The Siege of Sevastopol was one of the hardest battles of World War II. Between October 30, 1941, and July 4, 1942, the German armed forces fought the Soviet Union for control of this maritime base on the Black Sea. Despite having weapons such as the Dora cannon, the two fortified batteries called Maxim Gorky I and II enabled the Russians to hold out for months of continuous attacks. Here’s how these gigantic cement and steel forts were constructed.
The German Invasion
On June 22, 1941, Germany attacked Soviet troops stationed in Poland, destroying most of its air force and penetrating deep into Russian territory. The blitzkrieg tactics used by German generals worked so well that they soon wiped out a large part of the Russian army. Hitler, enthusiastic, ordered the 11th Army to march toward the Crimea region, trying to conquer the valuable port of Sevastopol. Of course, the Russians were not going to wait idly for the enemy's arrival.
They used the available time to heavily fortify the area, digging more than 33 kilometers of anti-tank trenches, laying about 56 kilometers of barbed wire against infantry, placing more than 9,600 land mines, and modernizing the coastal fortifications. The most important defense they had were two powerful batteries located on the Black Sea coast: the 30th Battery, near the village of Lyubimovka, and the 35th Battery, at Cape Chersonesus. The Germans, who experienced the qualities of these batteries firsthand, called them “Fort Maxim Gorky I” and “Fort Maxim Gorky II” respectively.
Heavy Firepower
Each of these fortifications had four 305mm cannons placed in two turrets capable of rotating 360 degrees. The range of these cannons was about 42 kilometers, which allowed each fort to cover about 500 square kilometers. Due to their location on the Black Sea coast, their primary purpose was to defend the area from enemy ship attacks, but as seen during the Siege of Sevastopol, they also proved very effective against ground troops. When the German army arrived in October 1941, it had 60,000 men, 1,275 cannons and mortars, about 150 tanks, 300 aircraft, and the impressive Dora cannon, considered the largest in the world.
The origin of these two fortifications is very old. They had been built between 1867 and 1877, and were redesigned when they became obsolete in 1905 against the power of the new naval guns of modern ships. The design of the reforms was led by Professor of the Engineering Academy, General Nikolaev N. Buinicky, who, after months of intense debates with the German expert Von Sauer (who ironically argued that this type of defense was ineffective and obsolete), managed to have the project approved in 1912. The new forts, which were ready in 1934, were truly impressive.
Underground Fortress
The fundamental piece of each of these batteries were the steel turrets armed with two 305mm cannons. To aim at targets, each turret and its cannons could be moved using 17 electric motors or, in emergencies or failures, manually. This was not exactly simple, as the giant turrets weighed 1,360 tons each, a weight mostly provided by the steel armor over 40 centimeters thick. But most of these forts were out of sight: a true underground labyrinth of steel and cement protected the troops in charge of operating the cannons and their supplies.
A series of rooms and tunnels, arranged on two levels, served as ammunition stores, electric power generation stations, living quarters and service rooms for the troops, and supply depots. This entire complex was protected by a layer of concrete 4 meters thick, and measured about 50 meters wide by 130 meters long. Ammunition and other necessary elements to operate the cannons arrived at the fort via 6,500 meters of railway tracks that connected Maxim Gorky to the Mackenzie railway station.
Water was extracted on site, thanks to two wells dug in the lower levels, inside the fortification itself, and stored in three large tanks also protected by the concrete layer. The command center was located 37 meters underground, and there was a network of six observation posts from which targets were spotted. During the battle, it was determined that this number of posts was insufficient and many shots failed due to lack of correct information, so the number was increased to about twenty.
More Than Just Cannons
The enormous cannons were not the only weapon protecting these forts. Three artillery batteries and four machine guns repelled air attacks, and five heavy machine guns protected inside concrete casemates served as infantry defense. In two months of battle, these cannons had fired more than 1,200 times. Their technical specifications indicated that after 300 shots, the barrels had to be replaced, as they deformed and lost precision.
This was not an easy task, as the cannons weighed 50 tons and required a crane capable of moving 75 tons and 60 days of work. Since the enemy was only 1,500 meters away and firing with everything they had, replacing the barrels was almost suicide. But with the help of experts provided by the cannon manufacturer and workers from the Black Sea Fleet Repair Plant No. 1127, the barrels were replaced in just 16 days using small 16-ton cranes, which were lower and therefore less likely to be damaged by enemy fire.
The German Assault
After weeks of siege, the commander of the German 11th Army, General Von Manstein, decided it was time to end the resistance of this fortification. An artillery group was concentrated that included 210mm to 356mm mortars, heavy 240mm and 280mm howitzers, a battery of 420mm howitzers, the 420mm “Gamma” battery weighing 140 tons, and self-propelled 615mm mortars. But the Germans' trump card was, without a doubt, the “Dora” cannon, an 800mm beast capable of firing projectiles weighing up to 8 tons and, by far, the largest artillery weapon ever built. Its shots could penetrate concrete slabs up to 8 meters thick.
The Fall of the Fortress
Inevitably, after heroically resisting, the 30th Battery Maxim Gorky was destroyed. Years later, at the end of World War II, when the Soviets arrived in Germany, they captured confidential files that included plans, engineering data, and a complete description of the 30th Battery. These had been made by German engineers after the fall of Sevastopol, and detailed the chemical composition of the gunpowder used, graphs of the resistance of the cannon barrels, and, with admiration, described the battery as “a masterpiece of military engineering”. No wonder: this fortification had delayed the conquest of Sevastopol for months.
