INCESSANT GERMAN BLOWS AT VORONEZH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 194, 18 August 1942, Page 5

INCESSANT GERMAN BLOWS AT VORONEZH

HURLING IN TANKS

Enemy Muss Bombing: Soviet Black Sea Ports

United Press Association—Copyright Roc. 1 p.m. LONDON, Aug. 17.

The Germans are incessantly attacking in the Voronezh area. Street fighting continues in a village the Germans entered yesterday, and fierce battles are raging in one district near Voronezh city, with the Germans hurling in tanks and infantry supported by artillery, mortars and planes. The Russians have repelled these forces.

The newspaper Red Fleet reports that a considerable portion of the Luftwaffe is now engaged in mass raids on Novorossisk, Anapa and Tuapse, the Russian Black Sea ports. The Vichy radio declared that fast German motorised units have encircled the Grozny oilfields and captured Gudermes.

The German communique states that south of the Lower Kuban and in the north-west of the Caucasus, Axis forces are advancing in a further successful offensive. The Russians have been finally defeated everywhere in the north-east loop of the Don bend, and the Don has been everywhere, reached. The entire Don bend is now firmly in German hands. Troops of all arms are engaged in heavy defensive fighting east of Viazma and Rjev, on the Moscow front, where numerous Russian attacks have failed. Tremendous Struggle for Don German penetration of the Russian front line positions inside the Don bend follows many days and nights of fighting_with tanks, mobile artillery and motorised infantry. There is. however, no confirmation of the German claim to have the entire west bank in their hands. Stalingrad is 40 miles to the east of the Don elbow.

The Germans have made little progress in their drive towards Stalingrad from Kotelnikovo. Moscow reports state that all the attacks in this area have been repulsed.

There is no news of the drive towards Astrakhan and the lower Volga. The situation round Mineralniyevody is still very serious. At this point the Germans are driving along the railway line towards the Grozny oilfields. The Germans are still being held up at the Kuban River. They reached this point several days ago. but have not been able to establish any bridgeheads. The few Germans able to get across are attacked by bands of Cossacks. Maikop Oilfields Evacuated The Moscow communique announces that the Russians have evacuated Maikop with all its equipment. The Maikop oil wells and all existing supplies were removed in good time, and the oil wells themselves were destroyed. The Maikop wells had an output of 3,000,000 tons of oil a year.

North-eastward of Kotelnikovo, on the Stalingrad front, Soviet troops, after repelling several enemy assaults, counter-attacked and routed a Rumanian infantry regiment. In the Mineralniyevody area, in the Caucasus, Soviet troops, under pressure by numerically superior enemy forces, have effected a fighting withdrawal to new positions. Prodigious Russian activity is reported from Baku. Old men, women and youths are working in the oilfields and factories by day and night to step up production without delay. The strictest fuel economy has been ordered throughout the Soviet.