CRITICAL OUTLOOK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 November 1943, Page 3

CRITICAL OUTLOOK

FOR TRAPPED GERMANS IN CRIMEA SOVIET FLEET AND AIR FORCE ON THEIR TOES. WAITING FOR EVACUATION ATTEMPT. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, November 4. With the Red Army within sight of blazing Krivoi Rog and of Borislav, where Soviet units are preparing to cross the Dnieper, the tremendous north and south pincers to engulf the Germans in the Dnieper bend and the Lower Ukraine is inexorably closing, say despatches from Moscow. Meanwhile the Berlin radio has revealed that strong Russian forces have landed on the Kerch Peninsula. The enemy radio said: “The Russians, north of’ Kerch, have established a new bridgehead, and heavy fighting has been in progress for two days at the points of the Russian landings. The Russians are making continuous air attacks, but the Luftwaffe heavily bombed the bridgeheads and the German Navy attacked the freshly landed troops. The situation in the Crimea is pressing, but not critical.”.

General Jaernecks, German commander in the Crimea, is sending repeated S.O.S. calls to Hitler’s headquarters for immediate help, says the Stockholm “Social Demokraten.” It adds that Jaernecks announced that he had not enough material to put up a serious resistance. He had still received no reinforcements for his evacuation fleet. There are estimated to be 50,000 gravely wounded Germans in the Crimea, and also 100,000 too badly wounded to fight.

Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says the Russian Black Sea Fleet and Air

Force are on their toes, ready to deal with any German attempt to stage a Dunkirk from the Crimea. Should the Russians decide on an immediate allout onslaught against the Crimea, the German-Rumanian garrison in the Peninsula will be threatened by troops under General Petrov, the Hero of the defence of Sebastopol, and more recently liberator of the Taman Peninsula.