ODESSA BATTLE OPENS

Southland Times, Issue 25334, 10 April 1944, Page 5

ODESSA BATTLE OPENS

GERMANS IMPROVISE DEFENCES

(Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, April 8. The great battle for Odessa itself has opened, declares the British’ United Press Moscow correspondent. The Red Army holds a belt of land 13 miles above Odessa extending from the east to the north-west, from which it is pressing on against the German defenders. General Malinovsky, taking advantage of the frosty nights, has been leap-frogging towards Odessa, throwing his troops forward by night over roads which are quagmires by the following noon when the sun has melted them.

The Russian arc is tightening round Odessa with the Russians smashing the successive lines of defence as soon as ’the Germans man them. Red Army columns are penetrating the improvised lines while the German working parties are still throwing up fortifications on them. RUSSIANS USE BOMBERS The Red Air Force has taken the lead in the battle for Odessa, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. With the plains before the city dangerously soft, General Malinovsky has switched the big weight of his striking force from artillery to bombers. He is also using hundreds of tiny, single-engined U.2 biplanes to supply his forces. Nevertheless, the battle for Odessa is not expected to be a brief struggle. The .correspondent adds that the Germans have launched a heavy relief attack south-west of Tarnopol in an effort to rescue their garrison there and are also mounting repeated coun-ter-attacks to relieve the entrapped troops at Skala. The , Germans trying to break out of the encirclement at Skala meet massed fire from hundreds of Red Army guns which have been laboriously brought in. FRESH GERMAN TROOPS Vichy radio quotes a Berlin military spokesman as saying: “The German High Command has hurled many fresh divisions into the main battle centres on the Eastern Front and it appears that the German line is now stabilized. This is the first time the German Command has thrown important strategic reserves into the fighting in Russia. These reserves have been specially mobilized for the fighting in Russia. Not one German division has ben switched to the Eastern Front from western or southern Europe.”