the 11th Army now commanded by General von Schobert, however he died in a crash the same day due to landing his liaison Fieseler Storch aircraft in a minefield. To replace him, General of Infantry Von Manstein was ordered to travel from the Leningrad sector of the front to the extreme southern sector. He would also receive support from the 4th Luftwaffe Air Fleet. At this time the LIV Army Corps of the 11th Army were still engaged in the Crimea, and because the Romanian forces were still engaged in the Siege of Odessa, the Army's resources for the Rostov objective were severely limited, even though Red Army troops were in retreat. For this reason Von Manstein initially replaced the LIV Corps with the smaller XXX Army Corps and XLIX Mountain Corps and ordered the LIV Corps into the first echelon in the advance to Rostov. Late in September the 3rd Romanian Army joined the 11th Army in the advance towards Rostov but were severely depleted by the attacks of the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies on 26 September. This forced a halt to the Army's advance to safeguard its flank and obliged Von Manstein to use his only mobile reserve unit, the Leibstandarte Brigade, to shore up Romanian defences. After the LSSAH had stabilized the Romanian sector, the Soviets increased the pressure on XXX Army Corps. The Soviets did not respond to the build-up of the 1st Panzer Army on their northern flank. On 1 October the Germans started their counterattack from the north and west. The rapid advance of German armoured and motorized forces from the north compelled the Soviets to retreat on October 3. The 11th Army took up the pursuit, with the Leibstandarte's attack eliminating the Soviet 30th Rifle Division's HQ section and dispersing its subordinate formations. Melitopol was captured by III Panzer Corps on 5 October. The LSSAH reconnaissance battalion under Kurt Meyer captured Berdiansk on 6 October. The XIV motorized Army Corps under Gustav Anton von Wietersheim linked up with the Leibstandarte to encircle seven Red Army divisions in the Mariupol-Berdiansk area on October 7. Four days later the battle was over. Caught in the pocket, 150,000 troops of the 9th and 18th Army were killed or captured. The Germans took more than 106,332 prisoners, both in the pocket and during the pursuit, along with 212 tanks and 772 guns of all types. Smirnov,