Reds' Round

In Russia last week both the Luftwaffe and German communications centers took a beating from the Red Air Force. Russian bombing attacks were focused on the central front, in the Smolensk-Bryansk-Orel sector, where 90 Nazi divisions are concentrated. Russian bombardiers blasted, and left burning, railway depots, trains, fuel and ammunition dumps at Bryansk, Karachev, Smolensk and Roslavl, and technical and engineering supply depots at Krasni Bor. The heaviest single attack was a 520-plane blast against the big German rail and supply base of Orel. Bomb and fire damage to supply depots and railways was heavy. When the Nazis railroaded supplies out of vulnerable Orel to Karachev and Bryansk the next day, Red bombers attacked the trains there, making direct hits and starting fires.

All along the front from Leningrad south into the Kuban, Russian fighter planes roared up to give the Luftwaffe battle. Near Leningrad Russian fighters sent 25 Nazi bombers crashing into the scrub birches and soft brown earth.

In a ten-hour battle above the Russian rail center of Kursk, 80 mi. south of Orel, Russian fighters fought a 500-German-plane armada to a standstill, forcing the Luftwaffe to dump its bombs at random. German losses to Russian anti-aircraft fire and fighter planes were 162 planes; Russian plane losses, 27.

In the South the warm sky above the Kuban was a shifting pattern of curves and smoking spirals as hundreds of German and Russian planes fought above the battle lines. Pravda reported that the wreckage of German planes littered the foothills near Novorossiisk.

Last week Russian communiques scarcely bothered with the small, scattered land fighting. Moscow talked of growing Russian air strength. Hitler's war plans had been based on air superiority. Now that superiority was gone. Said Radio Moscow: "The Luftwaffe is now vastly inferior both in quality and quantity."

Moscow's score for the week: German planes lost, 752; Russian losses, 212. For the month: German losses, 2,069; Russian, 528.

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