November 26, 1944; Tokyo Vulnerable:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1944:

 Kingsport, Tenn., Sunday, November 26, 1944

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, Paris —AP—  The American First Army, pushing steadily toward the Cologne plain against furious and undiminished German opposition, had reached the edge of the bloody Hurtgen forest last night and was under mounting robot-bomb fire from the Nazi defenders of the Ruhr.

The First Army's troops fought within a few hundred yards of Groshau and a thousand yards of Kleinhau in the Hurtgen area and brought the town of Hurtgen under artilleryfire, but still had not smashed their way completely out of the forest, reports to supreme Allied headquarters said.

On the First Army's left flank to the north U. S. Ninth Army units were engaged in heavy fighting outside Koslar just west of the Roer River, the last big natural barrier before the Rhine.

Nazis Say Yanks Gain

(A broadcast by the German news agency DNB's chief military commentator said Allied troops had scored a seven-mile advance east of Aachen. If true, this would place the Americans on the east side of the Roer. There was no Allied confirmation, however.)

In this heavy fighting east of Aachen, the greatest battle of the western front, the Ninth overran Bourheim, two miles southwest of Julich and less than a mile from the Roer, Saturday, while other elements of the First fought from house to house in Weisweiler, seven miles from a second Nazi Roer River strongpoint, Duren.

General MacArthur's Headquarters, Philippines, Sunday. A-P—

Deadly American fighter planes yesterday destroyed a four-transport convoy, carrying an estimated 2,000 Japanese troops, in smashing the fourth major attempt to reinforce Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita's hard-pressed troops on Leyte Island.

It was the second Japanese effort in two days to run fresh troops to Leyte. Both convoys were destroyed with a loss of 5,500 Nipponese soldiers.

7^th Air Force

Paved Way For

Raid On Tokyo

U. S. Pacific Fleet Headquarters,

Pearl Harbor —AP— Japanese bases in the Bonin Islands—long the B-29 route from Saipan to Tokyo—were heavily hit by U. S. Seventh Air Force bombers both before and after the Superfortresses made their first strike against the Nippon capital. This was disclosed Saturday by Admiral Chester . W.

Nimitz.