Allmendinger was not particularly alarmed by the landing at Eltigen, which was incorrectly assumed to be a battalion-size diversionary force, so he ordered Oberst Karl Faulhaber’s Grenadier-Regiment 282 to mop it up. Inside the bridgehead, Major Dmitri S. Koveshnikov found himself the senior officer at Eltigen, with elements of several battalions mixed together. Initially, Koveshnikov had no radio contact with his division command post on the Taman Peninsula or with his subordinate units. Oberst Faulhaber pulled together the spread-out 5. and 7. Kompanie for a counterattack at dawn, but quickly realized that he was not dealing with a small diversionary force. By 1130hrs, Faulhaber had assembled a battalion-size counterattack with some artillery support, but in the interim Koveshnikov had finally established radio contact with the artillery on the Taman side, which he directed to pound the German positions around the beachhead. Soviet aircraft also continually strafed every attempt by Faulhaber to mass troops for a counterattack. Around 1230hrs, six StuG III assault guns from Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 191 arrived and led an advance against the northern side of the Eltigen beachhead. A Soviet penal company was overrun and destroyed, and Major Koveshnikov’s front line began to crumble. Only timely artillery support from the Taman Peminsula forced the Germans to break off the counterattack late in the afternoon. When night arrived, Petrov began sending more troops across to reinforce the Eltigen beachhead, and, despite serious losses due to mines and artillery fire, another 3,200 troops and nine mortars were landed. Among the new arrivals was Colonel Vasily F. Gladkov, commander of the 318th Mountain Rifle Division, who took command of the Eltigen beachhead. Again the Kriegsmarine failed to interdict the crossing operation.
Dawn on November 2 found Gladkov with three poorly armed battalions holding a half-mile-deep and 1½-mile-wide strip of land. In mid-morning, Gareis’s 98. Infanterie-Division began a counterttack with two infantry battalions (I. and II./GR 282), supported by six StuG IIIs, pioneers, and flak guns. Luftflotte 4 also managed to scrape up some air support, although the Soviet 4th Air Army strenuously contested the air space over the beachhead. Attacking both ends of the beachhead, the Germans were able to reduce Gladkov’s lodgment by half during the day, but Soviet artillery support from the Taman Peninsula inflicted significant losses on the German infantry, halting the counterattack. Faulhaber’s Grenadier-Regiment 282 suffered 110 casualties in the first two days of fighting at Eltigen.[14] The next day Gareis continued counterttacking, and he received Stuka support from III./SG3 at Bagerovo airfield, but could not overwhelm the beachhead at Eltigen. By this point, the German forces surrounding the beachhead were heavily outnumbered by the encircled Soviet forces, but Gladkov’s troops lacked the tanks or heavy weapons necessary to affect a breakout.
Meanwhile, Petrov was finally able to begin his main landing effort with the 56th Army on the night of November 3/4. It began with a massive artillery preparation with over 600 guns and rockets from the Chushka Spit, bombarding German positions near the beaches. Then assault elements of the 2nd Guards and 55th Guards Rifle Divisions, along with the 369th Naval Infantry Battalion, began crossing the straits. The Germans detected the crossing operation, and coastal artillery from Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 613 opened fire and inflicted losses, but could not stop the crossing. The easternmost part of the Kerch Peninsula was guarded only by 9. and 11. Kompanie of III./Grenadier-Regiment 290, supported by three batteries of 10.5cm guns and one battery of 17cm cannon. When the 55th Guards Rifle Division began landing at Golubinaya Bay near Mayak, 9. Kompanie immediately fell back toward the battalion headquarters in Baksy. It was much the same at Opasnaya, where the 2nd Guards Rifle Division routed the sole German company in the area. Almost 4,000 Soviet troops were landed on the first day, seizing a lodgment area by evening that was 8 miles wide and up to 5 miles deep. Allmendinger hurriedly shifted two companies of fusiliers, some replacement units, and a pioneer outfit to create a thin screen around the Soviet beachhead, but he knew that he would need virtually all of Gareis’s 98. Infanterie-Division to contain the new Soviet beachhead. Consequently, he ordered Faulhaber’s Grenadier-Regiment 282 to make one more effort against the Eltigen beachhead, reinforced by Pionier-Bataillon 46 and two Romanian battlegroups from the 6th Cavalry Division. Allmendinger’s staff developed a counterattack plan known as “Komet,” which would crush the Eltigen beachhead, then redeploy all forces to contain the new Soviet landings. Allmendinger also pressed the Kriegsmarine to attack Soviet convoys in the Kerch Straits, but it was reluctant to risk its limited number of warships in the face of Soviet air and artillery attacks.
While Allmendinger struggled to employ his limited combat resources, Petrov ordered the 56th Army to expand its beachhead before the German defense could stabilize. On November 4 the town of Baksy was captured and the thin German center shoved backward. Gareis committed his fusilier and pioneer battalions, which prevented a complete collapse, but it was obvious that the equivalent of four battalions could not contain the 56th Army for long. Soviet reinforcements continued to pour across the Kerch Strait every night, enabling General-Lieutenant Mel’nik’s 56th Army to mount a major breakout effort on November 5–6. Somehow, Gareis’s thin screen of fusiliers and pioneers repulsed all attacks for two days, until Mel’nik’s forces expended most of their ammunition. Thereafter, Petrov called off further attacks until he could get more troops, tanks, artillery, and supplies across the straits.
The Axis implemented “Komet” at Eltigen on November 7 and it was an utter failure. The promised Luftwaffe support went instead to Gruppe Konrad at Perekop, and Gladkov’s troops heavily outnumbered the German and Romanian units that attacked the northern and southern perimeter. The only positive aspect of “Komet” was that the Kriegsmarine was finally prodded into operating in the Kerch Straits again, and the S-Boats and R-Boats began to seriously interfere with resupply missions to the Eltigen beachhead. Furthermore, it was clear to Petrov that Eltigen could not be expanded into a larger lodgment area, so no more reinforcements would be committed into this tactical dead end. After the failure of “Komet,” Grenadier-Regiment 282 was withdrawn and the Romanian 14th Machine-gun Battalion and 6th Cavalry Division took over the perimeter defense. The Kriegsmarine also began to erect a fairly impenetrable blockade around Eltigen, using light warships, armed MFPs, and mines, which gradually starved the Soviet forces in the beachhead.
The battle of Kerch–Eltigen was shaped by the struggle for air supremacy over the beaches and the Kerch Straits in November and December 1943. Although Fliegerkorps I only had a single fighter unit at any one time in the Crimea during this period, it was the cream of the Luftwaffe’s fighter arm. The Germans began the battle with I./JG 52, but Hauptmann Gerhard Barkhorn’s II./JG 52 took their place on November 13, and his unit remained in the Crimea until April 1944. Barkhorn was already one of the top Luftwaffe aces, with 177 victories claimed by the end of October 1943. Although his Gruppe of 40 Bf-109G fighters was outnumbered by more than 10-1 by the fighters from the VVS-ChF and the 4th and 8th Air Armies, Barkhorn’s pilots ripped into the Soviet air units operating over the Kerch Peninsula. In November and December 1943, Barkhorn personally claimed 51 enemy aircraft shot down and II./JG 52 inflicted over 200 losses on the VVS in exchange for 17 Bf-109s lost. Due to the ferocious resistance put up by Barkhorn’s fighters, the VVS failed to deliver adequate air support to either beachhead.
14
la, Anlage 4 z. KTB Nr. 8, AOK 17, Oct 10–Dec 31, 1943, NAM (National Archives Microfilm), Series T-312, Roll 739.