Crimea, February 1942: the Kerch bridgehead

General Dmitri Kozlov commands the Crimean Front, born of the bridgehead seized in late December 1941 during the Kerch and Feodosia landings. In a few weeks he has pushed three full armies into the peninsula, the 44th, the 47th and the 51st, ferried across the Kerch Strait and then over the ice once the channel froze solid.

To the west, the narrow Parpach Isthmus bars the road into the Crimean interior: a bottleneck a few kilometres wide, with no flank to turn, held on entrenched positions by Erich von Manstein's 11th Army. Beyond it, Sevastopol still holds but is wearing down, and the Stavka presses Kozlov to act and loosen the grip on the fortress. The early thaw, meanwhile, fills the plain with water and mud, halts the columns and drowns the tracks under a mire that clings to every wheel.

Kozlov must decide how to use his forces: launch the offensive westward at once, through Parpach, to break toward Sevastopol despite the mud crippling his support; first consolidate the bridgehead and wait for reinforcements and passable ground; or go over to the defensive, assuming Manstein will strike first as soon as his means allow.