I made myself comfortable in my chair and closed my eyes, completely ignoring Mekhlis's face, which was twisted with anger. The funny thing was that neither I nor the Commissar could figure out which one of us should obey whom. Comrade Stalin was always an extremely cunning bug; he masterfully knew how to plant potential conflict bombs under relations between his subordinates. Didn't he know Mekhlis's character well? I don't believe it! Rather the opposite. Stalin was well aware of what our joint mission to the Crimean front would entail, and he evidently sincerely believed that it would only be better for the cause.
Mekhlis did outrank me by quite a bit, but it was I, not the Commissar, who received the authority to make personnel decisions regarding the leadership of the Crimean Front. Stalin also explicitly recommended Mekhlis not to interfere in my military-strategic decisions, leaving him with disciplinary matters, moral-political preparation of the operation and some general control over its course, whose essence I could not fully grasp, and the Chief himself did not elaborate on his idea.
All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good jar of spiders, and in addition to purely military matters, I clearly had a lot of problems to deal with in the near future due to the manic suspicion and unparalleled mistrustfulness of the Army Commissar. But I don't care! The trouble to come was to be met as it came. I activated the augmented reality mode and unfolded a virtual map of the Crimean peninsula before my eyes.
The picture that emerged was, to put it bluntly, contradictory. At first glance, the Red Army and the Black Sea Fleet had considerable forces in the Crimea. On the Kerch Peninsula the 44th, 47th and 51st Armies were concentrated, having in their composition nearly 250,000 infantry, six tank brigades, and two separate tank battalions. The garrison of the Sevastopol defensive area had about 120,000 soldiers and commanders, numerous artillery, including coastal batteries of large caliber, 47 tanks, and more than a hundred aircraft, based at the airfield built at the beginning of the war on Cape Chersonesos. The Black Sea Fleet had the battleship Paris Commune, the cruisers Krasny Krym and Krasny Kavkaz, three destroyer battalions, two light cruisers, a fairly impressive underwater force and a significant number of minesweepers, small artillery ships and boats.
These seemed to be impressive forces, but there were some serious "buts". First of all, of course, aviation. This misfortune had only worsened by early 1942. The losses of the initial period of the war also affected the Red Army Air Forces and, no less importantly, the quality of pilot training. Too many experienced pilots died in the first six months of the war, and it was not easy to prepare their replacements quickly. In terms of tactical and technical characteristics, German aviation was also still superior to almost all Soviet aircraft, and something had to be done about it. I was doing something, but it takes time to introduce new technology, and in war, as a rule, this resource is always in severe short supply.
The second problem was traditionally shells. The defenders of Sevastopol had a lot of artillery, and it was very good artillery, but the ammunition for this zoo of different artillery systems was very scarce. The armies of the Crimean Front were better off with shells, but there was no fabulous abundance here either, while the Germans were doing very well with artillery and shells.
The new German tanks also made me very nervous. Manstein managed to squeeze the 22nd Panzer Division out of the Wehrmacht's command, staffed by these nasty machines. The tanks themselves were still the same Panzer III and Panzer IV, but their guns were now long-barreled and could penetrate the armor of the T-34 and KV relatively easily when firing sub-caliber shells. Our tankers didn't know about it yet, but Letra immediately drew my attention to the new dangerous weapon of the enemy.
Judging by the satellite image, the Crimean Front was preparing for another offensive, although it should, of course, have burrowed into the ground, build a regimented defense, cover the engineering barriers with an effective system of fire and minefields, allocate mobile reserves to promptly respond to threats of breakthroughs, and prepare in every way to repel a powerful enemy strike.
Manstein was preparing in a big way and seemed to be seriously planning to dislodge the Soviet armies from the Kerch Peninsula. The Germans managed to move a considerable part of their artillery, including heavy howitzers, from near Sevastopol and methodically took up positions, intending to sweep away the Soviet troops approaching the front with a powerful strike of artillery and aviation. If Comrade Stalin had delayed sending me to the Crimean Front for at least a week, it would most likely have been too late to do anything about it. Even now, I must say, there was hardly any time left.
In the past month and a half, Korolev was able to make significant progress, but unfortunately the Soviet industry could not yet provide mass production of cruise missiles. Still, it was a technologically complex product, especially with the modifications made according to my drawings. Too high precision was required in the production of many parts, which meant the need to have an adequate machinery equipment and qualified specialists with high labor and technological discipline. Both were available in the Soviet Union, but, unfortunately, in extremely limited quantities. Nevertheless, it was possible to prepare 14 missiles, half of them with a new control system. Their flight could now be corrected by radio from the ground or from a plane within line of sight. The reliability of this engineering marvel was abominable, but with a certain luck, a missile did not deflect more than 20 meters from its target.
Naturally, no one transferred the Tsaitiuni artillery regiment with its 203 mm B-4 howitzers from near Leningrad to the Crimea, so I was left without heavy artillery subordinate directly to me, but the replenished and additionally reinforced Kudryavtsevs air regiment arrived at Novorossiysk even slightly ahead of Mekhlis and me, and this time it was well staffed with fuel-air bombs. But the Korolev rocket launchers were not expected until a week later. The special train with their products, unfortunately, could not arrive sooner.
Lena flew to the Crimea with me. Comrade Beria did not object. Lieutenant of State Security Serova showed considerable organizational skills in the operation to repel the "chemical" raid on Leningrad, and I was going to give her about the same tasks on the Crimean front. True, Lena was no longer a lieutenant, but a Senior Lieutenant of State Security, and not Serova, but Nagulina, but it did not change the matter, unless one counts as something serious the fact that Comrade Mekhlis had managed to pick on me because of this fact of "nepotism" in official relations, and this made his attitude toward me even worse.
By the way, a very curious story happened in the Moscow registry office. The marriage itself between a major general and a female NKVD officer could not surprise anyone in particular. Lena brought some friend of hers from Moscow, whom I had never seen before, as a witness, but Comrade Beria came to the registry office from my side, which no one had been notified in advance for some reason.
When I caught Beria after another meeting of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, informed him of my and Lena's decision and asked him to be a witness at the marriage registration, the Commissar measured me with a long look, in which I read a whole gamut of emotions. Beria did not refuse, although he clearly had a bad suspicion about the reasons for my unexpected request. Yes, I think it was not even suspicion, it was absolute certainty. In any case, in the registry office he looked at Lena a little too intently, but she just smiled sweetly and pretended not to notice anything.
The registry clerk seemed to worry the most during our marriage registration. Comrade Beria's appearance made an indelible impression on her. I didn't tell Lena anything beforehand either, only warning her that something unexpected was waiting for her. The surprise was a success.
What did you do, Nagulin!? Lena said to me right after we were alone. Why did you bring him as a witness? He knew right away! Now he knows that I told you everything about the recruitment and about my mission.
Naturally, he understood it all. And I am really grateful to him for the fact that voluntarily or involuntarily he contributed to the beginning of our relationship. And it's very good that Beria knows all about it now, although I think he guessed it anyway. There won't be any consequences for you, you'll see. Well, except that no one else would want reports from you about my behavior and mindset. You see, it turns out that we ourselves informed your superiors that you told me everything. Unofficially, but we did. If we didn't, you'd have to keep pretending that you're on a mission for the NKVD and spying on your own husband. It would have been a very bad deception that would have come out sooner or later, and then the consequences would have been really hard to foresee. But as it was
Yeah, you're probably right, Lena smiled and took my hand. I didn't look at the situation from that point of view. It all makes a lot of sense, and it's probably really better that way. The People's Commissariat gave me a whole day's leave on the occasion of my marriage, so let's at least forget about the war and everything connected with it for a while.
Naturally, I did not object.
* * *
We arrived at Novorossiysk in the evening. Mekhlis immediately demanded to be delivered to the front headquarters, and I, without delay, went to the location of my air regiment. I didn't give a damn about the Army Commissar's leering looks. Every operation of mine traditionally started with night air reconnaissance, and Colonel Kudryavtsev was already waiting at the airfield, having given orders to prepare the Pe-3 twin-engine fighter for the flight in advance. Mekhlis will obviously find something to do at the front headquarters. No doubt he will send a telegram to Stalin today about how horribly everything is organized here and how the front leadership is not in control of the situation, has lost the initiative and does not know where his troops are. And, naturally, he will mention in this telegram my inadequate behavior. Instead of tightening the screws on the slackers here, the boy Major General went off to fly a plane Let it be. The main thing is that he doesn't shoot anyone there in a fit of temper, but I don't think it will come to that I'll be back in the middle of the night from the reconnaissance flight.
Following the plane in which Mekhlis and I arrived, two PS-84 transport planes landed at the airfield. Perfectly aware of the nature of the problems I was to face in the Crimea, I requested from the Leningrad Front the equipment and specialists with whom we were setting up air defense fire control system to repel the massive Luftwaffe raid. The situation on the Kerch Peninsula and Sevastopol Defense District was in many ways similar to the situation in the besieged city of Leningrad. Even the battleship Paris Commune was of the same type as the Marat and the October Revolution. Here, however, it was only one, but the 30th Battery in Sevastopol consisted of two gun turrets removed from the exact same battleship Mikhail Frunze, which could not be restored after a major fire that happened back in 1919. It was a remarkable coincidence. In Leningrad I also had at my disposal a Sevastopol-class battleship and, in fact, a fixed three-tower battery, which the Marat turned into after being hit by a heavy armor-piercing bomb.
Using the experience of Leningrad and the specialists who had already undergone the necessary practical training, I hoped to quickly enough organize in the Crimea a unified system of fire control of the major caliber of warships and guns of coastal batteries. The 305mm fuel-air shells were now also on their way to Novorossiysk by special train. Unfortunately, only 200 of them were produced in time, as production was focused mainly on 203 mm caliber, which was suitable for the B-4 howitzers. Nevertheless, I was really counting on this ammunition. The Kerch Peninsula was not so big, and the guns of the Sevastopol-class battleship could shoot through it, also they could reach as far into the Crimean territory as 30 kilometers from the coast and almost 40 kilometers from the towers of the coastal batteries of Sevastopol.
We flew over the Crimea, immersed in the darkness of night. Kudryavtsev was silent, trying not to distract me from my observations, he only occasionally adjusted the course in the control points. In the mountainous terrain not all details were clearly visible from the satellites, and sometimes I would order the Colonel to descend a little and fly over the areas I was interested in again. By and large we could have done without it, but since we flew for reconnaissance anyway, I wanted this flight to be of some real use, apart from eliminating unnecessary questions about how I knew so much about the location of enemy units and formations.
Manstein was not considered one of Hitler's best commanders for nothing. He was moving his troops and equipment purposefully, and every day his plan was becoming clearer to me. Previously the escape pod computer and my homemade analysis program only partly helped me in predicting the enemy's actions, but now Letra unfolded before me the Germans' plans in every detail. Drones were invisibly present at 11th Army headquarters, transmitting map shots, copies of orders, transcripts of telephone conversations and radio intercepts.
Taking advantage of their dominance in the air, the Germans conducted a thorough air reconnaissance. They knew almost everything about the group of Soviet troops opposing them. Manstein, who had received at his disposal Richthofen's 4th Air Fleet and had brought a considerable force of heavy artillery to Feodosiya, planned to squeeze everything possible out of the reconnaissance data in the initial phase of the operation.
In an effort to break deep into Crimea, Lieutenant-General Kozlov concentrated two-thirds of his forces on the northern section of the front, adjacent to the coast of the Sea of Azov. The southern section was occupied by a relatively weak force, covering Feodosiya and not taking active offensive actions. The command of the Crimean Front believed that the Germans would not risk an offensive along the Black Sea coast, fearing the heavy guns of the Black Sea Fleet ships, but Manstein reasoned otherwise. He decided to take advantage of the relative weakness of the southern section of the Soviet front and succeed by using the effect of surprise, based on the fact that the Russians were not expecting a strike in the south.