SMALL U-BOATS OPERATING.

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 242, 14 October 1942, Page 3

SMALL U-BOATS OPERATING.

P.A. Cable.

LONDON, Oct. 11.

Nearly a dozen Allied ships are known to have been sunk around Cape Palmas, says Reuter's correspondent in a message from a United Nations base in West Africa. The Germans are using small type Uboats off West Africa and are apparently receiving supplies and assistance from pro-German countries which are technically neutral. The Associated Press of America repcrts that one trader said that he saw in August two U-boats in the roadstead at Port Bouet, which is an important shipping centre on the Ivory Coast. An air-line pilot saw a submarine refuelling near the same city. Other submarines have been reported at Konakry and off Dakar. Three Vichyite merchantmen and one destroyer sailed northward around Cape Palmas shortly before three submarines fired on an Allied plane in that vicinity. The Vichy ships possibly carried fuel for a rendezvous with the submarines. A rubber planter said that it is common knowledge that nativeowned surfboats went to sea nightly lrom neutral territory loaded with meat and returned in the morning empty. It is also suggested that it is no coincidence that bushfires visible far out to sea broke out when Allied ships were at the ports and were extinguished after the ships sailed.