MUCH AT STAKE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 July 1943, Page 3

MUCH AT STAKE

IN BATTLE ON EASTERN FRONT BOTH SIDES COMMITTED S DEEPLY TWO THOUSAND GERMAN TANKS DESTROYED. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) LONDON, July 9. Russian tanks are fighting hard, as the great battle on the Eastern front reaches its critical point, to throw back the German wedge driven into the defences south of Kursk, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The south flank of the Kursk salient is not yet in serious danger, but much depends on who wins the next round. The danger area is somewhere between Byelgorod and Kursk. General Von Kluge has not gained any big operational success yet, but Soviet military circles emphasise that German pressure is expected to increase and that much heavy fighting is still ahead. Von Kluge is now in the position of being “in for a penny, in for a pound.” He has about 150,000 ground troops in the line and reinforcemerits are coming up hourly. The British United Press Moscow correspondent says the Russian toll of German tanks is now nearly 2,000, which is reported to be half the force available to Von Kluge. The Germans have lost also nearly 1,000 planes. The German killed are believed to equal nearly three divisions. Throughout all dispatches to Moscow runs the phrase: “We have tamed the terrible Tiger—the much-vaunted German 60 ton tanks.” The Russian Air Force continues to hold air mastery. AXIS GAIN AT AWFUL COST. The Associated Press Moscow correspondent reports that dozens of miles of the Kursk steppes were smokng as Von Kluge's armies swept into the fifth day of the offensive against the Red Army, which had knocked out 1,843 tanks and 810 planes in four days and held the lunging enemy columns almost in their tracks. Von Kluge persisted in hurling mechanical battering rams, led by Tiger tanks, i against narrow sectors on the 125 miles wide Russian salient, but succeeded nowhere except in two places in the Byelgorod area, at the bottom of the 60 mile bulge in the enemy lines.. Panzer columns managed at awful cost to wedge in there and advance slightly. The battle was resumed in the Orel-Kursk area yesterday, when the Germans hurled three tank and three infantry divisions, protected by hordes of planes, against one narrow sector. Some 250 German tanks participated in the attack, but not a single one penetrated the Russian line. In this sector some of the sharpest tank and air blows were struck against a Russian populated point and a railway, but the attacks broke against the deep defences. The Russians are using tried battle tactics. Infantry cut off the German infantry from their tanks and then engaged the enemy infantry, while artillery, to the rear, engaged the German tanks. Battle experience is proving the vulnerability of the German Tigers to heavy artillery and anti-tank fire. . Soviet airmen are attacking Junkers 52s and giant gliders, which the Germans are using to fly in reinforcements, and are also attacking German lorry convoys bringing up reserve troopi VAIN LUFTWAFFE EFFORTS The Associated Press correspondent says that during the first day of the offensive, Luftwaffe fighters attempted to establish a “flying fence” between the Russian planes and the German . bombers. Groups of between 60 and u 80 Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs ■Vhung over Russian soil, six to ten miles "behind the front line, but the manoeuvre failed when, the main group of Russian fighters outflanked the Luftwaffe fence. Over 100 German planes were destroyed in the resulting action and many more were damaged. On the second day, the Luftwaffe attempted to build up the fence to still greater strength, but the fence dissolved before a concentrated attack from the Russian fighters and the Germans lost another 80 planes. Soviet pilots have won the initiative in the air and the Germans now don’t hang around. The British United Press Moscow cor, respondent reports' that the Russians are using “firebags”—closely co-oper-ating groups of tanks and guns—against the German tanks. In one case the Russians allowed the head of an advancing German column of 40 tanks to advance. Then the “firebag,” comprising a tank unit and artillery, closed in and wiped out the enemy. The German losses are still soaring. One German infantry regiment withdrew after a day’s fighting, with 2000 men killed and sixty tanks destroyed. The Exchange Telegraph Agency’s Moscow correspondent says the chief reasons for Hitler’s failure to achieve not only a strategic, but even an im-

portant tactical gain, is the fact that the Russian Air Force is stubbornly holding the initiative in the entire Kursk salient, although the Luftwaffe is making a reckless bid for air mas* tery by bringing up reserves from Western Europe, the Kuban and Southern Ukraine. The Berne correspondent of the “Evening Standard” says neutral correspondents in Berlin report that the Germans no longer hide the fact that the battle of the Orel-Byelaorod sector, “has now reached such a point of intensity that both sides must fight on, either to victory or to overwhelming defeat.” The Germans admit that they were forced to pour in all available reserves early on July 6, in order to stem the Russian counter-offensive. The mechanised battle at present under way in the Byelgorod semi-circle far outweighs in quantity of materia! engaged any other battles fought on the Russian front.