ENEMY FAILURE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 July 1941, Page 5

ENEMY FAILURE

IN FIRST AIR ATTACK ON MOSCOW LARGE FORCE EMPLOYED. BUT ONLY SINGLE PLANES GET THROUGH. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, July 22. The Moscow radio announced the first German air raid on Moscow last night. It says that more than 200 planes tried to penetrate the defences, but only single aircraft got through. A few buildings were damaged and a few people were killed and injured. Not a single military objective was hit, the radio says. Seventeen bombers were destroyed by night-fighters and anti-aircraft batteries. The raid lasted five and a half hours. The raid began at 10 p.m. and ended at 3.30 a.m. It must be considered a failure. An agency corresponclent, writing before the raid, says that when Moscow has an air-raid warning all work stops and the traffic, including the underground trains, comes to a standstill. Most of the people go to the shelters. Most of these are quite comfortable and are placed deep down in railway stations. (The population of Moscow was 4,100,000 in 1939.) Moscow also refers to attempted, raids on Leningrad,on July 20 and 21. It says that the German machines were intercepted on each occasion, 11 being shot down in the first raid and eight in the second. During the second raid the Russians lost four machines. No military objectives were hit. Today’s Soviet communique reports stubborn fighting in again the same main sectors. BATTLE AT SMOLENSK. The Stockholm correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” says that Marshal Timoshenko on July 20 dislodged the] panzers from their precarious foothold which they had won in the outskirts of Smolensk on July 18. According to most reliable sources a big battle continues westward of Smolensk on both sides of the main Warsaw-Moscow railway. At the'same time it is believed in; London that German forces may be beyond the town at some points. : In the southern Ukraine sector, the Germans may be developing a thrust down the right bank of the Dniester which, if it continues, may embarrass the Russians still in Bessarabia. The Germans make no new definite claims of advances. Reviewing the first month’s fighting, they report an advance of more than 370 miles from the Russo-German border. This figure would not bring them beyond Smolensk. though they had recently claimed to have made advances' far beyond it. Berlin states that M. Stalin’s eldest son has been captured.