RP78GL
h.Prikubanskiy, Slavyanskogo rayona

One of the most heroic battles of the Great Patriotic War, the battle for the Caucasus, ended with the defeat of the Taman grouping of the enemy and the liberation of the Taman Peninsula.

The Blue Line was a system of German defense fortifications which stretched across the peninsula from the city of Novorossiysk at the Black Sea to the town of Temkyuk on the Sea of Azov shore. The total depth of the system was up to 20-25 kilometers.

The system consisted of 577 closed firing structures, 37.5 km of minefields up to 500 meters wide and up to 2500 mines per 1 km were built. 87.5 km of wire fences, 12 km of forest blockages. Even estuaries and floodplains were mined.

Realizing the importance of defeating the enemy in the Kuban, the Soviet Headquarters significantly strengthened the troops with the aviation of the 4th Air Army, which helped to put an end to the dominance of German aviation in the sky. Air battles in the Kuban were the largest and most productive for the entire period of the Great Patriotic War.

The breaking of the Blue Line began with the attack on the Svistelnikovo fortified area on March 31, 1943 but only in September 1943, after the liberation of Novorossiysk, the Blue Line finally fell.

The liberation of the Taman Peninsula and Novorossiysk significantly improved the possibilities of basing the Black Sea Fleet and created the conditions for liberation of the Crimea