germans had used three Pioneer Regiments to get the infantry over the river, and now they had deepened their bridgehead to a depth of 15 kilometers. A brigade from 3rd Army’s Mech Corps was committed there to try and hold the line, but it was unable to make much of a difference. The German infantry found the weak points in the enemy line, hammered their way through, and then presented the strong points with the option to either withdraw or be enveloped. Cavalry Divisions used to plug holes were quickly pushed back, and the weight of this attack would soon begin to threaten the strong defensive front west of Belorchensk.
Yet that was not even the main German effort, for Manstein assumed that Maykop would fall like a ripe plum the instant he had swept through Stavropol and began pushing to cut the rail line to the south. The German mobile units had all but destroyed the outer defensive line of 3rd Kazakh Army, and now they were fighting with the regulars of the 7th Army. Grossdeutschland Division came barreling right up the road from the Kuban bend east of Kropotkin, and was already closing on Stavropol. 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions were mopping up shattered enemy stragglers and forging on. 7th Army had been trying to watch the entire front from Stavropol north to the Manych Canal, a distance of 135 Kilometers, and it was still waiting for its last four divisions.
As the Germans pushed to within 12 kilometers of the main airfield at Stavropol, the order was given to fly off the fighter group there to Elista. The 18 planes took off, heading north east towards the wide empty desert region, but not an hour later the drone of planes could be heard again. The remaining ground service crews rushed to man machineguns, thinking the field was under German attack, but to their great surprise, down came another group of 12 fighters, all Volkov’s Yak-1’s, built with plans he had provided. The bewildered ground crews soon learned they had just flown in from Armavir.
“The Germans have crossed the Kuban north of the city!” the pilots exclaimed. “They have taken Armavir!”
That sleight of hand had been accomplished when the 24th Bridge Column trundled forward and threw up a pontoon bridge on the night of the 30th of March. The following morning, 170th Infantry crossed, soon to be followed by the 81st. This sudden and unexpected attack had completely compromised the defenders at Kropotkin, and those trying to contain the Labinsk bridgehead, and now Volkov’s Generals had to make some very difficult decisions. They had stopped the Germans in that heavy woodland just north of Aspheronsk, the best defensive positions they had west of Belorchensk, but now that whole line had been flanked. The rail line that fed them ran back through Armavir, and the defense of the Labinsk bridgehead was now collapsing. Manstein’s plan was working.
Now Volkov had to either order his 3rd Army into a defensive hedgehog around Maykop, or to withdraw. In that instance, he would have to destroy all the well sites at Maykop, and lose all that equipment, for unlike his historical counterparts, he had not moved anything south. Unwilling to lose one of his best oilfield developments in less than a week, he opted instead for a limited withdrawal. The Kuban Rifle Corps and all elements of 3rd Army in the Kuban bend were ordered to fall back towards the rail line from Armavir. The last four divisions of 7th Army had finally arrived at Nevinomyssk, and he sent the 77th up the road to Armavir, with the others deploying north to the defense of Stavropol.
Volkov was making a mistake, and the German Army would soon show him that, but he was obstinate. He should have pulled 3rd Army out immediately, abandoning the Maykop District an establishing a new line on the Urup River, which is just where Hitler had ordered him to go. But his pride would not allow him to do that. His success in delaying the advance of 17th Army near Belorchensk had made him believe that his regular troops could hold, but the forces advancing on Stavropol were not infantry divisions, they were all fast, well hardened Panzer divisions, and one of them was Grossdeutschland.
It was April Fool’s Day. It was now his to learn the lessons that had bedeviled his enemy, Sergei Kirov, since Germany crossed the frontier into the Soviet state in 1941. What Volkov desperately needed now was not the arrival of a few more rifle divisions—he needed another army, and more if he could get it to the Caucasus in time. The only way he was ever going to have that option would be if he could somehow demilitarize the long line of the Volga River. In order to fight the war he never expected to be facing now, he needed peace with Sergei Kirov.