NAZI PLANES COLLIDE.

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

NAZI PLANES COLLIDE.

ANXIETY TO GET HOME. (British Official Wireless.) (Rec. 1.40 p.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 18. It is now known that two of the Messersehmitt 109’s which were brought down yesterday over Britain collided in mid-air. They were members of a group of seven Messerschmitts which were attacked by a single Spitfire pilot. “They immediately turned for home, in such disorder,” lie said “that two of them collided and crashed.” After 17 hours’ rescue efforts an injured man was released from a car in which he was trapped in the basement of a West End garage. His wife was killed nearby. Eight members of the Auxiliary Fire Service were killed in the same garage by a bomb. The Polish Premier (General Sikorski) decorated 20 Polish airmen with the Polish equivalents of the D.S.Q. and M.tl. Their squadron had destroyed 71 raiders in 18 days. In his speech the Air Minister (Sir Archibald Sinclair) said: “We can win only by clever fighting and landing every blow where it hurts and weakens most. The indiscriminate bombing of German civilians would only increase suffering and misery and would not protect our people. German industrial production, as a result of the R.A.F. attacks, is reliably reported to have fallen 30 per cent, through lack ot sleep and has shaken the morale of the German workers.”