LATE NEWS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24792, 17 December 1941, Page 8

LATE NEWS

PLANES NEAR FORMOSA FIRST AIR RAID SCARE TOKIO, Dec. 16. Army headquarters said that Formosa had its first air raid scare on Saturday night, when 12 planes were sighted off Takao, 450 miles north of the Philippines, but veered off without approaching the city. AMERICA'S PACIFIC ftEET HUNTING FOR JAPANESE SHIPS LONDON, Dec. 16. The whole of the American Pacific Fleet is now ranging the Pacific Ocean in a hunt for the Japanese forces, according to a statement made by the Secretary of the Navy, Colonel Frank Knox. Referring to the Japanese claim to have crippled the fleet, Colonel Knox announced that American battleships, aircraft carriers, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers and submarines were operating in the Pacific. THE FIGHTING IN RUSSIA ——— « NAZIS' TERRIFIC LOSSES MOSCOW, Dec. 15. In five months of fighting on the Eastern front the Germans -lost a whole generation. About 6,000,000 men were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners. They also lost 19,000 guns, 15,000 tanks, and 13,000 planes, says the Soviet Information Bureau, in a statement refuting the figures cjuoted in Hitler's recent speech. Actually, the Russian losses in missing amounted to 520,000, including war prisoners. The statement adds: The German losses are so immense that Hitler dare not inform the German people of them. %■ " GERMAN MORALE DEFEATIST TENDENCIES NEW YORK, Dec. 15. " Germany appears to be facing an internal crisis of extreme gravity," declares the New York Times representative at Stockholm. Reports reaching Sweden refer to a conference between Hitler and the Gauleiters, at which it was revealed that the morale of the masses was extremely unsatisfactory. Hitler, is reported to have been informed that it would be difficult to avoid a dangerous wave of defeatism as a result of the failure to capture Moscow. An Istanbul message states that about 8000 frostbitten Germans from Russia are at present in Bulgaria and Greece. It is believed that they will not be allowed to return to the Reich in view of the effect it might have on German morale.