CRITICAL POINT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25275, 12 July 1943, Page 3

CRITICAL POINT

BATTLE SOUTH OF KURSK HEAVY FIGHTING AHEAD LONDON, July 9. Russian tanks are fighting hard as the great battle on the eastern front to throw back the German wedge driven into the defences south of Kursk reaches a critical • point. The south flank of Kursk, says Rfcuter’s Moscow correspondent, 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. Much .heavy fighting is still ahead. Von Kluge is now in the position of being “in for a pound.” He has about 150,000 ground troops in the line and reinforcements are coming up each hour. The Moscow correspondent of the British United Press says the Russian, toll of German tanks is now nearly 2000. which is reported to be, half the force available to von Kluge. -The Germans have also lost nearly 1000 planes. The German* killed are believed to equal nearly three .divisions. Throughout all the despatches 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.

The Moscow correspondent of the Associated Press reports that dozens of miles of the Kursk steppes were smoking as, von Kluge’s armies swept into the fifth day of the offensive against the Red Army, which knocked out 1843 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 against narrow sectors on the 125-mile wide Russian., salient, but succeeded nowhere except in two places of the Byelgorod area. At the bottom of the 60-mile bulge in the enemy lines panzer columns managed at awful cost to wedge in and advance slightly. The battle was resumed in the OrelKursk area yesterday,' when the Germans hurled three tank and three infantry divisions, protected by hordes of planes, against one narrow sector. Some 250 German tank's participated in the attack, but not a single one penetrated the Russian line. Russian Tactics In this sector some ’of the sharpest tank air blows wfere struck against a Russian populated point and railway, but the attacks broke against the deep defences. The Russians are using tried battle tactics by infantry to cut off the German infantry from the tanks and then engage the enemy infantry while the artillery to the rear engages the German tanks. Battle experience is proving the vulnerability of the German Tigers to heavy artillery and anti-tank fire. The Soviet airmen are attacking the Junkers 52’s and giant gliders which the Germans are using to fly in reinforcements, and are also attacking German lorry convoys bringing up reserve troops. The Associated Press 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 ©f between 60 and 80 Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs hung over Russian soil six to 10 miles behind the front line, but the manoeuvre failed when the main group of Russian fighters outflanked the Luftwaffe fence. Over 1 100 German planes were destroyed in the resulting action, and many more 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 Russian fighters. The Germans lost another 80 planes. Soviet pilots have won the initiative in the air, and the Germans now do not hang around. The Moscow correspondent of the British United Press reports that the' Russians are using “ firebags ’’—closely co-operating groups of tanks and guns —against the German tanks. In one case the Russians allowed the head of a German column, comprising 40 tanks, to , advance, and then the “ firebag,” comprising a tank unit and artillery, closed in and wiped jput the enemy. The German losses are stil soaring. One German infantry regiment withdrew after a day’s fighting, with 2000 men killed and 60 tanks destroyed. Russian Air Activity The Moscow correspondent, of the Exchange Telegraph says the chief reason for Hitler’s failure to achieve not only strategic but even important technical gains is the fact that the Russian Air Force is stubbornly holding the initiative over the entire Kursk salient, although the Luftwaffe is making a reckless bid for air mastery by bringing up reserves from Western Europe, the Kuban, and the southern. Ukraine. The Berne correspondent of the Evening Standard says that neutral correspondents in Berlin report that the Germans no longer hide the fact that the battle of the Orel-Byelgorod sector “has now reached such a point of intensity that both sides must fight on, either to victory or overwhelming defeat.” The Germans admit, that they were forced to pour in all their 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 the material engaged in any other battles fought on the Rusisan front. '