SILENT RAIDS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 212, 23 September 1937, Page 3

SILENT RAIDS

Our Own Correspondent.)

Air-Defence Tests Over London GH0STLY NOISELESSNESS

(From

LONDON, Aug. 26. Londoners with reeollections of the German air raids during tho war, aud the clamour by which they were attended, were astonished at the almost ghostly noiselessness of the imaginary aerial warfaro which has raged. over London and south-east England. That 30 raids could be made to the east, west and north of London, Tilbury Docks and the oil depots on the Thames "bombed" repeatcdly, while 400 aeroplanes (Ihe famous Fury single-seater fightfers with a epeed of 230 miles an hour among them) swarmed and fought overhead, seemed something in tho nature of a miracle. Yet it was so. Many people sat up late on roof gardens and lofty windows with binocuiars or race-glasses, scanning the battle from ai'ar. All they could see was a confusing drift of pin-point lights across the midnight eky, resembling — as one of the watchers remarked — a game of musical chairs played by the stars. They were so high up that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the planets from tho raiding planes and the defenders. Bright jewels of light appeared to be floating in space. trembling, twinkling, disuppearing and reappearing as the raiders approached. (The Kiver Thames is the air raider's path to London, and a very good one.) Then the searchlights east of London suddenly flash, and planes down the rivcr go up in pursuit, shooting of£ green roekets as they iutercepted the raiders.' Nearly 200 "enemy" bombers took part in the raids, and more than 200 tried to parry the thrusts. What happened in the heavens nobody seems to know, but a number of young pilots were up there for the first time, learning to defend their country, and they are confident that they strafed the invaders. But the latter think differently. The inhabitants of London were completely in ignorance, though suburban dwellers were conseious of a certain liveliness high above the suburban roofs, resembling a swarm of gigantic bees, and the vibration elightly shook the windows. The noise was never alarming. The reason for that ghostly absence of sound was that the adthorities, in testing the efiiciency of London 's air defences, ordained that no machine should fiy below 5,000ft. or Within seveu miles of London Bridge. Most of the fighting was done, and the raids carried out, at a height of 12,000ft. Londoners are wondering whether this presages an advance in the dreadful art of war, which will tara this great city into an inferno when the real thing comes along, with bombs raining down on it in darkness and silenco.