Kerch Landing Operation

The Kerch Landing Operation was a U.S. Marine assault at Arsincevo that secured an undefended beachhead and refinery complex south of Kerch. The landing established a foothold for forces advancing toward the tank farm and naval base, while the refinery offered a possible answer to the Jefferson battle group’s worsening fuel crisis. The operation’s immediate success on shore therefore carried a larger logistical stake: keeping the carrier’s aircraft flying in a sea from which the group could not readily escape.

Causes and Operational Stakes

By this stage, the Jefferson’s position in the Black Sea was constrained by more than the threat of enemy action. Although the carrier was nuclear-powered and did not need fuel for its own propulsion, its aircraft consumed aviation fuel rapidly. Under ordinary conditions, that supply would last no more than ten days, and less under a heavy flight schedule, a major strike, or a prolonged running battle. The battle group depended on UNREP tankers following it at sea; if resupply became impossible, the carrier’s endurance would be determined by the fuel remaining for its air wing.

The danger sharpened if the Bosporus Strait closed. With the carrier and escorts trapped inside the Black Sea, the tankers that were their only source of resupply could not simply be assumed to reach them. The later estimate was more severe still: sustained maneuvers and round-the-clock flight operations could reduce the ten-day margin to only two to four days. After that, the Jefferson and its escorts would be unable to function effectively as a fighting force. The Arsincevo refinery thus mattered in a practical, time-sensitive way: control of the shore could create a source of aviation fuel where the ordinary supply chain was failing.

Landing and Securing the Shore

At 0830 on Saturday, 7 November, U.S. Marines were firmly ashore at Arsincevo and moving across the beach by several means. Dozens of LVTP-7 amphibious vehicles, each carrying twenty men, crossed the light surf at nine knots and climbed onto the sand. The landing craft made the scale of the assault visible: the vehicles emerged from the water in succession, while LCAC hovercraft swept over the surf and across the beach shelf amid spray and windblown sand. The beach was designated Red Beach; the first amtracks had reached shore at 0750, twenty minutes after sunrise.

The beachhead was undefended, and the Marines secured both it and the refinery complex. This gave the assault a different character from a landing fought through an established beach defense: the first reported task was to move inland and secure key facilities, rather than to break through resistance at the waterline. Helicopters carried Marine strike teams to positions around the tank farm and naval base, extending the operation beyond the beach itself and placing troops near the installations that gave the landing its strategic value.

Air Support and Objectives Ashore

Marine helicopters raced inland as the landing unfolded. Marine Harrier jets and Cobra gunships joined the operation, while aircraft also struck threats to the force’s movement and control of the area. Targets included surface-to-air missile sites, radar complexes, command posts, communications centers, and individual vehicles. The attacks were described as precise, with smaller or dispersed targets selected individually rather than treated as a single undifferentiated area.

Larger or more widely distributed targets were attacked repeatedly by A-6 Intruders from VA-84 and VA-89, flying low-level missions from the Jefferson. The air effort therefore supported both the movement of troops inland and the suppression of systems that could threaten the landing or coordinate a response. The account establishes the targets and the aircraft used, but does not claim that every threat in the wider region was destroyed. What it does show is a coordinated operation in which landing craft, helicopters, and carrier-based aircraft worked on distinct parts of the same problem: establishing the shore position and protecting the forces moving through it.

Fuel, Resupply, and Consequences

The refinery’s importance becomes concrete in the effort to replenish the carrier. At Arsincevo, the aviation gasoline was tested and judged to meet the Jefferson’s demanding standards. The next task was to pump nearly three million gallons—about nine thousand tons—aboard. Flight-deck operations were suspended during the transfer, a necessary pause that set the immediate cost of replenishment against the longer-term need to restore the air wing’s supply.

The operation did not erase the battle group’s vulnerability to a closed strait or make its sea-based supply problem disappear. It did, however, secure a shore facility capable of providing aviation fuel, making the carrier’s endurance depend on whether that fuel could be transferred in time. In a later discussion about whether a route through and resupply for the isolated force were possible, Admiral Scott turned to Matthew Magruder, who distributed the group’s estimates. That exchange returns the operation to its central tension: taking the refinery was a significant gain, but the carrier’s ability to exploit it remained a question of access, time, and the volume of fuel that could actually be brought aboard.