STOUT RESISTANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1942, Page 4

STOUT RESISTANCE

OFFERED BY SOVIET TROOPS & AIRCRAFT TO GERMAN ONSLAUGHT IN SOUTH. ONLY NARROW GAPS MADE IN FRONT. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.45 p.m.) LONDON, July 5. The Russian front, from Leningrad to Rostov, is a smouldering volcano, ready to flare up with the greatest violence into the most serious over-all challenge to the Soviet this year. The most immediate danger is in the Kursk, Volchansk and Byelgorod sectors, where the Germans are aiming to converge on Voronesk, on the Don, in pincers movement, and to cut the railway line between Moscow and Rostov. The Germans have not achieved their major objectives hereabouts, but an Associated Press correspondent says the situation is very grave. Since June 28, when the Kursk offensive was launched, “The Times” Moscow correspondent says, over a thousand German tanks have participated in the main attack in the Kursk sector, but the Russian defences have withstood the initial assault. The Germans have lost heavily in tanks and they have nowhere attained freedom of tank manoeuvrability. The Russians’ mobile artillery, dive-bombers and Stormoviks have pegged down the attacks and forced the tanks from clear, rising ground into valleys. The Germans brought up reserves and the weight of their attack overrode resistance at isolated points, where the Russians are falling back towards Voronesh, fighting great delaying actions. The .stubbornness of the defence has restricted the tempo of the German break-through and is wearing down the Germans’ strength. The few narrow gaps forced by the Germans between the extreme points of this 120 mile front are nowhere wide enough for the Germans to straighten up their front and strike squarely at their objective. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says a Russian abandonment of territory on anything like last year’s scale, would no longer be sound strategy.