ABSTRACT
As German resistance was being rolled back across much of northwestern Europe, it was being snuffed out entirely in the Black Sea and increasingly in the Baltic as well. In the former a massive air raid by the Soviet Black Sea Fleet on the Romanian naval base of Constanza on 20 August spelt the beginning of the end for the pro-German administration of the Romanian military dictator Marshal Antonescu. Apart from wreaking considerable damage amongst the Axis warships and other light craft that were using the port, it proved to be a lightning rod for wholesale change within the Romanian body politic. Three days later Antonescu was removed from power in a coup d’état and a caretaker government was installed under General Saˇnaˇtescu that was opposed to continuing the war. Within hours the Red Army had been assisted in crossing the River Dniester by Sergei Gorshkov’s Soviet Danube Flotilla. Not unnaturally, both of these moves were interpreted unfavourably by the German military authorities in Romania and promptly led them to evacuate as much of their shipping as possible from the most important southern port of Constanza. Those vessels that were inoperable were scuttled where they rested in the harbour on 24 August. Although the Germans sailed some of their ferry barges up the Danube, the rest of their vessels in Romanian and Bulgarian waters, roughly 200 in number, were scuttled off Varna on 29-30 August as the Soviets, using thirty torpedo cutters and six patrol cutters, prepared to take control of Constanza later that same day. As a fitting dénouement for the German campaign in the Black Sea, the last three German U-boats (U19, U20, U23) remained reasonably operationally proficient – sinking a Soviet minesweeper and writing off an already damaged freighter – in the waters off Constanza until their fuel began to run out. Finally, left with nowhere to go and rejected by the Turkish government, they scuttled themselves off the northern Turkish port of Eregˇli on 11 September – the day before the new Romanian administration and the USSR signed an armistice in Moscow bringing the war between them to an end and preparing the way for the Romanians to switch sides and declare war on their erstwhile allies.1
