It was the ill-conceived brain-child of Germany's Admiral Hinze Manningburg, who thought he could use the Kriegsmarine and a small force of Turkish and Chechen volunteers to support a deep thrust from the recently defeated town of Astrakhan, towards the Turkish border, with the help of a Lithuanian infantry unit and Hungarian armoured unit near Rostov-upon-Don. The Soviet NVKD spy service had done their homework whilst the SPETNAZ forces had organised a well-executed ambush around | Nalchik. Mountain ambushes involving artillery, sniper fire, anti-tank mines and katyusha mobile rocket launchers all took their toll both at Sochi, Nalchik and Novorossiysk. The Chechens did manage to free there territory after several Luftwaffe arms drops, but this prove very costly for the Luftwaffe, due to