The campaign was fought by the Axis powers of Germany and Romania against the Soviet Union for control of Sevastopol, a port in Crimea on the Black Sea.

After the failure of their first assault on Sevastopol, the Axis opted to conduct siege warfare until the middle of 1942, at which point they attacked the encircled Soviet forces by land, sea, and air.

The Soviet Separate Coastal Army was annihilated, with 118,000 men killed, wounded or captured in the final assault and 200,481 casualties in the siege as a whole for both it and the Black Sea Fleet.

With the Soviet forces neutralized, the Axis refocused their attention on the major summer campaign of that year, Case Blue and the advance to the Caucasus oilfields.

Its site, on a deeply eroded, bare limestone promontory at the southwestern tip of the Crimea, made an approach by land forces exceedingly difficult.

The Soviet Navy had built upon these natural defenses by modernizing the port and installing heavy coastal batteries consisting of 180mm and 305mm re-purposed battleship guns which were capable of firing inland as well as out to sea.

German planners assumed the area would be captured in mopping-up operations once the bulk of the Red Army was destroyed west of the Dnieper river.

Hitler described the area as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" and ordered the conquest of Ukraine and Crimea as vital targets in Directive 33, dated 23 July 1941.

[10] The Command of the Army (OKH) issued orders that the Crimea was to be captured as soon as possible to prevent attacks on Romanian oil supplies, vital to the German military.

[11] By the end of October 1941, Major-General Ivan Yefimovich Petrov's Independent Coastal Army, numbering 32,000 men, had arrived at Sevastopol by sea from Odessa further west, it having been evacuated after heavy fighting.

This gave Vice Admiral Filipp Oktyabrsky, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, time to bring in men and materiel from Novorossiysk.

The defence of Sevastopol was provided mainly by the Black Sea Fleet and the Separate Coastal Army under Petrov (which had been shipped in from the siege of Odessa).

Assisted by shelling from two light cruisers and the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna, the Red Army halted this attack, and Manstein called off the offensive on 21 November, having lost 2,000 men.

The naval commander demanded that Petrov hold the coast along the northern flank of Sevastopol on the Belbek River in order to retain Coastal Battery 10, an artillery complex near Mamaschai.

In order to commit as many forces to the battle as possible, Manstein left the weak XLII Corps, containing just the 46th Infantry Division and two Romanian brigades, to protect the entire front from Yalta to Kerch.

The Regia Marina sent the 101st Naval Squadron, which brought nine torpedo boats and nine coastal submarines under the command of the highly competent Capitano di Fregata Francesco Mimbelli.

At the same time, German medium bombers conducted rolling attacks on the city, which included all units except LG 1, which engaged in suppressing anti-aircraft installations.

They sank the tanker Mikhail Gromov, but the flotilla leader Tashkent, the destroyer Bezuprechnyy, and transport Abkhaziya escaped to bring 2,785 soldiers into the fortress.

Ivan Laskin, commanding the 172nd Rifle Division in the northern sector recalled, "Bombers in groups of twenty to thirty attacked us without caring for their targets.

Situated on the northeast edge of the city, they struck along the lines of least resistance, across the Belbek river while the German XXX and Romanian Mountain Corps conducted holding attacks in the south and center, respectively.

The Luftwaffe had a greater impact, using its Ju 87s to knock out the communications systems of the fort.On the morning of 7 June 1942, the German infantry began advancing cautiously.

While the Germans did make progress, nearing the main railway station just southeast of Maxim Gorky, they were stopped from achieving a full-scale breakthrough by the 172nd Rifle Division.

The German LIV Corps extended the salient on the seam of the III and IV sector to 3 km, determined to break through before Petrov could reinforce his lines.

The consumption rate of ammunition was putting von Richthofen's logistical network under strain and he could no longer afford to fly massed bombing raids.

Adding to the Luftwaffe's troubles in the sector, von Richthofen was transferred to prepare the Corps' Headquarters near Kursk to support the upcoming Operation Blue, the German summer offensive in southern Russia.

The fortifications allowed the Soviet forces to concentrate artillery against breakthroughs and machine gun posts protected the fort from southern and eastern attacks, but it was vulnerable from a northern assault.

At 19:00 the 22nd divisional artillery began shelling the fort and its smaller supporting fortress, Volga, located to Stalin's rear, with 210, 280 and 305 mm weapons.

The German 24th, 50th and Romanian 4th Mountain Divisions were to maintain pressure in the central sector while they pushed towards the Mekensia and Gatani Valley and the Chernaya River opening at Severnaya Bay.

[60] A flanking attack by German assault boats on 29 June succeeded in taking the fortified southern shore of Severnaya Bay, greatly diminishing resistance against the capture of the city and harbor of Sevastopol.

German aerial attacks had sunk 10,800 tons of Soviet shipping including 4 destroyers, a submarine, 3 motor torpedo boats, 6 coastal vessels and 4 freighters.