Book of Sevastopol historian A.V. Nemenko is devoted to one of the little-studied problems of the history of battles for Crimea and Sevastopol in the second half of 1941 - the first half of 1942: the confrontation of samples of military equipment and weapons. The author considers not only and not so much their tactical and technical characteristics, but also the issues of organizing technical branches of the armed forces (artillery, tank, engineering units, etc.), their combat use, supply, support - everything, without which the equipment becomes just a pile of metal. The author compares different aspects of the use of equipment and weapons by the warring parties. Particular attention is paid to the Crimean "exoticism": the use, first of all, by the German side of experimental and single samples, many of which did not go into series and were used only in battles on the peninsula, such as the famous super guns "Dora" and "Karl," ultra-small radio-controlled mine wedges "Goliath" and others.