KRONSTADT ATTACKED

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXV, Issue 254, 28 October 1942, Page 2

KRONSTADT ATTACKED

SMASHED BY RUSSIA.NS. STALINGRAD'S GRAVE CRISIS.

PA. Gable.

LONDON, Oct, 27.

That Stalingrad's position is extremely tense is emphasised in the latest despatc'nes from Moscow, but references to the successful Russian counter-attacks in the Stalingrad area and on other active fronts constantly are coming in. The British United Press Moscow correspondent says that the Russians after a fortnight's fighting have driven the Rumanians and Germans to the steppes beyond the ridge of hills surrounding Stalingrad's southern approaches. The Russians, as a result of this success, ncw have the Germans on the defensive on both flanks of the army attaoking Stalingrad itself. The Germans gained some ground in Stalingrad yesterday, but the Russians before dusk reoecupied their original positions, except for one 300 yard stretch which they are still strugglin gto recover. The Russians north-west of Stalingrad have recaptured a large village, street after street. The' Associated Press correspondent reports that the Luftwaffe continues to concentrate agains sectors holding out in the Stalingrad area, Red Army, Gossacks and marines are holding cff the Germans from the Tuapse area across the Caucasus towards Novorossisk. Russian scout detachments are constantly infiltrating the enemy' s rear, fighting on the whole Caucasus front being mobile. The Russian Baltic fieet has smashed a major German attempt to capture Krostadt naval base. The Russians attacked and crippled the German invasion fieet before it could leave its home port. A Stockholm report says that the Germans had assembled barges and landing craft for the attack when Russian cruisers and destroyers, supported by bombers, blasted hundreds of barges massed in an unidentified Nazi-occupied hai'bour in the gulf of Finland. The Daily Telegraph's Stoekholm correspondent says that the German operation was prepared by Admiral Carls, planner of the invasion of Norway and cf the unattempted invasion of Britain. The Germans were determined to take Kronstadt. because fche submarines •operating from this base had inflicted' such heavy losses on German troop transports in the Baltic Sea.