Made for the home market in Germany during WWII, this silent newsreel shows the Siege of Sevastopol. The film starts with a title card indicating that Sevastopol was the “strongest fortress in the world” before segueing to a shot of Axis Stuka aircraft on their way to bomb the city. At :53 Austrian ace Gordon Max “Mac” Gollob is shown in the cockpit of his plane. At 1:02 the tail of his Messerschmidt Bf-109 aircraft attests to his 100 victories. He claimed his 100th victory on 20 May, 1942 and a short time later on 23 June was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords following his 107th aerial victory.
At 1:08 large numbers of Bf-109s get airborne for the attack while on the ground Axis artillery rains shells on the city. At 1:35 a massive shell is moved into position. At 1:50 the city burns. At 1:57 the Schwerer Gustav, an 80-centimetre (31.5 in) railway gun, prepares to fire. Schwerer Gustav was the largest-calibre rifled weapon ever used in combat and, in terms of overall weight, the heaviest mobile artillery piece ever built. It fired the heaviest shells of any artillery piece ever!
At 3:34 an explosion on the horizon shows that the artillery strikes have had their effect. At 3:54 huge shell holes are shown in the ruins of the city. At 4:35 German troops cautiously enter the outskirts of the city. At 5:05 a grenade is tossed over a wall. At 5:40 German troops reach the docks where a shattered naval gun (and behind it a sunken warship) bear testament to the ferocity of the attack. This is most likely the light cruiser Chervona Ukraine which was sunk by Ju-87 Stukas on 12 November 1941. At 6:00 the German flag flies over Sevastopol — for now.
The Siege of Sevastopol also known as the Defence of Sevastopol was a military battle that took place on the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The campaign was fought by the Axis powers of Germany, Romania, and Italy against the Soviet Union for control of Sevastopol, a port in the Crimea on the Black Sea. On 22 June 1941 the Axis invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. Axis land forces reached the Crimea in the autumn of 1941 and overran most of the area. The only objective not in Axis hands was Sevastopol. Several attempts were made to secure the city in October and November 1941. Under the command of Erich von Manstein, Axis forces were unable to capture Sevastopol during this first operation.
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. On 2 June 1942, the Axis began this operation, codenamed Störfang (Sturgeon Catch). The Soviet Red Army and Black Sea Fleet held out for weeks under intense Axis bombardment. The German Air Force (Luftwaffe) played a vital part in the siege, its 8th Air Corps bombing the besieged Soviet forces with impunity, flying 23,751 sorties and dropping 20,528 tons of bombs in June alone. The intensity of the German campaign of airstrikes was far beyond previous German bombing offensives against cities such as Warsaw, Rotterdam or London. At the end of the siege, there were only 11 undamaged buildings left in Sevastopol. The Luftwaffe sunk or deterred most Soviet attempts to evacuate their troops by sea. The German 11th Army suppressed and destroyed the defenders by firing 46,750 tons of artillery ammunition on them during Störfang.
Finally, on 4 July 1942, the remaining Soviet forces surrendered and the Germans seized the port. 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 Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Axis losses in Störfang amounted to 35,866 men, of which 27,412 were German and 8,454 Romanian. With the Soviet forces neutralized, the Axis refocused their attention on the major summer campaign of that year, Case Blue and their advance to the Caucasus oilfields.
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