On the night of 3-4 February 1943, Soviet forces staged amphibious landing on the either side of the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. The amphibious landing at Ozereika Bay included an attempted landing by 33 M3L tanks of 563rd Separate Tank Battalion. Half of the tanks were trapped when their barge was hit by German artillery fire, preventing them from landing. Other were dropped in deep water and their engines were flooded. About a dozen made it to shore, some fighting their way into the nearby towns. The attack was crushed by German coastal artillery fire and over a thousand infantry and tanks were captured or killed. It was a disaster similar to the ill-fated Dieppe Raid of 1942.