SWARMS OF RAIDERS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 250, 19 September 1940, Page 10

SWARMS OF RAIDERS

SWIFTLY DISPERSED. WEDNESDAY'S ATTACKS. (British Official Wireless.) (Rec. 1.20 p.m.) RUG-Bi, Sept. 18. A description ot Wednesuay’s daylig'nt attacks by the German air lorce on South-East England was given late on Wednesday mgnt by the Air Ministry News Service, live separate waves of bombers and fighters were sent over at intervals between 9.30 a.m. and 8 p.m. with the apparent object ot wearing down the R.A.F. fighter defence. The assaults were strenuous but the results disappointing to the enemy, who lost 46 aircraft as ascertained up to 10 pm. Fortyfive were shot down by R.A.F. fighters and one by anti-aircraft fire.

Each wave of German aircraft followed roughly the shme course, crossing the Kent coast between Dungeness and t'lie North Foreland, and each was met by Hurricanes and Spitfires. One raid of 15 bombers, surrounded, as one R.A.F. pilot said, by a sphere of Messersehmitt 109 fighters, was dispersed so quickly when the Spitfires met them near the Kentish coast that only three British pilots got a chance to fire. A patrol of Hurricanes met a formation of enemy bombers heavily protected bv Messerschmitts stepped up in -tiers' above them. Near the Isle of Sheppey on the way up the Thames Estuary the Hurricanes made a headon attack on the bombers. “They jettisoned their bombs even before we attacked.” one of the Hurricane pilots said, “and went straight out over Folkestone.”

R.A.F. ACHIEVEMENTS. The third and fourth attacks came in quick succession. Soon alter 4 p.m. another hundred of the enemy came in over Kent, again making for the Thames Estuary, and beiore tins was over another 2t>U bombers and lighters were already on their way, one iormation of a hundred coming m by Dungeness. . . it was these two attacks which took the roughest handling Irom the British fighters. A squadron of Spitfires over Kent shot down live bombers and one fighter-bomber as well as sharing in tne destruction of another Heinkel. 1 Better was to come. A single squadron ol Hurricanes near the Thames Estuary shot down eight Dormers and three Junkers ns well as sharing in the destruction of three more. in the same light two other Hurricane patrols accounted for nine raoru bombers alone.