In many respects, Nazi loss at Ladoga led to the breaking of the siege of Leningrad on January 18, 1943, during Operation Iskra.
On October 22, 1942, the garrison of Sukho Island, sailors from the Ladoga military flotilla, and pilots from the Leningrad, Volkhov, Karelian, and Baltic fronts, as well as the Baltic Fleet, repelled a German landing force's attempt to seize the island in order to destroy the coastal battery and lighthouse. For Soviet ships transporting food and supplies to besieged Leningrad in the southern portion of Ladoga, the lighthouse was a vital marker. After losing the struggle for the Road of Life, the enemy incurred casualties in men, ships, and aircraft, which affected the result of the war for Leningrad.
The island was cloudy and peaceful at seven o'clock in the morning on October 22, 1942. Senior Lieutenant Ivan Gusev, the battery commander and island commandant, went down to the bay's edge to wash and shave. In the meantime, his subordinates were getting ready for breakfast. Suddenly, the watchman reported seeing a caravan south of the island, consisting of 14 landing boats and 24 self-propelled landing barges.
A few meters from the coast, a shell detonated. "Anxiety!" yelled Gusev, who then instructed the radio operator to inform the Ladoga military flotilla's headquarters that the enemy was bombarding the island. The garrison was alerted to the necessity to take up battle positions by the harsh strikes of the bells: artillerymen gathered at three 100-mm naval guns, while riflemen and machine gunners from the firing posts kept a close eye on the situation.
Gusev dashed up to the command post on the lighthouse's higher platform, where he got the initial data for shooting from the rangefinders and ordered the third and second cannons to fire. There have been no targets found in the first cannon's area thus far. Five minutes after the bombardment began, the coastal battery engaged the enemy ships in action.
The bullets from naval artillery, which had several times the firepower of the Gusevites, smashed stone blocks, resulting in a strong deluge of debris and stones that prevented Suho's defenders from lifting their heads.
Gusev later recalled:
"The bursts of enemy shells and the discharges of our weapons shook the island. In the initial minutes of the conflict, fire washed down two tall wooden pillars that supported the antenna of the battery radio station. "Did the radio operators manage to broadcast a report about the enemy's attack on the island to the flotilla headquarters?" the idea flashed involuntarily.
His suspicions were realized when the radio operators realized they didn't have enough time to broadcast the information. Meanwhile, German planes took to the skies. The island was bombed by nine Junkers, while the Messerschmitts who were protecting them dove into the gun positions. Given Suho's small size (90 by 60 meters), there was not a single piece of land on the island that had not been damaged by enemy fire. The garrison began to incur casualties in the form of slain and injured soldiers almost immediately. Gusev was also hit in the face by broken window glass pieces.
A little less than half of the 90 personnel under his command were poorly equipped military builders who sought safety in dugouts as the first sounds of war were heard. Only the batteries, the observation and communications post staff, radio operators, and the lighthouse team remained. They couldn't hold out for long, though.
The conquest of Leningrad and Kronstadt was part of the German "Barbarossa" invasion plan against the Soviet Union, which aimed to compel the Soviet Baltic Fleet to cease fighting. The Wehrmacht "should commence efforts to seize Moscow as a key center of communications and military industry only after capturing Leningrad," it was stressed.
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The Kirov Plant in Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second-largest city, manufactured massive KV tanks, making it the most significant defense product. Ideological motivations also played a part; the takeover of the city where the October Revolution of 1917 took place would play a crucial role in the demoralization of the Red Army and the USSR's citizenry.
Everything seemed to run smoothly at first. In comparison to Army Group Center and especially Army Group South, the rate of advance of Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb's Army Group North in the first three weeks of the war was unprecedented. The 56th Motorized Corps of General Erich von Manstein advanced 675 kilometers from the frontier, while the 41st Motorized Corps of General Georg Hans Reinhardt advanced 750 kilometers.
General Franz Halder, Chief of the German Ground Forces' General Staff, wrote in his personal journal on July 8, 1941: "The Fuehrer's decision to destroy Moscow and Leningrad to the ground is unshakeable, as it will allow us to utterly eliminate the people of these cities, which we will otherwise be compelled to feed throughout the winter."
General Erich Gepner's 4th Panzer Group participated in combat with Soviet cover forces on July 12, 1941, after capturing bridgeheads on the Luga River. The quickest road from Luga to Leningrad is only 136 kilometers, and tanks bearing crosses must make the final, crucial drive to Russia's northern capital.
Despite the fact that the Luga defensive line was not completely prepared, the Germans were compelled to briefly halt their planned advance towards Leningrad due to its tenacious defense.
However, the Wehrmacht remained formidable, and the city of Luga was abandoned on August 24 as a result of his assault. On August 27, Soviet troops under General Andrei Astanin's command were besieged, and around 20,000 soldiers and leaders were taken prisoner. The battles between the encircles lasted until September 15, 1941.
The Soviet leadership was able to create various formations, including two armies, and construct a number of defensive lines and fortifications on the close approaches to Leningrad due to the extended delay in the German onslaught. In addition, the city was evacuated of over 489 thousand residents.
In consequence, the unexpected shift in the Leningrad orientation from offensive to positional war had a significant impact on the Third Reich's future plans. Now, Hitler did not consider the loss of Leningrad to be a pre-requisite for an attack on Moscow; this should have happened concurrently.
Von Leeb was instructed to encircle Leningrad on the Karelian Isthmus with Finnish soldiers, then transfer part of his air formations and motorized units to Army Group Center in mid-September 1941, which was preparing for the climactic fight for the USSR's capital. Army Group North took Shlisselburg (Petrokrepost) on September 8, cutting Leningrad off from the mainland by land.
Apart from the refugees, the blockade ring engulfed two and a half million Leningraders, 340 thousand citizens of the region, and more than half a million combatants and commanders of the Leningrad Front and the Baltic Fleet, covering a total area of 5,000 square kilometers. It was unimaginable to force that many people to surrender, yet Leeb tried.
He tried to take Leningrad by storm from September 9 to September 23, 1941, seizing Krasnoe Selo, Strelna, Slutsk (now Pavlovsk), Uritsk, Pushkin, and Peterhof, thus shutting off Oranienbaum and the 8th Army holding there from Leningrad. The front on the southwestern approaches to the northern capital stabilized on September 24, and Leeb reported to Berlin that he couldn't seize the city without additional reserves.
In reaction, Hitler ordered the urgent deployment of four tank and two motorized divisions from Army Group North to Moscow, as well as a strict prohibition on entering Leningrad under any circumstances, as the city was mined and would fight to the death.
"It is not permissible for German soldiers to sacrifice their lives to save Russian cities from fire or to feed the people of these places at the price of the German country," the Wehrmacht Supreme Command's headquarters directive of October 7, 1941 said. It was resolved to bomb Leningrad, fire long-range artillery, and, most all, subject it to the power of hunger and cold.
Fuel, medications, munitions, and, most crucially, food were all cut off as a result of the siege. Leningrad needed at least 1100 tons of flour per day. Aviation, on the other hand, could only transport a maximum of 100 tons.
The sole enemy-free transit route went along the southern section of Lake Ladoga, from the beleaguered Osinovets Bay on the western shore to the city of Novaya Ladoga on the eastern side. The 60-kilometer journey was short, but difficult due to the lake's terrible weather, which seldom climbs above 19-20 degrees even in summer.
The events of the night of September 17, 1941, were the worst catastrophe. The storm killed the crew of the barge as well as 460 troops on their way from Novaya Ladoga. At the same moment, more than a thousand people, including women and children, drowned as another boat departing Osinovets to the east sank. Only 240 people were rescued.
The raids by German planes on ports and ships continued unabated. As a result, on November 4, 1941, the patrol boat "Konstruktor," which was stationed near Osinovets, was hit by a 250-kilogram bomb, killing roughly 200 persons from the crew and the evacuated civilian population.
However, Ladoga was the only option. She became Leningrad's Lifeline, feeding it with all it needed, evacuating the populace, and bringing in new supplies. When the Germans took Tikhvin on November 8, 1941, they cut off the flow of commodities and food to Leningrad from the east via rail to Novaya Ladoga, and the situation deteriorated dramatically.
The bread ration for hot shop employees, which was 1000 grams on July 18, 1941, was reduced to 375 grams on November 20. It was reduced from 400 to 125 grams for dependents and children under the age of 12. The city was the epicenter of the famine.
The liberation of Tikhvin on December 9, 1941, and the start of the ice route operating along the frozen Ladoga Lake eased the situation marginally. Workers' daily rations were doubled to 500 grams of bread, while children and dependents received 200 grams.
The period from mid-November 1941 to the end of January 1942 was the most difficult for Leningrad residents during the blockade, as deliveries through Ladoga were minimal and internal supplies were depleted. The city's water supply froze as the temperature dropped below thirty degrees in January.
Water was as crucial to Leningraders as a paltry bread ration. In frosts, blockade tea, or regular boiling water, warmed and offered the sensation of satiety. A soup prepared from vegetable oil waste was heated in water, and wood glue was used to make jelly.
The State Defense Committee's plenipotentiary for the provision of food for Leningrad and the Leningrad Front, Dmitry Pavlov, recalled:
"Acute hunger was becoming more and more apparent, and people of all ages, men and women, were dying. People's legs and limbs became weaker, their bodies became numb, and numbness eventually neared the heart, bringing the end. People died all over the place."
Between December 1941 and February 1942, about 252 thousand city inhabitants died.
The besieged city received food, ammunition, military equipment, medications, and gasoline. They transported machinery and mostly people in the other way, including children, women, the old, and the sick. Over 514 thousand people were evacuated to the mainland during the winter of 1941-1942. Between the second part of May 1942, when transportation on the Ladoga commenced, until November 1942, another 448 thousand people were evacuated from Leningrad.
By the spring of 1942, Berlin had concluded that starving Leningrad out of the city had failed to produce the desired consequences. Despite constant shelling, bombing, starvation, and cold, the city's defenders refused to surrender, diverting a huge number of combat-ready German forces required elsewhere.
Hitler issued Directive No. 41 on April 5, 1942, detailing preparations for a summer assault on the Eastern Front. In it, he instructed soldiers in the south to make a breakthrough toward the Caucasus, and troops in the north to "accomplish the fall of Leningrad and establish land contact with the Finns."
As a result, the assault plan was resurrected. Field Marshal Georg von Küchler, who succeeded Leeb as commander-in-chief of Army Group North, was entrusted with its implementation by the Fuehrer.
Hitler directed in Directive No. 45 on July 23, 1942, that a strategy to seize Leningrad be devised by early September. A military officer with expertise in fights around Leningrad was dispatched to assist Kühler, and was elevated to field marshall von Manstein for the conquest of Sevastopol. His 11th Army was relocated from Crimea to Army Group North's command. Operation Nordlicht ("Northern Lights"), a storming of Leningrad, was to be carried out by two field marshals.
A spectacular view unfolded in front of Manstein during the inspection of the area: "We observed a city covered by a heavily echeloned system of field fortifications, yet placed, it seemed, nearby." On the Neva, a massive plant was spotted that was still constructing tanks. The shipyards of Pulkovo may be seen near the Gulf of Finland. The silhouettes of St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Admiralty steeple, as well as the Peter and Paul Fortress, loomed in the distance.
On the 23rd of August 1942, the combat was to commence with a heavy artillery bombardment and bombing of the city. Numerous zones of fire and constant damage were to arise throughout Leningrad, according to the Nazis' plan, which was dubbed Feuerzauber ("Magic Fire"), paralyzing the opponent defenders. Then, on September 14, it was Nordlicht's turn: the forces marched into the demoralized city from the south, largely unopposed.
These efforts, however, were halted by the Red Army. General Leonid Govorov's Leningrad Front soldiers went on the attack on August 19, 1942, and were joined by the Volkhov Front army under the leadership of General Kirill Meretskov.
They launched approaching attacks, attempting to breach German positions and, after uniting, destroying the enemy's MGinsko-Sinyavin grouping. The main purpose of the Sinyavinskaya offensive operation was to breach the blockade.
After the German divisions were threatened with encirclement in the Shlisselburg-Sinyavinsky ledge region, Manstein, who had been ordered by Hitler to rectify the situation, encircled a substantial portion of the Red Army's 8th and 2nd shock armies by September 25 with fierce counterattacks.
Despite the fact that the opponents failed to complete the tasks assigned to them and suffered heavy losses, the Red Army eventually triumphed - Leningrad was not taken, and the absence of the 11th German army in the south was one of the reasons for the Nazi defeats at Stalingrad and in the North Caucasus...
The Germans did not take their eyes off Lake Ladoga during the struggle for Leningrad, which was under the command of General Alfred Keller's 1st Luftwaffe Air Fleet. Ports, supply bases, civilian ships, and warships were all targeted with precision air strikes. Three Ju-88A bombers dropped 24 bombs on the Ladoga military flotilla's flagship, the patrol ship "Purga," on September 1, 1942.
With the exception of the southern portion of Ladoga, the German-Finnish soldiers controlled practically the whole water area of the lake, having enveloped it around the perimeter from two deep flanks. By the summer of 1942, the 1st Air Fleet's leadership had concluded that bombings were insufficient, and that tiny Soviet islands needed to be captured in order to impede, if not block, transportation to Leningrad.
First and foremost, Suho was chosen, a little manmade rocky island in the shape of an uneven horseshoe with a stone lighthouse constructed in 1891 as its principal feature. Sukho, 37 kilometers north of Novaya Ladoga, where the Ladoga military flotilla's main base was located, served as a vital bulwark for the movement of Soviet ships. There were no troops on it at the same time.
A detachment of Siebel-type collapsible catamarans-ferries, led by its designer, Aviation Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Siebel, was transported to Ladoga in early June 1942. The assault landing barges "Siebel" had a displacement of 144 tons. They were linked together by a large platform on which cannons and machine guns were mounted, as well as the ship's and firing control stations.
One 37-mm gun and two 20-mm multi-barreled anti-aircraft machine guns were carried by light barges. Three 20mm machine guns and three 88mm cannons were mounted on the heavier ones. Speeds of up to 10 knots were possible thanks to two gasoline engines (18 kilometers per hour).
The ferries' shallow draft allowed them to go close to the coast, allowing not only paratroopers but also light tanks to land on an unique descending armored gangway.
The Siebels were supposed to take part in Operation Sea Lion, a failed invasion of Great Britain that involved the transport of ground forces across the English Channel.
The Soviet command, which accurately recognized the most endangered location - in July 1942, military constructors and naval artillerymen emerged on Sukho - did not go undetected by the Germans.
By October, the island had three artillery yards, three shell niches, several dugouts, a four-meter rangefinder tower, coastal guns, and anti-aircraft machine guns. Simultaneously, they failed to mine the approaches to the shore and build wire obstacles in the water and on land.
Meanwhile, a joint German-Finnish-Italian armada formed on Ladoga, consisting of torpedo boats, landing high-speed barges, light minelayers, and other warships.
To take Suho, the Brasil ("Brazil") plan was devised.
All of this was completed in two hours.
He oversaw the operation, and he and a Kriegsmarine official, Siebel, led the landing from the headquarters ferry, with his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Max Wachtel, commander of the anti-aircraft unit, whose subordinates were to land on the island.
The anti-aircraft gunners were split into assault parties, each with the mission of capturing naval weapons and destroying battery servants. The landing force included over 100 persons, including a special sabotage party tasked with blowing up the lighthouse.
On the night of October 9, 1942, the Germans attempted to conquer Sukho for the first time, but became disoriented in the darkness. They came upon two Soviet small hunters on the way back, sinking one and capturing many seamen. The second attempt was made on the night of October 13, but the operation was called off owing to navigational uncertainty.
On the night of October 22, the third campaign took place. In the early hours of the morning, German ships reached the island. The enemy was observed aboard the minesweeper TShch-100 and the boat MO-171 even before they were seen on the island.
"The Germans are landing men on the island of Sukho," the commander of the minesweeper told the Ladoga military flotilla in plain writing. I'm in a battle. Peter Kargin, Senior Lieutenant
After receiving an unencrypted transmission, the headquarters mistook it for a belated introduction message, since a drill to resist an enemy landing on the Ladoga coast had just taken place the day before.
"Landing ships in the region of the Storozhensky lighthouse, course 180," the Germans announced in Russian, intercepting Kargin's communication and attempting to misinform the Soviet leadership. The headquarters felt something was amiss because this lighthouse was placed far away from Sukho, so they requested a communications post on Storozhensky, where they were told that nothing of the kind had been relayed.
The fronts of Leningrad, Karelia, and Volkhov, as well as the Baltic Fleet and the Red Army's General Staff, were instantly warned. The Supreme High Command's reserve unit of long-range bombers was in quick ready to aid naval and front-line aircraft, following Moscow's orders.
The defenders of Sukho were aided by eight ships from the Ladoga military flotilla, led by Captain 1st Rank Nikolai Ozarovsky. The gunboats Selemzha and Bira were at the head of the striking group. The three fronts' attack and fighter aircraft, as well as the Baltic Fleet's, were sent into the air.
Meanwhile, on the island, events moved quickly; despite their tiny number, the garrison opened fire with ferocity. Two well-aimed blasts from a Soviet cannon set fire to a German ferry, killing ten crew members. The gusevites opened fire on the landing paratroopers with machine guns and rifles.
When one of the German rounds detonated at the command post, shattering both metal walls, the senior officer sustained a concussion. The beacon bulb was damaged by another shell, causing a fire. Gusev instructed everyone to seek cover in the lighthouse's basement structure and form a perimeter defense.
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The gun crews of the second and third cannons fled to the lighthouse as well, under fire from German 20mm anti-aircraft machine guns. The opponent was only hit by the first gun. In the artillery yards, hand-to-hand combat was taking place, and the Germans attacked the lighthouse, attempting to toss grenades at its defenders. Gusev was shot many times, including once in the stomach.
The pilots themselves were assaulted by hostile fighters in this scenario. Two assault planes were shot down and one was damaged in a brief air fight. Three enemy planes were lost in the battle.
The TSh-100 and MO-171 were aided by small hunters MO-201, MO-205, and MO-206. Meanwhile, five "Siebel" were stranded on the rocks as they tried to get closer to the beach, and the Germans were frantically trying to free them. The weather cooperated in allowing some of the ferries to be rescued, when it snowed and visibility decreased.
Wachtel delivered the signal to retire with a rocket after realizing the mission had failed. The paratroopers were only on the island for 30 minutes before leaving the combat and loading aboard ships, following which the German ships began to retire from Sukho to the northwest. During the conflict, the garrison lost 36 troops who were killed, injured, or taken, while the Germans lost almost 60 persons.
On October 22, Soviet aviation lost six planes in severe air fights over Ladoga, while downing 16 enemy planes. The Ladoga military flotilla chased the enemy convoy for some time, destroying the heavy ferry and capturing a landing boat as a prize. The Germans lost five ships in all during Operation Brasil.
In his memoirs, General Waldemar Erfurt, the German high command's representative at the Finnish army's headquarters, labeled the action "a recklessly bold step," emphasizing that it only resulted in substantial losses in the flotilla's ranks.
It was dissolved when Germany lost the surface fight for Ladoga on October 22. In many respects, this led to the breaking of the siege of Leningrad on January 18, 1943, during Operation Iskra.
[Credit : Lenta.Ru]