318th Rifle Division (Soviet Union)

rdf:langString 318th Rifle Division (Soviet Union)

rdf:langString 318th Rifle Division (June 15, 1942 – August 15, 1944)

rdf:langString 318th Rifle Division (1954–1955)

rdf:langString 318th Mountain Rifle Division (August 15, 1944 – 1954)

rdf:langString Novorossiysk

rdf:langString Maj. Gen. V. F. Gladkov, Hero of the Soviet Union

rdf:langString Col. Anatolii Nikolaievich Chervinskii

rdf:langString Col. Valentin Apollinarovich Vrutzkii

rdf:langString Maj. Gen. Aleksei Aleksandrovich Grechkin

rdf:langString Maj. Gen. Vasilii Fyodorovich Gladkov 10px

rdf:langString Infantry

rdf:langString Division

rdf:langString The 318th Rifle Division began forming on June 15, 1942, in and near Novorossiysk on the coast of the Black Sea, as a standard Red Army rifle division; it was later re-formed as a mountain rifle division, but exactly when this happened is disputed among the various sources. It fought in the area it was formed in until September 1943, and was granted the name of this city as an honorific. In November of that year it took part in the largest Soviet amphibious operation of the war, across the Kerch Straits into the easternmost part of the Crimea, but its small beachhead was eliminated some weeks later. After the Crimea was liberated in May 1944, it remained there for several months before it was transferred to the Carpathian Mountains west of Ukraine as a mountain division, and spent the remainder of the war fighting through Czechoslovakia in the direction of Prague. The division continued to serve postwar in this same role, but was converted back to a standard rifle division before it was disbanded in the early 1950s.