ITALY-BASED PLANES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25799, 21 March 1945, Page 5

ITALY-BASED PLANES

ASSAULT ON SOUTHERN REICH

LONDON, Mar. 19. While targets in Jugoslavia in the area opposite Marshal Tolbukhin’s new offensive were pounded for the third successive day, Fifteenth Air Force Lightnings and Italy-based Liberators and Flying Fortresses to-day resumed operations with attacks against two railways in Southern Germany, reports the Exchange Telegraph’s Rome correspondent. The Lightnings, flying at a high level, bombed the Warazdin railway yards and strafed the area. Liberators and Fortresses bombed yards at Landshut, 55 miles north-east of Munich, on the line to Regensburg. Other Liberators bombed yards at Muldorf, 15 miles east of Munich, where previous reconnaissance had shown large quantities of rolling stock. Mitchells flew their five-thousandth sortie in the battle of the Brenner Pass to-day, attacking railway bridges. Other Mitchells flew over Austria to attack the railway bridge at Muldorf, 27 miles north-west of Villach, on the Salzburg-Spitta] line. Fighter-bombers simultaneously strafed communications all the way from the Western Po Valley to Northern Jugoslavia. Allied bombers in their campaign against the Brenner railway are “starving out” Kesselring’s 300,000 troops in Northern Italy, says the British United Press correspondent at Allied headquarters in Italy. There is only the one major route for German supply traffic through the 100-mile corridor flanked by rugged, towering mountains between Switzerland and the Gulf of Venice. As many as 11 cuts in the vital Brenner railway were made on a day’s operations during the past week Good results are reported in the attacks yesterday against the Brenner line when the Salorno cutting. 15 miles north of Trento, was pounded. Seventy-eight cuts were also made in Northern Italy’s railway network yesterday, besides attacks on rolling stock, factories, and supply dumps.