Current Events September 24, 1943;

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY SEPTEMBER 24, 1943:

The allies struck by land, sea and air today, advancing upwards of thirty miles in southern Italy, shooting down seven air transports attempting to evacuate German troops from Corsica and sinking a munition ship in a daring torpedo boat foray into an Albanian harbor.

Military sources said today that Russian assault troops had virtually invested Smolensk and its
fall was imminent, while to the south soviet armies were massing on the east bank of the Dnieper river at several points. (A Berlin dispatch to Stockholm said Smolensk and Vitebsk were "directly
threatened" and indicated that the Germans might have ^begun evacuating both places.)

A big force of British -four-engincd bombers sent a new non-stop allied aerial offensive into its second day with a heavy block-buster assault last night, on Mannheim-Ludwigshafen.  Germany's second largest inland
port and a vital arms center. Marauder medium bombers of the 8th United States air force carried on the offensive by daylight.

Allied artillery, only two miles away, pounded the bomb and shell-torn Japanese base at Finschhafen today
to pave the way for the capture of the enemy stronghold.
                         Altoona Mirror
   GERMANS FACE DISASTER IN EAST
                          ALTOONA, PA., FRIDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 24, 1943.

 Allies Strike by Land, Sea and Air In Advances In Southern Italy

 5TH ARMY'S
DRIVE AIMED
AT NAPLES
Germans Evacuating i
Corsica Under Hail
of Bombs and Bullets
By RICHARD D. McMILLAN Staff Correspondent
A L L I E D HEADQUARTERS, NORTH AFRICA, Sept. 24.—
The allies struck by land, sea and air today, advancing upwards of thirty miles in southern Italy, shooting down seven air transports attempting to evacuate German troops from Corsica and sinking a munition ship in a daring torpedo boat foray into an Albanian harbor.
The 5th army launched an offensive aimed squarely at blazing Naples and captured Oliveto Citra' in the initial
seven-mile advance, while the 8th army to the southeast pushed ahead thirty miles in some sectors, enveloping Matera. eleven miles north of Ginosa.
                                                            Taste of Dunkirk.
The German evacuation of Corsica by air and sea was in full swing under a gauntlet of allied bombs and bullets. British Beaufighters intercepted three formations of German air transports trying to sneak across at dusk and shot down all three planes in the first, two of six in the second and two of five in the third Aerial reconnaissance

RED CAPTURE
OF SMOLMENSK
IS IMMINENT
Napoleonic "Gateway
to Moscow" About
to Be Retaken by
Soviets.
 By HENRY SHAPIRO
Staff Correspondent
MOSCOW, Sept. 24.—
Military sources said today that Russian assault troops had virtually invested Smolensk and its
fall was imminent, while to the south soviet armies were massing on the east bank of the Dnieper river at several points. (A Berlin dispatch to Stockholm said Smolensk and Vitebsk were "directly
threatened" and indicated that the Germans might have ^begun evacuating both places.)
                                                                   Base Outflanked.
Smolensk, greatest German base on the central front if not in all of Russia, was outflanked on both the north and south in a rapidly maturing- squeeze, play by which the red army has driven the Germans from most of the big towns captured this summer.

HEAVY ASSAULT IS
MADE BY RAF ON
NAZI INLAND PORT
By WALTER CRONKITE
Staff Correspondent
LONDON, Sept. 24.—
A big force of British -four-engincd bombers sent a new non-stop allied aerial offensive into its second day with a heavy block-buster assault last night, on Mannheim-Ludwigshafen.  Germany's second largest inland
port and a vital arms center. Marauder medium bombers of the 8th United States air force carried on the offensive by daylight.
Escorted and supported by Spitfire fighters, the Marauders attacked air field targets In the Evereux-Fauville area.
An air ministry communique announced that thirty-two bombes were lost in the raid and subsidiary attacks on the railroad junction of Aachen, in western Germany near the Dutch and Belgian borders, and Darmstadt, twenty miles south of Frankfurt.
Striking in the wake of American Flying Fortresses and other allied bombers that raided Nantes
F ran c e  a n d  more other targets in naval base in than a dozen western Europe .yesterday, the British
night raiders dropped a torrent of explosives on ihe twin cities that span the Rhine southwest of Frankfurt:.
Huge fires wore left burning more than sixty miles beyond Lae, was followed by a twenty-five-minutc
air battle in which American fighters shot down forty to forty five planes of an enemy fleet of fifty to severity attacking the convoy

Allied Big Guns
Pound Jap Base
United Press
A L L I E D HEADQUARTERS,
Southwest Pacific, Sept. 24.—
Allied artillery, only two miles away, pounded the bomb and shell-torn Japanese base at Finschhafen today
to pave the way for the capture of the enemy stronghold.
Australian troops, landed under cover of a naval and air bombardment Wednesday, ha'd advanced four mile.s toward the base, a communique announced, and hauled up guns to the north end of the adjacent
airfield, two miles from the town itself.
The communique revealed the thrust, up the New Guinea coast. Huge fires wore left burning more than sixty miles beyond Lae, was followed by a twenty-five-minutc air battle in which American fighters shot down forty to forty five planes of an enemy fleet of  fifty to severity attacking the convoy.