Fliegerkorps, which flew an average of 1,500 sorties per day in support of Trappenjagd and constantly attacked Soviet field positions, armored units, troop columns, medical evacuation ships, airfields, and supply lines.

[20] A German Messerschmitt Bf 110 reconnaissance aircraft noted the buildup of Soviet naval forces and reported it to Lieutenant General Hans Graf von Sponeck's XXXXII Army Corps headquarters.

[22] On the evening of 25 December 1941, the Soviet 224th Rifle Division and 83rd Naval Infantry Brigade were packed into small craft on the Taman Peninsula and began to pass the Kerch Strait.

[22] It consisted of the gunboat Don, the transports Krasny Flot and Pyenay, a tugboat, two motor barges that carried three T-26 light tanks and a few artillery pieces, and 16 fishing trawlers.

[24] Lacking radios, the lightly-armed and half-frozen Soviet formations north of Kerch moved only one kilometer inland before stopping and digging in for German counterattacks.

The Soviet regimental commanders, with little to no communications link to headquarters, decided to wait for planned reinforcements that were delayed for three days due to the unfavorable winter weather and never arrived to help them.

Two German battalions from Colonel Ernst Maisel's 42nd Infantry Regiment held perfect defensive positions on high ground that dominated the sand beaches.

The landing at 0500 hours was stopped by an onslaught of German MG 34 machine gun, mortar and light-artillery fire that prevented the whaleboats and fishing trawlers from advancing to the shore.

[27] Feodosia, a mid-sized town with a pre-war population of 28,000, was lightly defended by two coastal artillery battalions and 800 combat engineers under the command of Oberstleutnant Hans von Ahlfen, which were refitting from the assault on Sevastopol.

[29] The 44th Army began loading up men and equipment at 1300 hours on 28 December into an invasion fleet at Novorossiysk, which consisted of two light cruisers, eight destroyers, 14 transports and dozens of small craft.

At 1730, the advance guard consisting of the Soviet cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz, the Fidonisy-class destroyers Shaumyan, Zhelezniakov, and Nezamozhnik and patrol boats and minesweepers steamed towards Feodosia in relatively favorable weather permitting speeds of 16 knots.

[27] At 0350 hours on 29 December, the Soviet destroyers Shaumyan and Zhelezniakov showed up at Feodosia, fired star shells for illumination and followed up with a 13-minute barrage on the German defenses.

The naval infantrymen, led by Lieutenant Arkady F. Aydinov, captured two 3.7 cm Pak anti-tank guns and launched green flares to signal the all-clear for the follow-up forces.

[12] During the offensive, Soviet photojournalist Dmitri Baltermants took a photograph of the aftermath of a mass execution near Kerch where seven thousand people, including Jewish Holocaust victims, had been shot in anti-tank trenches.

Manstein also diverted the XXX Corps under Generalmajor Maximilian Fretter-Pico from the siege of Sevastopol to lead a counteroffensive composed of four Axis divisions that were in place by 13 January.

Luftwaffe reinforcements poured in to meet Manstein's demand for air support and a new Special Staff Crimea was created under the command Robert Ritter von Greim to lead operations in the peninsula.

Prior to his planned main offensive, he landed 226 soldiers on board the destroyer Sposobnyi 40 kilometers southwest of Feodosia as a diversion but succeeded in drawing off only one company of Panzerjäger to contain it – which Kozlov translated as weakness.

Supported by the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna, the cruiser Krasnyi Krym and four destroyers, the Soviet Sudak Landing [ru; uk] quickly dispersed the small Romanian garrison in the town with naval gunfire.

In the north, 46 ID and the Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade launched distraction attacks against 51st Army and succeeded in drawing the majority of the Soviet reserves into an irrelevant sector.

In exchange, five German infantry battalions backed up by powerful air support and several assault guns crushed a Soviet division and established an ascendancy over the 44th Army.

Fretter-Pico reinforced Hitzfeld with more battalions as the Soviet 63rd Mountain and 236th Rifle Divisions lost ground and were pushed into narrow, isolated sectors close to the sea.

The Red Army troops in the town fought on through heavy street combat but were badly hampered by constant Stuka attacks as well as German artillery and machine gun fire.

[43] XXX Corps' attack intensified on 19 January as the remaining two divisions of the 44th Army were pursued along the Black Sea coast, unraveling the Soviet forward positions to the north.

[42][44] The Caucasus Front, having lost 115,630 men in January, was too shaken and weakened by Manstein's rapid counter-stroke and the Luftwaffe's anti-shipping campaign to mount large-scale offensive operations for more than a month.

[55] The open terrain provided no cover for the Red Army soldiers, who were systematically killed and wounded in great numbers by incessant German artillery strikes.

The division was not yet fully equipped with its supporting elements and its tanks were mostly obsolete Czech-built Panzer 38(t)s. Its attack at 0600 hours on 20 March in dense fog ran headlong into an offensive buildup of Soviet armor and went badly wrong.

[62] Manstein conceded he had prematurely committed an inexperienced, half-deployed division into an all-out assault but pointed out that an immediate counterattack was necessary as his army was in danger of losing its critical defensive positions.

[74] On 9 May, the German engineers finished breaching the anti-tank ditch and Manstein committed the 22nd Panzer Division, which swung north and trapped the 51st Army against the Sea of Azov on mid-day 10 May.

Once this happened, the eight divisions of the 51st Army surrendered on 11 May, releasing XXX Corps to pursue the fragments of retreating Soviet forces to Marfovka [Wikidata], barely 12 kilometers from Kerch.

[10] The motorized ad-hoc Groddeck brigade [ru], supported by the Schlachtgeschwader 1 wing, reached the Marfovka airfield in the afternoon and destroyed 35 fighters on the ground.