stupid strategic question

[Andy Fletcher]

Originally Posted by Juha

Hello

Andy, there might be some truth in Your argument but Kuban was not so important in that sense because Germans had the Crimea with its good airfields anyway. BTW, there were some minor oilwells in Kuban also which had some minor importance to Germans.

Yes there were excellent airfields in the Crimea but the problem for the Germans if they wanted to attack oil (and for all intents and purposes this meant Baku) was range, Baku was over 1,200 km from the Crimea.

All the oil wells in German occupied territory in the Kuban had been thoroughly destroyed by the retreating Soviets. The Germans had a special Brigade for the exploitation of Soviet oil that was deployed to the Caucasus but the amount of oil extracted was negligible. It was estimated that it would take at least six months of repairs to extract a worth while quantity from Maikop (then there were the problems of transporting it back to Germany or at least as far as Rumanian refineries, there was no spare shipping capacity in the Black Sea or Danube).