BOMBS’ TOLL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 242, 10 September 1940, Page 7

BOMBS’ TOLL

IN CENTRAL LONDON.

DISTRESSING SCENES. (United Press Association—Copyright.) (Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 9. Further details • of Sunday night’s raids show that two streets, in Central London suffered severe damage from a bomb which fell near a newspaper office situated in this area. A heavy bomb directly hit a block of tenement buildings and demolished forty yards of the centre of the block. It is feared residents are still buried under the debris.

Incendiary and high-explosive bombs falling in quick succession in clusters in another Central London street severely damaged scores of shops and business premises, also public houses and cafes, flames coming from the wreckage for hours after the raid. A road junction was damaged when heavy bombs burst, smashing property and damaging gas mains. Five young women are missing following the bombing of a hospital in Central London, and other, people are injured. The secretary stated that the two top storeys, mainly nurses’ quarters, were ruined. The windows of one ward were blown in. The behaviour of the patients and nurses was splendid.

The damage on the Central London area extended over a quarter of a mile radius. Not a single property escaped damage. An institution had all its windows blown in, but there was no panic among the 1400 inmates aged from GO to 100. Fifteen were injured.

The worst effect in the underground shelters was at an office buildings in Central London, where many people were buried in the shelters, of whom several of those killed are believed to have been trapped through one corner falling in as tbe result of the terrific force of the explosion, which shattered the walls of neighbouring buildings. Others became, a hollow shell. Huge baulks of timber and other supports lay mingled with massive pieces of plaster and bricks in the tangled mass of debris. An outside cellar being used as a shelter caved in, burying the occiipants, who were subsequently extricated. FIRES IN SOUTH-WEST. South-West London received a terrible pasting, especially between 2 a.m. and 4.50 a.m. The fires started earlier in the night brought hack the raiders, and bombs tell with scarcely any intermission.

One south-western shelter received a direct hit which was visible for a great distance. There was a scene of devastation at the corner of two London roads where a huge block of flats were badly damaged. A fire broke out. Ambulances for several hours were engaged in taking the casualties to the hospital. A cinema adjoining was practically wrecked.

The raiders, after starting fires with incendiaries in the East London area, tried to prevent fire-fighting by dropping screaming bombs, hut the firemen carried on coolly.

Large areas in the East End wore cordoned off this morning owing to the danger of collapse of buildings and gas escaping from the mains in some areas. DELAYED ACTION BOMBS. Several loud explosions in another area brought the tired wardens back on duty, but they discovered the explosions were duo to delayed action bombs. Utility undertakings in the docks area are seriously damaged and the gas lias been cut off over a large district.

Two screaming bombs which fell in the North London area struck residences, lifting several roofs bodily into the air.

Passengers on a South London train watched a plane dropping its bombs, after which the plane collided with a balloon and both fell in flames.

The train services are busily attempting to return to normality, hut the services from the dock stations have been suspended.

Over fifty were killed when an aerial torpedo demolished an East London block of flats. Rescue parties extricated twenty bodies.

Seven people, including a mother, father and their daughter and her child, were killed when a high-explo-sive bomb hit a garden shelter in South-East London. In the dock area a fire station was burned out when a bomb scored a direct hit.

Notwithstanding the fires and the damage, business in the docks area went on as usual and the docks today presented a surprisingly normal appearance.

About 2500 persons have been transferred from the fire-damaged East End district, also 800 from the area bordering the river. Mobile canteens are meeting the immediate food requirements. “Everyone has been splendid in providing food, taking in children, and lending clothes,” said a London County Council official. “The council is caring for those rendered homeless.”