'Bustard Hunt' succeeds on Kerch

18th May 1942: Overwhelming Wehrmacht firepower breaks the Red Army on the Kerch Peninsula in the eastern Crimea

German bombs fall on the Kerch Peninsula, May 1942

The surprise Soviet counter-offensives of December 1941 had had only patchy success, often proving to be a stretch too far for the Red Army. Amphibious landings on the Kerch peninsula had established themselves on the eastern end of the Crimean peninsula in the last week of 1941. But they had failed to b…