REDS ATTACKING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 133, 8 June 1942, Page 5

REDS ATTACKING

LENINGRAD FRONT

Violent Air Fighting Over

Sebastopol

United Press Association.—Copyright. Rec. 2.30 p.m. LONDON, June 7. The Germans admit powerful Russian attacks on the Leningrad front, which neutral correspondents believe are a prelude to a general Russian offensive on this front anticipating the German offensive which was expected at any moment. Violent air battles are being fought out over Sebastopol as the result of a new German drive against the base. Russian Stormoviks are pounding German mechanised units moving up on the stronghold. The Red Star reports that masses of German bombers are indiscriminately attacking Sebastopol, but the electric and water supplies are undamaged and the communications are intact. No important military objectives have been hit. Twentysix German planes were shot down in this area in the past three days. A German spokesman claims German successes in the Volkhov area despite floods and swamps, and says the Germans have gained territory and cut off substantial Russian forces.

"The English Giving Them Hell"

"Anglichanye dayut zhizn," a piece of soldiers' slang translatable colloquially as "The Englisn are giving them hell," has now spread widely through the Red Army as a message of encouragement, says The Times Moscow correspondent. It was first heard after the R.A.F. raided Rostock and Lubeck.

A Stockholm message quotes a Swedish military correspondents belief that the recent nig R.A.F. raids have caused the Germans to withdraw planes from the eastern front. The British raids are believed to have postponed, at least temporarily, any wide-scale German operations eastwards.

The German success in the Kerch Peninsula, it is felt, has been largely neutralised by their failure further north in the Kharkov area. With Sabastopol still in Russian hands and the Soviet Black Sea Fleet intact, a German advance towards the Caucasus, across the Kerch straits, would prove highly dangerous. The offensive power and spirit of the Russian armies as displayed in the Kharkov battles is seen as the mOst important feature of the recent fighting on the eastern front.

Germans' Probing Tactics

I The Moscow radio says a Russian reconnaissance reported a German concentration of infantry and tanks in one sector on the south-western front. Russian artillery opened fire and destroyed three German tanks and killed 100 German officers. Afterwards Soviet infantry launched an attack and occupied an important height. On another section of the same front the launched an attack against the Russian positions. They were repelled with heavy losses to the enemy.

The Russian Army paper Red Star says that during the past few days large German reconnaissance parties have been trying again and again to test the Russian defences northwest of Moscow on the Kalinin sector. These sorties definitely failed in their object and caused the Germans considerable losses in men. At two points where the Germans did succeed in penetrating they were quickly encirclcd and wiped out.

The Moscow radio announces that 10 Germans ships have been sunk in the Baltic Sea, seven that went down being part of a German convoy. , One was a transport of 7000 tons. Another enemy convoy was dispersed during the same day.