RACINE, WIS., FRIDAY AFTERNOON, MARCH
30, 1945.
2 Armies Race
Toward Junction
In Northeast
With U. S. First Army—(AP)
Spearheads
of the First army reached Faderbarn today and drove on with virtually no opposition.
The
armored drive now has carried more than 125 miles in five days. Reports from leading elements were running at least 8
1/2 hours behind actual advances.
Only a
65-mile gap remained between advance elements of British and American armor.
PARIS —(AP)—
The
American First and Ninth armies drove powerfully forward today toward a
junction northeast of the Ruhr that would seal off Germany's greatest and last
large arsenal and up to 40,000 enemy troops among its ravaged factories.
Security
blackouts hid new advances.
The
First army shot forward so fast its spearheads lost contact with headquarters.
The Germans said one armored column had reached Bad Windungen, 20 miles
southwest of the great rail center of Kassel, 170 miles
from
Berlin.
By-Pass
Industrial Cities.
The
Ninth army broke loose overnight in a race along the northern rim of the Ruhr,
bypassing most of the great industrial cities of the valley.
The British
Second army appeared to be veering northeastward toward the great ports of
Hamburg, Bremen and Wilhelmshaven.
The
whole onsurge , on the 21st army group front in the north was in high gear
front the Muenster plain to the Odenwald. Infantry alone tramped 18'miles
forward in a. day, and tanks still were, running unchecked along clear roads.
On
every sector, supreme headquarters said officially that advances
were
going well.
Stalin Announces Fall
of Danzig,
Soviet Tanks Push
Near Vienna
LONDON.—(AP)—
Russian troops have thrust over
the Austrian | frontier, Moscow dispatches said,
and Marshal Stalin announced a 31-mile
advance north of the Danube in a twin thrust upon Vienna.
Danzig, where the first shots of the
war were fired, fell to Russian forces and 10,000 prisoners were taken, Stalin
announced. The Germans already had announced loss of the former free city on
the Baltic.
While Marshal Feodor Tolbukhin's
tanks penetrated into the hills inside Austria, threatening to lay siege to
Vienna, Stalin announced that Marshal Rodion
Malinovsky's forces north of the
Danube had broken across the Nitra river, capturing Komarno, Ersekujvar
(Novy-Zamky), Surnay, Komjaty, Verebely (Vrable) and Poerful.
Gain on
34-Mile Front.
The advance was on a 34-mile front
from the broken Hron river defenses in Slovakia, and brought the Russians up to
or across the Nitra on a 27-mile front to within 49 miles of Bratislava. Komarno
is on the north bank of the Danube opposite the captured stronghold of Komarom.
Ersekujvar is on the west side of
the Nitra, and Surany and Komjaty
are in a line to the north along the banks of the Bitra. Verebely is 11 miles
southeast of the stronghold of Nitra on the railway from Levice.
British
Ships
Join
Assault on
Ryukyu
Isles
GUAM—(AP)—
A powerful
British task force has joined the mighty American assault on the Ryukyu Island
approaches to the Japanese homeland which the navy announced
today is continuing.
Fleet guns and carrier planes poured
heavy shells and bombs for the seventh straight day on strategically important
targets around Okinawa, Japan's Ryukyu bastion which Tokyo says is expecting American
landing parties any time now.
(Berlin radio quoted Tokyo as saying
150 American Super-Fortresses attacked Tokyo this morning with a new type of
incendiary bomb, starting numerous fires. The Berlin broadcast, not confirmed
by Allied sources, was heard in London.)
The British task force, which
included the battleship King George V and the carrier Illustrious, operated as
a unit attached to Adm. Raymond A. Spruance's Fifth U. S. fleet.
Japs
Attack Warships.
It became the first element of the
royal navy to strike an offensive blow so close to Japan in this war, and the
first part of the British fleet to undertake such operations
at
extreme long range.
No comments:
Post a Comment