'Neptun' (ii) was a German offensive by General Wilhelm Wetzel’s V Corps with the support of Generalleutnant Alfred Mahnke’s I Fliegerkorps to destroy the Soviet beach-head between Novorossiysk and Myskhanko on the southern side of the Taman peninsula (17 April 1943).

This lodgement, by General Ivan Ye. Petrov’s Black Sea Group of General Ivan V. Tyulenev’s Trans-Caucasus Front, posed a threat to the right flank of Generaloberst Hermann Hoth’s 17^th Army of Generalfeldmarschall Ewald von Kleist’s Heeresgruppe 'A', which had recently been driven back from the Caucasus into the Kuban lodgement on the Taman peninsula. It was this lodgement whose southern flank was threatened by the Soviet beach-head between Novorossiysk and Myskhanko.