The Crimean bridge that was opened in 2019 between Russia and occupied Crimea was not the first bridge to cross the Kerch Straight. There was an earlier Crimean bridge built by the USSR in 1944 which was destroyed. The first Crimean bridge was built after a cableway was built in 1943 which supplied the German army in the Taman Peninsula. However the Soviet Crimean bridge was also destroyed, not as a result of conflict but by the weather - something one might have thought that Soviet planners would have considered. This video tells the story of that Crimean bridge.
Due to current events and the importance of this issue at present, I did not write the text before dicatating it and as a result the narration is even more slurred and staccato than normal. However I hope that you will find the research that has gone into this video useful and as a way of understanding the Soviet mentality.
Excerpt :
In the city archives in Kerch, we find an eight page study suggesting two options for the routes of railway lines drawn up by the city authorities in Temriuk. Temriuk is located on the Taman peninsula. This project dates to before May 1911. We also can find this map of a proposed railway line across the Kerch Straight from Bagerovo to Abinskaya, today called Abinsk from the same time.
Naturally Soviet intelligence took an interest in the transport infrastructure behind enemy lines. On 22 July 1943, this report from the railway troops of the North Caucaus Front was made which concerned the construction and beginning of operation of the Kerch cable way. In this map of the same date we can see the railway infrastructure in the Taman Peninsula which includes the cableway. Photographic intelligence of the cable way was obtained on 18 and 19 July 1943 and the Chief of staff of the 44th Railway Brigade, Lt General Ney wrote to the Deputy Chief of the Railway Troops of the North Caucasian Front in this message on 29 July 1943. The first that the Soviets knew of the construction of a more permanent reinforced concrete structure appears to be this report of Lieutenant Colonel Yatsyno, Chief of the Railway Troops of the North Caucasian Front, to the Headquarters of the Railway Troops of the USSR.
Here we can see a diagram of the construction works as of 27 August 1943 dated 20 September 1943.
Analysis dated 27 October 1943 was provided by the intelligence services attached to the 44th Railway Brigade on railway infrastructure in the Taman peninsula together with information relating to the bridge which was then under construction.
We have a photographic record of the construction of the Kerch bridge by the Soviet Union.
Before construction of the bridge could begin, the Kerch Straight needed to be cleared of mines and one way of doing this was to use depth charges to get rid of them which we can see here. Once the straight was considered demined, floating wooden pile drivers went into action which drove metal piles into the sea. In this photograph wooden piles are being delivered via pontoons. This shows lifting a portable pile driver and here we have pile driving in action. At the same time, metal supports for the bridge were constructed nearby. This shows that despite the requirements of the front, the Soviet Union placed a great deal of urgency in the building of this bridge, resources for which, by the summer of 1944, would probably have been much more usefully deployed elsewhere.
My history channel is based on my own research and generally comes from places I have visited and or original research. I live in a motorhome and as such spend most of my time travelling between Poland, Germany and Italy which is why there is a tendency to produce material from these countries, and sometimes material that is not available in English. My speciality is in World War Two, and in particular, the Holocaust although as you can see, I have opinions on a lot of other historical subjects too.
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