DAMAGE AT EMDEN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 243, 11 September 1940, Page 7

DAMAGE AT EMDEN.

R.A.F. CAUSE BIG FIRES

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 9. “Fires have been started which are quite as big as anything I saw in London.” This was the description of the, result of tlio bombs dropped by R.A.F. aircraft on the Emden dockyard given by a rear gunner who lias been spending his leave ill London. The attack on Emden was made on Sunday night at the same time as other British aircraft were bombing Boulogne. Some of the raiders on the occupied French harbour, however, experienced difficult weather conditions on the way to their target. Leaving England in fine conditions, the aircraft encountered electrical storms after half an hour’s journey at freezing level. Describing the voyage, the pilot of one aircraft said: “Our aircraft was being thrown about the sky, and it was absolutely impossible to keep a steady speed or height. Once or twice we were jerked up at least 600 ft by the electrical current. “When we got over the target the port engine was hit and there was a burst of flame as the oil started burning. Then the flames disappeared, but we were running on an engine and a half for the rest of the time.. On the wav back we found the wireless out of action owing to the storm. It was largely thanks to the navigator that we°got home. He gave me the courses which brought us in dead over the aerodrome, and just as we were turning in to land, the port engino failed completely.”