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.
A new 224th was raised in July 1942 near Arkhangelsk and served the rest of the war in the fighting near Leningrad and the subsequent campaigns against Finland. Even after joining the 67th Army in the city, it was understrength until it was reinforced by a disbanded rifle brigade. During the Leningrad–Novgorod Offensive, as part of 42nd Army, it took part in the liberation of Gatchina (Krasnogvardeisk) for which it received a battle honor. As the offensive continued, it took part in the partial encirclement and elimination of a German division near Lake Peipus and was recognized for this feat with the Order of the Red Banner. During the summer offensive in 1944 that drove Finland out of the war, the 224th, now in 59th Army, played a leading role in amphibious landings on several islands in Vyborg Bay. Following this, it remained facing Finland as part of 23rd Army until the end of the war. Late in 1945 it was moved to the Ivanovo Oblast and was disbanded in April 1946.
1st Formation While technically this could be considered a pre-war division, since it had a commander assigned on June 1, 1941, it does not appear in the official Red Army order of battle until September 1.Dunn lists it as having formed in June; Walter S. Dunn, Jr., Stalin's Keys to Victory, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 2007, p. 71 It appears that it was scheduled to form up in June but nothing was actually done besides assigning Lt. Col. Ivan Mikhailovich Lilyavin, and possibly a basic staff, until July. The formation took place at Sukhumi in the Transcaucasian Military District and as it was recruited locally it was considered a Georgian national division through its existence.Charles C. Sharp, "Red Tide", Soviet Rifle Divisions Formed From June to December 1941, Soviet Order of Battle World War II, vol. IX, Nafziger, 1996, pp. 34-35 Once formed, its official order of battle, based on an abbreviated version of the shtat (table of organization and equipment) of September 13, 1939, was as follows: 143rd Rifle Regiment 160th Rifle Regiment 185th Rifle Regiment 111th Artillery RegimentSharp, "Red Tide", p. 34 76th Antitank Battalion 80th Antiaircraft Battalion 96th Reconnaissance Company 47th Sapper Battalion 172nd Signal Battalion 44th Medical/Sanitation Battalion 46th Motor Transport Company 52nd Field Bakery 994th Field Postal Station 898th Field Office of the State Bank Lt. Colonel Lilyavin was replaced on July 10 by Col. Aleksandr Pavlovich Degtyarev, and this probably marks the time when the division began forming in earnest. As of the start of September it was assigned to 46th Army in Transcaucasian Front.Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1941, p. 47
Crimean Campaign The 224th officially entered the fighting front on November 24, and on December 18 it was reassigned to 51st Army in the Caucasus Front (later Crimean Front).Sharp, "Red Tide", p. 35 The Front chief of staff, Maj. Gen. F. I. Tolbukhin, came up with an overly elaborate plan to compromise the positions of German 11th Army in the Kerch Peninsula with many small amphibious landings at multiple points rather than one large landing. In the first echelon of the operation five different transport groups would land a total of 7,500 troops from the 224th and the 302nd Mountain Rifle Division on separate beaches north and south of Kerch.Robert Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2014, pp. 99-100
On the evening of December 25 elements of the 224th and the 83rd Naval Infantry Brigade loaded aboard small craft on the Taman Peninsula to cross the near-frozen Kerch Strait. Group Two, heading for Cape Khroni, northeast of Kerch, consisted of the gunboat Don, the transports Krasny Flot and Pyenay, a tugboat, two self-propelled barges that carried three T-26 tanks and some artillery, and 16 small fishing trawlers. Lacking purpose-built landing craft the Azov Flotilla was forced to use whaleboats to transfer troops from the transports to the shore, a tedious and difficult process under the circumstances. The weather was roughly Sea state 5 with strong westerly winds and rain, and worsening. At the landing point 697 soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of 160th Rifle Regiment managed to reach shore by 0630 hours on December 26, but a number of men drowned while wading ashore through the surf or became hypothermia casualties. Later in the day another battalion was landed, along with the tanks and artillery. Only 290 men succeeded in getting ashore at Cape Zyuk farther west, and at Cape Tarhan the effort was abortive due to a lack of whaleboats. A more successful landing took place at Bulganak Bay where 1,452 troops of the 143rd Rifle Regiment landed, along with another three T-26s, two 76mm howitzers and two 45mm antitank guns. Other landings at Kazantip Point and Yeni-Kale failed due to the weather.Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, pp. 101-03
By midday the Army had five separate beachheads on the north side of the Kerch Peninsula containing barely 3,000 half-frozen and lightly armed soldiers who generally moved inland before digging in against expected German counterattacks. The 22nd Regiment of the 46th Infantry Division was located in the Kerch area but had very few men along this stretch of coast. However, the German Air Force soon arrived, sinking the cargo ship Voroshilov with 450 soldiers aboard, while a further 100 were lost when a vessel of Group Two was bombed near Cape Zyuk. The isolated regimental and battalion commanders of the 224th, with little or no communications between them or with higher headquarters, decided to wait for the arrival of the rest of the division and the follow-on 83rd Brigade before advancing inland. However, the worsening weather prevented any further large-scale landings for the next three days. The landings by 302nd Mountain Division south of Kerch on December 26 were opposed by the 46th Infantry's 42nd Regiment and largely failed, apart from 2,175 who got ashore at Kamysh Burun.Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, pp. 102-04
The commander of the 46th Infantry, Lt. Gen. K. Himer, ordered elements of his reserve 97th Regiment to counterattack the beachhead at Cape Zyuk but due to bad road conditions they were not in position until 1300 hours on December 27. Nevertheless, during the next day they were able to overwhelm the lodgement, which had been reinforced by the 83rd Brigade; 300 Red Army men were killed and 458 were taken prisoner. In the meantime the reinforcing 72nd Infantry Regiment crushed the beachhead at Cape Khroni. Only about 1,000 troops remained hanging on at Bulganak Bay.Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, pp. 104-06
A second wave of Soviet landings took place farther west on December 29, and the city of Feodosiya, which had been held by a battalion of the 97th Regiment, was liberated by units of the 44th Army. At 0830 hours the German Corps commander ordered his 46th Division to retreat from the Kerch Peninsula despite having been forbidden to do so by the commander of 11th Army. The division force-marched through a snowstorm over December 30-31 toward the Corps headquarters northwest of Feodosiya, abandoning vehicles due to fuel shortages and with its heavy equipment lagging behind. It then ran into a roadblock held by the 63rd Mountain Rifle Division and was forced to continue its retreat cross-country, although its personnel losses were light. With the departure of the 46th the 302nd Mountain Division was able to liberate Kerch on the 31st. Both the 51st and 44th Armies were free to establish themselves on the Kerch Peninsula.Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, pp. 106-10
The vanguard of 51st Army arrived at the Parpach Isthmus by January 5, 1942, but by the 12th it still had only two divisions deployed forward. Meanwhile 11th Army was concentrating German and Romanian forces for a counterattack which struck 44th Army on January 15, effectively destroying the 236th Mountain Rifle Division on the first day, mauling much of the rest of the Army and forcing it back to the Parpach. After January 20 the two sides dug in along this 17km-wide line which soon acquired the characteristics of a WWI battlefield with extensive trenches, dugouts and barbed wire. 44th Army was effectively crippled and the addition of 51st Army did not allow Crimean Front to do more than hold its ground.Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, pp. 114-15, 118-19 On January 29 Colonel Degtyarev handed his command to Col. Mikhail Ivanovich Menshikov, but this officer was in turn replaced by Col. Valerian Sergeevich Dzabakhidze on February 10. From February 27 to April 11 Crimean Front launched a series of efforts to break out west of Parpach toward Sevastopol but these had little result beyond heavy Soviet casualties. 51st Army on the northern part of the line did most of this fighting with 44th Army offering diversionary support; as one further result the bulk of the Front's forces ended up massed on this northern flank.Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, pp. 127-34 By the start of May the 224th had been reassigned to 47th Army which had recently moved to Crimean Front.Combat Composition of the Soviet Army, 1942, p. 86 Operation Bustard Hunt Before the last of these offensives ended General von Manstein began planning an operation to destroy all three armies of Crimean Front in one stroke. Operation Trappenjagd would initially target the 44th Army, which was defending a sector about long with five rifle divisions and two tank brigades. 47th Army was deployed on the opposite (northern) end of the Parpach defenses. While the Front had nearly 260,000 men, 347 tanks, and 3,577 guns and mortars deployed in the peninsula, most of these forces were concentrated in preparation for their own attack, leaving them poorly prepared to defend themselves. Trappenjagd began with a massive artillery preparation at 0315 hours on May 8 and the positions of 44th Army were hopelessly compromised within hours. Late the next morning the 22nd Panzer Division penetrated the Parpach line and, despite heavy rains overnight got into the rear of 51st and 47th Armies on May 10. The battle quickly became a disaster for the Red Army; on May 15 a regiment of the German 170th Infantry Division covered more than to retake Kerch. Over the next two days the surrounded Soviet troops came under heavy artillery and air attacks which reduced them to a formless mob, 170,000 eventually being made prisoners.David M. Glantz, To the Gates of Stalingrad, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2009, pp. 72-73, 76-77. This source mentions a 224th Division in Southwestern Front in June on p. 96 but this is an error for the 244th Rifle Division according to the map on p. 91. Colonel Dzabakhidze survived the debacle, going on to command the 406th and 414th Rifle Divisions before the end of the war and being promoted to the rank of major general in November 1943. The 224th was officially disbanded on June 14.
2nd Formation A new 224th began forming on July 1, 1942, at Onega in the Arkhangelsk Military District, based on the 116th Rifle Brigade. Given the realities of sparse population and limited resources in the far north the division spent almost six months forming up as compared to other divisions being formed in two to four months elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Once formed its order of battle, based on the shtat of July 28, was as follows: 143rd Rifle Regiment 160th Rifle Regiment 185th Rifle Regiment