The army fought in the Battle of Stalingrad during the winter of 1942–43, helping to defeat German relief attempts.

From late 1944 to the end of the war, the army fought in the final cutting-off of German forces in the Courland area next to the Baltic.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the army continued in existence as a component of the Russian Ground Forces.

[1] Professor John Erickson in The Road to Stalingrad describes Stalin's rationale for the formation of the Army during a 12 August session within the Stavka war room: Stalin and the Stavka had concluded from the German moves underway at the time that a strike on the Crimea (along with an attack on Bryansk) was likely, and thus the formation of an Independent Army in the Crimea had been decided upon.

However, due to what Erickson describes as Kuznetsov's 'sticking blindly to the prewar plan', which anticipated a seaborne assault, and leaving the Perekop and Sivash approaches too thinly held, Erich von Manstein, leading the German assault, was able to push past the defenses.

51st Army was originally planned to be the Kerch arm of the assault, but delays caused by bad weather and a schedule change prompted by renewed German attacks on Sevastopol resulted in 51st Army troops being landed at Capes Sjuk and Chroni during the night of 26–27 December 1941.

[8] The offensive concluded around 18 May 1942 with the near complete destruction of Soviet defending forces, which Erickson attributes to bickering between Kozlov and the Front commissar, Lev Mekhlis, and a trail of incompetent actions.

On 31 July when it came under Stalingrad Front control it was so worn down by its previous rough handling that it was only 3,000 men strong.

[14] During Operation Uranus, the counterattack from Stalingrad, the 4th Mechanized Corps began its attack from the 51st Army's sector.

In early December, 51st Army was deployed to cover the Kotelnikovo approaches against German relief attempts by the LVII.

Trufanov, organized a local offensive operation on the right flank with the forces of three rifle divisions, and moved to the north bank of the Aksay River, on the eve of the Kotelnikovo offensive operation,[16] which eventually defeated the German efforts made as part of Operation Winter Storm to relieve the Sixth Army in Stalingrad.

[23][24] Under tremendous pressure, the Germans organized an armored counter-attack (Doppelkopf) from 16 to 27 August 1944 that succeeded in re-opening a 40-kilometer wide corridor through which Army Group North retreated westward into the Courland region of Latvia.

[27] Order of Battle 1 May 1945: During June 1945, the army moved from the Baltic States to the Urals with almost all its forces.

Other Army-level troops reported by Feskov et al. 2013, as of 1988, included the 31st Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade with surface-to-air missiles at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the 326th Engineer-Sapper Regiment also at Yuzno-Sakhalinsk; and the 1101st Separate Motor Rifle Regiment at Sokol.