318th Rifle Division (Soviet Union)

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318th Rifle Division (June 15, 1942 – August 15, 1944)
318th Mountain Rifle Division (August 15, 1944 – 1954)
318th Rifle Division (1954–1955)
Active1942–1955
CountryFlag of the USSR (1936-1955).svg  Soviet Union
Branch Red Army flag.svg Red Army
TypeInfantry
SizeDivision
Engagements Battle of the Caucasus
Battle of Novorossiysk
Taman Peninsula
Kerch–Eltigen Operation
Crimean Campaign
Prague Offensive
Decorations Order of Suvorov 2nd Class
Battle honours Novorossiysk
Commanders
Notable
commanders		Col. Anatolii Nikolaievich Chervinskii
Maj. Gen. Aleksei Aleksandrovich Grechkin
Col. Valentin Apollinarovich Vrutzkii
Maj. Gen. Vasilii Fyodorovich Gladkov Hero of the Soviet Union medal.png

The 318th Rifle Division began forming on June 15, 1942, in and near Novorossiysk on the coast of the Black Sea, as a standard Red Army rifle division; it was later re-formed as a mountain rifle division, but exactly when this happened is disputed among the various sources. It fought in the area it was formed in until September 1943, and was granted the name of this city as an honorific. In November of that year it took part in the largest Soviet amphibious operation of the war, across the Kerch Straits into the easternmost part of the Crimea, but its small beachhead was eliminated some weeks later. After the Crimea was liberated in May 1944, it remained there for several months before it was transferred to the Carpathian Mountains west of Ukraine as a mountain division, and spent the remainder of the war fighting through Czechoslovakia in the direction of Prague. The division continued to serve postwar in this same role, but was converted back to a standard rifle division before it was disbanded in the early 1950s.

Contents

78th Naval Rifle Brigade

The precursor to this division formed from October to December 1941, at Novorossiysk in the North Caucasus Military District. It was based on personnel taken from the Black Sea Fleet and the naval schools. Late in the year it was shipped to Southern Front where it served in both the 56th and 9th Armies. By late spring of 1942 it was being referred to as a regular rifle brigade, probably indicating it had lost most of its naval cadre in the winter fighting. It June it returned to Novorossiysk. [1] [2]

Formation

The division started forming on June 15, 1942, in the North Caucasus Military District, based on the 78th Rifle Brigade and the 165th Reserve Rifle Regiment. [3] [4] at and near Novorossiysk. Its first commander, Col. Anatolii Nikolaievich Chervinskii, was appointed the same day, but he only held this post for a month. Two other officers were appointed in quick succession, until Maj. Gen. Aleksei Aleksandrovich Grechkin took command on August 28. The division's main order of battle was as follows:

The division was formed in 9th Army, but immediately went into the reserves of North Caucasus Front, and then into the Transcaucasus Front. As of September 4, while most of the division remained in Front reserves, the 1331st Rifle Regiment was detached to 18th Army in the Black Sea Group of Forces. On September 22, just before the German 17th Army began its offensive towards Tuapse, the 318th was in 47th Army, facing the German V Army Corps and the Romanian Cavalry Corps; it remained under this command until after the German offensive ended in November. [6] On the first day of the new year General Grechkin was succeeded in command by Col. Valentin Apollinarovich Vrutzkii.

Battle of Novorossiysk

After months of stalemate, the battle for the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk began to come to a head on September 9, 1943. By this time all of the 318th was in 18th Army, which was commanded by Col. Gen. K.N. Leselidze. Following a fifteen-minute artillery bombardment and an advance guard of marines, the 1339th Rifle Regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. S.N. Kadanchik:

"...descended upon the Tsementnaya wharf. And although not all the regiment managed to land, the men who did get a hold on the shore attacked the enemy fortifications in a massive rush. By dawn they had seized an important strongpoint -- the Proletary cement works. The rest of the regiment joined them the following night." [7]

On his way in, Kadanchik's boat sank after hitting a mine, but he was rescued by a ship returning from the landings and he reached his regiment later that day. The 1339th came under massive pressure from German counterattacks over the next 24 hours which pushed some elements back to the sea, but eventually they held. Kadanchik was killed on September 15 by German artillery, and was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union three days later. Meanwhile, other elements of the division were entering the battle.

"On the second night the 1337th Regiment went ashore near the power station. Col. V. A. Vrutzkii, commanding the 318th Rifle Division, landed together with the regiment but contact with him was lost... Leselidze decided to send a senior officer [with another officer] to the power station area to find Vrutzkii...and report back immediately... Despite the danger they returned... They also brought sad news: Col. Vrutzkii had suffered severe concussion, lost an eye and been wounded in the arm. Steps were immediately taken to help the division's units which were making slow but sure headway. The divisional commander's duties were temporarily entrusted to the divisional Chief of Staff."

Shortly afterwards further news was received that Lt. Col. A. Tikhostup, the division's political department head, had been killed. [8] When Novorossiysk was finally liberated on September 16, the division was awarded its name as an honorific:

"NOVOROSSIYSK"...318th Mountain Rifle Division, Col. V. A. Vrutzkii (until September 11); and Col. M. V. Yevstigneev... The troops who participated in the liberation of Novorossiysk, by the order of the Supreme High Command of September 16, 1943, and a commendation in Moscow, are given a salute of 12 artillery salvoes from 124 guns. [9]

Colonel Yevstigneev held command for only a few days, until replaced by Col. Vasilii Fyodorovich Gladkov; this officer would be promoted to Major General on June 3, 1944, would go on to be named a Hero of the Soviet Union, and would remain in command for the duration of the war.

Even before the liberation of Novorossiysk, Axis forces had begun evacuating the Taman Peninsula across the Kerch Strait into the Crimea in what was called Operation Brunhild. [10] On September 20, the 318th came under the command of Col. (later Maj. Gen.) Vasilii Fyodorovich Gladkov, a post he would hold well into the postwar era. On the following day the division liberated Anapa, [11] and soon began preparing its own crossing of the strait.

Kerch–Eltigen Operation

The Kerch-Eltigen landing operation began overnight on October 31/November 1, 1943, when the three rifle regiments of the 318th, supported by the 386th Naval Infantry Battalion and the fire of 50 howitzers of 18th Army on the lower Taman peninsula, embarked for the sandy beaches at Eltigen, south of Kerch. The main landing by 56th Army east of Kerch was delayed for two nights. The crossing was carried out using a vast assortment of fishing boats, tug boats, barges and other assorted craft. These encountered at least two German naval minefields which sank several vessels, killing over 200 troops, including the commander of the 1337th Rifle Regiment and most of his staff. Surprisingly, the explosions did not alert the defenders' coastal artillery. Around 0330hrs. the beach area was strafed and bombed by Soviet aircraft, then at 0420hrs. the artillery support group began a 35-minute preparation. The first vessels approached the beaches at 0450hrs and began unloading; due to the presence of a sandbar 50 metres from shore, many heavily laden soldiers quickly found themselves well over their heads and drowned. There was no resistance from the beach's defenders, who seemed unaware that anything was happening for at least 15 minutes, but the surf was rough and made landing difficult. [12] By the end of this first night the three regiments were ashore with the following strengths:

One of the men who landed that night was Starshina Samad Abdullayev, a battalion sanitary instructor in the 1339th Rifle Regiment, who was killed in action on November 5, and was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union 12 days later for his actions in the beachhead fighting.

The division lost many men and a good deal of equipment, including heavy weapons such as antitank guns and mortars, which would make it impossible to break out of the beachhead. In addition, about one-third of the transport vessels had been sunk. Nevertheless, the Soviets managed to land enough troops to secure a lodgment, and also overran two Romanian 75mm guns at the northern end. The senior officer was Major D.S. Koveshnikov, although initially he had no communications with the divisional headquarters across the strait, or to his subordinate units. On the German side, the landing was assumed to be a battalion-sized diversion. Once the scale of the landing was understood and a sufficient force was gathered for a counterattack, Koveshnikov had established radio contact with the artillery on the far shore, which forced the Germans to break off late in the afternoon. Overnight, Colonel Gladkov, with another 3,200 troops and nine mortars, were landed. [14]

At dawn on November 2 the beachhead was about 2 km wide and less than 1 km deep. Counterattacks by the German 98th Infantry Division, with armor and some air support, reduced its area by about half, but once again the Soviet artillery support from across the strait cost the Germans significant casualties, and they were also outnumbered by the Soviet troops in the beachhead. That night the main landing by 56th Army finally began at Yenikale. In an effort to make more troops available to contest this landing, the Germans and Romanians developed a plan to crush the Eltigen beachhead. Operation Komet on November 7 was an utter failure, but led to several consequences. First, the German Navy forces in the Crimea were finally persuaded to take part in the battle, seriously interfering in resupply missions to the beachhead. Second, the Soviet command recognized the beachhead was a tactical dead-end, and ceased plans to reinforce it. During the rest of November the 318th was contained by Romanian troops and allowed to wither on the vine. [15]

By early December the Axis command decided to finally eliminate the beachhead. Due to the partial blockade, Gladkov's troops had limited ammunition and had been on short rations for weeks. The attack opened at 0500hrs. on December 4, led by a Romanian cavalry and a mountain infantry division backed by German armor and aircraft. The mountain infantry gained ground in the south, and over the next two days rolled up the beachhead from this direction. On the night of December 6/7, Gladkov made the desperate decision to break out to the north towards Kerch. A group of more than 1,500 men broke clean through the enemy perimeter and began trekking north more than 17 km. In the morning the beachhead was completely overrun and the Romanians took 2,294 prisoners, mostly from the 318th. Gladkov's group was too exhausted to break through to friendly lines, and gathered in a perimeter on the shoreline east of Mount Mithridat, hoping for rescue. They were soon penned in by the Romanian mountain troops and pounded by German artillery and aircraft over the next four days. Gladkov and some of his men escaped by sea, but the position was overrun on December 11, with another 820 men taken prisoner. [16]

From February 1944, the rebuilding division was part of 3rd Mountain Rifle Corps in the Separate Coastal Army in its bridgehead east of Kerch, and served under those commands during the Crimean Campaign in April and May. [17]

Re-formation as Mountain Division

While the division had served in the Caucasus and in 3rd Mountain Rifle Corps in the Crimea as a regular rifle division, it was often referred to as a mountain rifle division, and has been since, in spite of not being organized as such. On August 15, 1944, the 318th was officially converted to the 318th Mountain Rifle Division, with the following order of battle:

The artillery regiment had two battalions with one battery of 76mm mountain guns and two batteries of 120mm mortars each, while the third battalion had one battery of each. The rifle regiments each had only two battalions with three companies each, averaging 150 men or more per company with a special organization for mountain warfare. In addition, each battalion had a company of 82mm mortars, and another of antitank rifles, and the rifle regiments had a battery each of 107mm mountain mortars for additional support.

In order to fully confirm to the shtat for a Soviet mountain division, the 318th should have been assigned one more rifle regiment. Given the sequence of the numbers of the division's regiments, this would logically have been either the 1333rd or the 1335th. While there is no positive identification of a fourth regiment from either Soviet or German sources, neither of these numbers were used for rifle regiments in any other divisions. [18]

Into Slovakia and Postwar

While the 318th was converting to its new role, 3rd Mountain Corps was reassigned to 18th Army, which was moving to join 4th Ukrainian Front in the Carpathians. It spent the duration of the war under these commands, fighting through Slovakia in the general direction of the Czechoslovakian capital. [19]

By the end of the war, the men and women of the division had earned the full title of 318th Mountain Rifle, Novorossiisk, Order of Suvorov Division (Russian: 318-я горнострелковая Новороссийская ордена Суворова дивизия). In the immediate aftermath, the division served in the 38th Army's 3rd Mountain Rifle Corps in the Carpathian Military District [20] at Mukachevo. In 1954, the division was converted into an infantry division along with the corps, and in 1955 became the 53rd Rifle Division. The division was relocated to Uzhhorod. On 9 September 1955, it became the 39th Mechanized Division. [21] The division received personnel and equipment from the disbanded 13th Guards Mechanized Division in fall 1955 and on 4 December became the 39th Guards Mechanized Division. [22] [23] The new division inherited the 13th Guards' honorifics "Poltava Order of Lenin Twice Red Banner Orders of Suvorov and Kutuzov". [24]

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The 386th Rifle Division was raised in 1941 as an infantry division of the Red Army, and served twice during the Great Patriotic War in that role. The division followed a very similar combat path to that of the 388th Rifle Division in both of its formations. It was first formed on August 19 in the Transcaucasus Military District. In late December it was shipped from the Black Sea ports to Sevastopol, which was under siege by the German 11th Army. The division arrived just as the second Axis assault on the fortress was ending and did not see any heavy fighting until the final offensive, Operation Störfang, began on June 2, 1942. On June 18 it came under attack from the Romanian Mountain Corps and put up a stiff fight but rapidly lost strength and cohesion before falling back towards the port in the last days of the month; it was officially disbanded just days before the final Axis victory. In the buildup to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria a new 386th was formed in the Far Eastern Front in late 1944. The new division fought with enough distinction that it was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and continued to serve briefly into the postwar period.

The 396th Rifle Division was created in 1941 as an infantry division of the Red Army and was activated twice during the Great Patriotic War. The division followed a very similar combat path to that of the 398th Rifle Division in its 1st formation. It was first formed in August in the Transcaucasus Military District. In January 1942 it was moved to the Crimea where it joined first the 47th and then the 44th Armies in Crimean Front. On 8 May it came under attack by the German 11th Army as part of Operation Trappenjagd and by the end of the month it was destroyed in the Kerch peninsula, being officially disbanded on 14 June. In the buildup to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria a new 396th was formed in the Far Eastern Front in early 1945. The new division was one of only three formed in 1945 and served with the 2nd Red Banner Army, crossing the Amur River on 11 August and helping to reduce a Japanese fortified zone while also marching towards central Manchuria. Its rifle regiments were all decorated for their achievements and the division was disbanded before the end of the year.

The 398th Rifle Division was raised in 1941 as an infantry division of the Red Army, and served briefly during the Second World War in that role. The division followed a very similar combat path to that of the 396th Rifle Division in that unit's 1st formation. It was first formed in August in the Transcaucasus Military District. In January, 1942 it was moved to the Crimea where it joined the 44th Army in Crimean Front. On May 8, now in the 51st Army, it came under attack by the German 11th Army as part of Operation Trappenjagd and within days it was destroyed in the Kerch peninsula, being officially disbanded on May 19 after one of the briefest careers of any Soviet division. The 398th was never reformed.

The 414th Rifle Division was twice formed as an infantry division of the Red Army; very briefly in the winter of 1941/42, then from the spring of 1942 until after May 1945. It was officially considered a Georgian National division, having nearly all its personnel of that nationality in its second formation. After its second formation it remained in service in the Caucasus near the borders of Turkey and Iran in the 44th Army until the summer of 1942, when it was redeployed to help counter the German drive toward Grozny. As German Army Group A retreated from the Caucasus in January 1943 the division was reassigned to the 37th Army in North Caucasus Front, and during the fighting in the Taman Peninsula during the summer it served in both the 58th and 18th Armies, earning a battle honor in the process. It entered the Crimea during the Kerch–Eltigen Operation in November, and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner following the offensive that liberated that region in April and May 1944, fighting in the 11th Guards Rifle Corps of the Separate Coastal Army. After the Crimea was cleared the Coastal Army remained as a garrison and the 414th stayed there for the duration of the war. Postwar, it was relocated to Tbilisi, being renumbered as the 74th Rifle Division in 1955 and disbanded the following year.

The 417th Rifle Division was formed as an infantry division of the Red Army in the spring of 1942 and served in that role until after the end of the Great Patriotic War. Although it was formed in the Transcaucasus, unlike the 414th and 416th Rifle Divisions formed in about the same place at the same time it was never designated as a National division. After its formation it remained in service in the Caucasus under direct command of the Transcaucasus Front until the summer of 1942, when it was redeployed first to the Northern Group of Forces in that Front and then to the 9th Army. As German Army Group A retreated from the Caucasus in January, 1943 the division was reassigned to the 58th Army and a few months later to 37th Army in North Caucasus Front. In July it redeployed northward to join Southern Front, where it was assigned to the 63rd Rifle Corps in 44th Army in mid-September as the Front fought through south Ukraine, eventually reaching the land routes to the Crimea. It took part in the offensive that liberated that region in April and May, 1944, fighting in the 51st Army and winning both a battle honor and the Order of the Red Banner in the process. After the Crimea was cleared the 51st Army was moved far to the north, joining 1st Baltic Front. During operations in the Baltic states the 417th was further distinguished with the award of the Order of Suvorov. In March, 1945 it joined the Courland Group of Forces on the Baltic coast containing the German forces encircled in northwest Latvia. It ended the war there and was soon moved to the Ural Military District before being downsized to a rifle brigade. This brigade was briefly brought back to divisional strength during the Cold War.

The 56th Guards Rifle Division was formed as an elite infantry division of the Red Army in June 1943, based on the 2nd formations of the 74th and 91st Rifle Brigades, and served in that role until after the end of the Great Patriotic War. Along with its "sister", the 65th Guards Rifle Division, the 56th was formed "out of sequence", that is, many Guards rifle divisions were higher numbered and formed earlier than the 56th. The division was immediately assigned to the 19th Guards Rifle Corps of the 10th Guards Army and remained under those headquarters for the duration of the war. It first saw action in Western Front's summer offensive, Operation Suvorov. On September 8 the 254th Guards Rifle Regiment was given the honorific title "in the name of Aleksandr Matrosov" and on September 25 the division as a whole was awarded the honorific "Smolensk" for its role in the liberation of that city. During the winter of 1943-44 it took part in the stubborn fighting north and east of Vitebsk, first in Western and later in 2nd Baltic Front. During the following summer offensives it helped break through the defenses of the German Panther Line and advanced into the Baltic states, eventually being decorated with the Order of the Red Banner after the liberation of Riga. For the rest of the war it was part of the forces blockading the remnants of German Army Group North in the Courland Pocket in Latvia, eventually in Leningrad Front. After the war the 56th Guards was moved to the town of Elva in Estonia where it was disbanded in 1947, although the successor formations of the 254th Guards Regiment exist into the present day.

The 63rd Mountain Rifle Division was formed as a specialized infantry division of the Red Army in July 1936, based on the 2nd Georgian Mountain Division. When the German invasion of the Soviet Union began it was in the Transcaucasus Military District and was soon assigned to the 47th Army for the invasion of Iran. Following this it was moved to the western Caucasus region where it joined the 44th Army of Crimean Front for amphibious operations against the Axis forces in the Crimea. In late December 1941 it landed at Feodosia as part of 9th Rifle Corps. Along with the remainder of the Corps the 63rd Mountain hindered but failed to block the retreat of Axis forces from Kerch, where the 51st Army had also made landings. After a German counteroffensive retook Feodosia in mid-January 1942 the division fell back to the Parpach Isthmus where it took part in trench warfare near the Black Sea coast into the spring, gradually losing strength. On May 8 it was caught up in the opening stage of Operation "Bustard Hunt" (Trappenjagd) and in a few hours was overwhelmed and largely destroyed by German air and artillery bombardment in support of infantry and armor attacks. Less than a week later it was stricken from the Red Army's order of battle and was never rebuilt.

The 224th Rifle Division was an infantry division of the Red Army, originally formed as one of the first reserve rifle divisions following the German invasion of the USSR. A large part of this first formation took part in amphibious landings near Kerch in late December 1941 but it was encircled and destroyed during the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula in May 1942.

The 227th Rifle Division was an infantry division of the Red Army, originally formed in the months just before the start of the German invasion, based on the shtat of September 13, 1939. It arrived at the front in July and was assigned to 26th Army along the Dniepr, but was fortunate to escape that Army's encirclement in September. During the next several months, the division fought as part of 40th Army in the Kursk region, operating toward Prokhorovka and Oboyan during the winter counteroffensive. It made noteworthy gains during the May 1942 offensive north of Kharkiv but these went for naught when the southern wing of the offensive collapsed. When the main German summer offensive began in late June, the division's 21st Army was directly in the path of the German 6th Army and the depleted 227th was soon destroyed on the open steppes.

The 242nd Rifle Division was the lowest-numbered infantry division of the Red Army to be formed from scratch following the German invasion of the USSR. It was largely based on what would become the shtat of July 29, 1941 and was very quickly assigned to the new 30th Army of Western Front. Despite many shortages of equipment and specialist personnel, and a near-complete absence of formation training, the division joined the active army on July 15, thrown into the fighting near Smolensk. In late August and early September it took part on the Front's offensives toward Dukhovshchina, in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to encircle and destroy a large part of the German 9th Army. At the start of Operation Typhoon on October 2 it was defending part of the sector attacked by 9th Army and 3rd Panzer Group south of Bely and was quickly overwhelmed. After fighting in encirclement for most of the rest of the month its remaining men were able to break out and reach Soviet-held territory, but the losses were to too great to justify rebuilding and the division was disbanded.

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Charles C. Sharp, "Red Death", Soviet Mountain, Naval, NKVD, and Allied Divisions and Brigades 1941 to 1945, Soviet Order of Battle World War II, Vol. VII, Nafziger, 1995, p. 44
  2. ↑ Walter S. Dunn, Jr., Stalin's Keys to Victory, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 2006, p. 87, states the 78th was a regular, then a naval, rifle brigade, and that it was first assigned to 56th Army.
  3. ↑ Sharp, "Red Swarm", Soviet Rifle Divisions Formed From 1942 to 1945, Soviet Order of Battle World War II, Vol. X, Nafziger, 1996, p. 120
  4. ↑ Dunn, Jr., Stalin's Keys, p. 115, states the 318th was formed as a mountain division, that the 78th was a mountain rifle brigade, and does not mention the 165th Regiment.
  5. ↑ Sharp, "Red Swarm", p. 120
  6. ↑ David M. Glantz, Armageddon in Stalingrad, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2009, pp. 563, 602, 606
  7. ↑ Leonid Brezhnev, Trilogy - Little Land, International Publishers, New York, 1980, p. 72
  8. ↑ Brezhnev, Trilogy, pp. 73–75
  9. ↑ "Освобождение городов". www.soldat.ru. Retrieved December 31, 2016.
  10. ↑ Robert Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2014, pp. 239-40. Note that, due to a typo, the start date is given as Sept. 12, 1942, instead of 1943.
  11. ↑ Sharp, "Red Swarm", p. 120
  12. ↑ Forczyk, pp. 250–53. Due to a typo, the 1337th Rifle Reg't. is identified as the 137th.
  13. ↑ Sharp, "Red Swarm", p. 120
  14. ↑ Forczyk, pp. 253–54
  15. ↑ Forczyk, pp. 255–56
  16. ↑ Forczyk, pp. 258-59
  17. ↑ Sharp, "Red Swarm", p. 120
  18. ↑ Sharp, "Red Death", pp. 17-18
  19. ↑ Sharp, "Red Swarm", p. 120
  20. ↑ "Vasily Gladkov". Герои страны ("Heroes of the Country") (in Russian).
  21. ↑ Feskov et al 2013, p. 151.
  22. ↑ Feskov et al 2013, pp. 205–206.
  23. ↑ Feskov et al 2013, p. 474.
  24. ↑ Feskov et al 2013, p. 201.

Bibliography

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