TEMPEST OF FIRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 June 1942, Page 4

TEMPEST OF FIRE

O TURNED BY GERMANS ON SEBASTOPOL UNPRECEDENTED WEIGHT OF ATTACK. WITHSTOOD MAGNIFICENTLY BY RUSSIANS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.10 a.m.) RUGBY, June 25. The Germans dropped 9,000 bombs on Sebastopol in the first eight days of June, besides shells and mines, says the “Red Star,” which adds: “The enemy is shelling the city with the biggest gun ever used in the history of warfare. The defenders, however, have learned a means of reducing casualties to a minimum. In one raid, when 800 bombs were dropped, only one person was killed and one wounded. There have been hundreds of such raids. Trench lines are subjected to an even fiercer fire and bombing than the city. The intensity of the fire is growing daily and instead of the original 500 planes there are now 1,000 pounding Sebastopol. When the pressure of their land forces weakens, the Germans intensify their air raids. The power and density of fire the Germans use surpasses anything in the history of military campaigns. The territory being defended by Russian infantry and marines is small and every yard of it is open to fire from all sorts of weapons. There is no rear, but only a front. Yesterday saw the hardest fighting of all in both the northern and southern sectors, against which the Germans threw three infantry divisions, supported by aircraft and tanks. The Germans lost nine tanks and ten planes and were forced to roll back without having widened the northern wedge or advanced further in the south. In one sector the Germans compelled the defenders to fall back a little, after a 24hour battle, but failed to break through and lost eight tanks and hundreds of men killed.” The latest despatches received by the “Red Star” indicate that enemy pressure on Sebastopol has weakened somewhat, through the enormous losses of German and Rumanian divisions, “but the enemy still enjoys a superiority of forces, allowing his conduct of fierce attacks simultaneously in a number of sectors, with respite.” At Kharkov the Germans concentrated on efforts to recapture a settlement lost to the Red Army, but were repulsed.