'Blücher II' was the German scaled-down landing on the Taman peninsula first posited as 'Blücher' (ii) (2 September 1942).

In this undertaking, which was the responsibility of Generalfeldmarshall Wilhelm List’s Heeresgruppe 'A', Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein’s 11^th Army crossed the Strait of Kerch from the eastern tip of Crimea into the Kuban region as support for the effort of Generaloberst Richard Ruoff’s 17^th Army to take the oilfields of Maykop and the port of Batumi on the Black Sea coast near the frontier with Turkey against the Soviet defences of General Leytenant Ivan V. Tyulenev’s Trans-Caucasus Front.

The breakthrough of a Romanian cavalry division of the 17^th Army to Anapa, on the south coast of the Taman peninsula, on 31 August prevented major parts of General Leytenant Fyedor V. Kamkov’s 47^th Army from withdrawing from the peninsula, into which Colonel Vasile Mainescu’s Romanian 5^th Cavalry Division and General de brigadâ Corneliu Teodorini’s Romanian 6^th Cavalry Division now penetrated.

On 2 September Generalmajor Ernst Haccius’s 46^th Division of General Rudolf Konrad’s XLIX Gebirgskorps within the 17^th Army was landed on the northern and western sides of the Taman peninsula in 'Blücher II' by 24 Marinefährprahme (naval landing ferries) of Korvettenkapitän Max Giele’s 1^st Landungs-Flottille, Siebel ferries and engineer landing and assault boats under the protection of Korvettenkapitän Arnulf Hölzerkopf’s 3^rd Räumboots-Flottille and the Luftwaffe. General de divizie Ion Boiteanu’s Romanian 3^rd Division followed.

From 2 to 5 September Soviet warships and transports of Kontr Admiral Sergei G. Gorchkov’s Azov Flotilla, including the patrol ship Shtorm and the gunboats Oktyabr and Rostov-na-Donu, evacuated most of the Soviet army and naval forces from the south coast of the Taman peninsula to Novorossiysk, but on 2 September the gunboats were lost. During the nights of 2, 3 and 5 September Korvettenkapitän Georg-Stuhr Christiansen’s 1^st Schnellboots-Flottille attacked the Soviet loading points and reported 19 successes for the loss of one vessel, which was sunk by its own torpedo.

There followed the battle for Novorossiysk, which was defended against General Wilhelm Wetzel’s V Corps (Generalleutnant Willi Schneckenberger’s 125^th Division, Generalleutnant Rudolf von Bünau’s 73^rd Division and Generalleutnant Siegmund Freiherr von Schleinitz’s 9^th Division) of the 17^th Army by the 77^th Division and the 14^th, 142^nd, 83^rd and 2^nd Naval Infantry Brigades under Rear Admiral Kholostyakov. Despite fire support by the Soviet flotilla leader Kharkov and destroyer Soobrazitelny on 1, 2 and 4 September, German units entered the outskirts of Novorossiysk on 5 September, captured the centre of the city on 6 September and occupied the harbour on 9 September.

The elements of the Soviet forces driven to the west were evacuated to Gelendzhik by sea. This marked the limit of the German advance to the south-east along the Kuban coast of the Black Sea.