MUCH EQUIPMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 January 1943, Page 3

MUCH EQUIPMENT

LEFT BEHIND BY NAZIS AS RESULT OF SWIFT SOVIET ADVANCE. SOME DETAILS OF RECENT CAPTURES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.35 a.m.) RUGBY, January 15. Such is the speed of the Soviet advance in the Northern Caucasus, covering in a few days distances it took the Germans three months to> cover last year, that the enemy has been compelled to abandon equipment and supplies on a 'wholesale scale. One Soviet division captured 80 tanks and other booty, including 500 car loads of bombs, 200 car loads of shells and cartridges, fifteen aircraft and twenty aero engines. A Russian supplementary communique records successful operations in the Stalingrad factory area by storm detachments, who dislodged the enemy from more strong points, wrecked 56 pillboxes and cleared one street. On the Lower Don, where the Germans launched counter-attacks in one sector, using large tank and infantry forces, the Russians still hold the upper hand and continue to advance. In another sector strongly-fortified localities were captured. On the central front, south-west of Velikiye Luki, two enemy battalions, supported by automatic riflemen, tanks and armoured cars, were repelled, eight tanks being put out of action. In another sector of the same front, the Russians captured several strong points. In the Northern Caucasus more localities were occupied, enemy counterattacks being beaten off with heavy losses. A certain credence, pending news from Moscow, is given in London to Berlin reports of the launching of three new offensives-by the Russians. These are said to be in the Western Caucasus, south of Voronezh and south of Lake Ladoga. There are also reports of attacks being launched from inside Leningrad and from south of Schlusselburg. Of these new offensives the Germans speak of that on the Voronezh front is the most serious. The Germans still hold a stretch of about 70 miles of the main Moscow-Rostov railway, southwards from Svoboda, itself an important junction 50 miles southward of Voronezh.