The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-11-18
The War On
 MonyFronts

American heavy bombers smashed again at German targets in Norway today, rounding out a thunderous 24-hour attack on Axis Europe from Britain and the Mediterranean while Russian armies pounded vest ward through stiffening Nazi resist ance that at one point forced the first Soviet retreat since the begin ming of the offensive last July.
 In Italy, the British 9th Army advanced two miles on the Sanro river front despite rain and mud that pinned most of the Allied and German armeis to their trenches
 U. s. Liberator bombers carried out the Norwegian raid, the second on that occupied country this week but the targets were not immedi- ately identified.
 The two-way Allied aerial assault was climaxed last night by smash ing RAF blow against the Rhine land chemical center of Ludwig. shafen, site of the largest chemica plant in Germany. Tn their first raid in almost a week, the RATS four-moto bombers dropped hun- dreds of tons of explosives on the city and probably wiped out most of the repairs made by the Ger mans since Ludwigshafen last was attacked on September 23.
 Speedy RAF Mosquito bombers joined the attack with diversionary raids on Berlin and western Ger many, and only one bomber was lost in the entire nights operations.
 American Flying Fortresses spear headed the Mediterranean arm of the aerial pincers, striking out in daylight yesterday against the Eleu- sis airfield near Athens, where they laid their block-busters suuarely on five of the nine hangars.
 Airf1eld Attacked
 Mitchell medium raiders followed the Forts with an attack on the nearby Kalamaki airf1eld, and @ force of hard-hititng light bombers swept over northern Italy after dark to pound industrial targets at Piombino.
 The Red army drive on the from tiers of Poland and the Balkan states continued to grind forward although heavily-reinforced Ger man units struck back desperately in an effort to stem the advance.
 Between Zhitomir and Koresti- shev on the south-central front massive German tank and infantry forces hurled themselves against 6 narrow sector of the Russian line and forced 8 limited Soviet with drawal.
 That slight gain was more than offset, however, by Russian advances in the north and south. and a junc- ture of Red army forces on the Kiey and Gomel fronts that established 8 solid 170-mile line on the west bank of the Dnieper.
 That merging of forces doomed thousands of German troops trapped in the narrow fork formed by the confluence of the Dnieper and Pri- pet rivers.
 The Soviets frightened their siege lines around Gomel, main anchor of the German position in White Russia, breaking into the streets of Rechitsa, 25 miles to the west, and fought their way into the western suburbs of Korosten. The latter, a key junction point on the main Kiev- Warsaw and Odessa -Lenin- grad railroads, was hemmed in by Russian forces from the west, north and south.
 Twin Drives
 The twin drives on Gomel and Korosten threatened to roll the Nad armies back into the Pripet marshes.
 Front reports from the Italian battle line indicated that the cam pain had reverted temporarily to the trench warfare of 1914-18, with American and British soldiers fight ing from trenches knee-deep in water and mud. The Germans at tempted minor counter attacks against the 9th army line on the Adriatic coast but were repulsed Light Allied and German patrols clashed intermittently all along the front.
 Jugoslav Partisan troops .contin- ued their widespre attacks against German communications and industrial centers, and claimed the capture of an important coal mining center in western Serbia.
 The Partisans acknowledged, how ever, that German tanks had broken into the Bosnian center of Tuzla and reported that fierce street fight jug was in progress there.