LEAD ESTABLISHED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 June 1943, Page 4

LEAD ESTABLISHED

BY RED AIR FORCE DISPROPORTIONATE LOSSES. SUFFERED BY LUFTWAFFE. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.40 a.m.) LONDON, June 9. Soviet planes are leading the way in a new phase of the air offensive which is now in full swing. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says the Luftwaffe, for the first time since the war started, is copying Red Air Force tactics by concentrating on disorganising communication centres to the rear. There is no doubt that the damage done to the German centres by Russian pilots is many times greater than the Luftwaffe is inflicting on Russian centres. The German losses continue to be heavy enough to justify the assumption that they will affect to a noticeable degree Germany’s capacity to take the offensive. Air warfare at present is particularly marked along and to the rear of the Donetz line and in the Bryansk and Leningrad sectors. Torpedo-planes and Stormoviks are participating in attacks against German transports in the Baltic. The Luftwaffe, in the Arctic, is again actively attacking Soviet ships. Eighteen Soviet fighters, in battle yesterday, shot down seven of 24 Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts for the loss of one of their own number. It is known that more than 60 German pilots were taken prisoner during a mass Luftwaffe raid against Kursk. Russian casualties were in the ratio of one to six. The Germans had drawn heavily from other sectors for planes in order to concentrate substantial forces against Kursk. Today’s German communique claims that German close-range bomber formations yesterday sank 47 landing barges off the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov. Reuter comments that this indicates a new and large scale Russian attempt to land troops behind the German battlefront in the Kuban area.

HEAVY DESTRUCTION OF GERMAN AIRCRAFT. ON GROUND & IN COMBAT. t LONDON, June 9. A Soviet communique states that large forces of Russian aircraft raided six enemy airfields last night. They destroyed or damaged between 150 and 160 German aircraft on the ground. They also blew up several big munition and fuel dumps and left hangars and other aerodrome buildings in flames. Twenty-one of the Russian planes did not get back. German aircraft raided a railway junction 80 miles east of Leningrad. Few of the raiders got through the defences. Soviet fighters and anti-air-craft guns brought down 24. Two Russian planes were lost.