About the book: 2014 / April 16, 1942, General E. von Manstein reported to Hitler the plan for an operation to defeat Soviet troops on the Kerch Peninsula called “Hunting for the Bustard.” He approved everything except the upcoming role of the Luftwaffe. The Fuhrer believed that it was aviation, as before, that would play a decisive role in the offensive in the Crimea, and then in the decisive push to the Caucasus that he had planned. Therefore, the next day he announced that he was sending the commander of the VIII Air Corps, Baron V. von Richthofen, to Crimea, whom he considered his best specialist. “You are the only person who can do this job,” Hitler admonished the latter. And soon the Soviet troops of the Crimean Front and the ships of the Black Sea Fleet were hit by German bombers of unprecedented power. Having practically destroyed Soviet troops in Crimea and wiped out Sevastopol, Richthofen headed the 4th Air Fleet, at that time the most powerful in the Luftwaffe. “I have the impression that everything will go smoothly,” he wrote in his diary on June 28, 1942, the day Operation Blau began. Based on numerous archival documents, memories and reports of pilots, as well as previously unpublished domestic sources and memoirs The book tells about unknown episodes of the battle for Crimea, Voronezh, Stalingrad and the Caucasus, and for the first time details of the fighting in the Caspian Sea are given. The authors answer the question of why Hitler’s “best specialist,” who destroyed dozens of cities and towns, was never able to carry out the Fuhrer’s order and ended up “with nothing.”».