HEAVY BOMBING OF STALINGRAD

Southland Times, Issue 24881, 22 October 1942, Page 5

HEAVY BOMBING OF STALINGRAD

“PERMANENT FURNACE”

(Rec. 8.20 p.m.) LONDON, October 20. Two pictures from different sources vividly describe the hell Stalingrad has become. Moscow radio says that Stalingrad quakes under incessant bombing from the air. Soviet fighter pilots continue to fight against numerically superior forces and with the utmost gallantry to prevent the enemy from bombing Soviet troops.

Rome radio, quoting an Italian special correspondent, says the road leading to Stalingrad can be compared with a huge crater. The course of the battle is marked by an uninterrupted chain of cemeteries' of machines and artillery. Flying over the area one sees enormous masses of tanks destroyed in the battle and by bombers. Miles of columns of motor-vehicles are nailed down to the ground and parts of light, medium and heavy artillery are all converted into a shapeless mass of iron. Stalingrad has become a permanent furnace. The sky over the city is dark because of dark clouds of smoke reaching to 6500 feet. The heat from the furnace is felt for several miles. Even the rains of the last few days have not lowered the temperature or decreased the extent of the fires which the fighting continually lights anew. There is evidence, says the Stockholm correspondent of The Times, that the Germans are taking seriously the Russian concentrations on the Kalinin front. There is brisk transport of German reinforcements along the railways to Smolensk. The Russian preparations have the Germans guessing. The Russians may aim to pinch out the Viazma-Rjev-Gjatsk pocket, but the present concentration can

equally be directed eastward and north-westward with the aim of out-flanking the Germans before Leningrad.