LESS ACTIVITY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 251, 20 September 1940, Page 7

LESS ACTIVITY

RAIDERS OVER BRITAIN.

ISOLATED ATTACKS

(United Press Association—Copyright.) (Rec 11 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 19 A single German raider bombed the London area this afternoon, doing considerable damage. South-East England was also bombed, but apart from isolated attacks, which caused several casualties, Germau activity over England to-day has been exceptionally slight.

A number of Home Office windows were broken by a blast. Miss Ellen Wilkinson’s flat was bombed twice in her absence. (Miss Wilkinson, who is Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions, is well-known for her labours on behalf of the unemployed and distressed areas in Durham.) A slight mist is hanging over the Straits of Dover. The sky is overcast and a stiff south-westerly is blowing. It is officially stated that during this morning R.A.F. fighters shot down three enemy bombers, two , off the South-East Coast and one in East Anglia. ROYAL INTEREST.

The King and Queen once again spent the morning visiting areas, this time in South-West and West London, which have suffered from the bombs of Nazi night raiders, and once again they were greeted by smiling faces and undaunted enthusiasm.

The police made no attempt _ to keep the people away, and the King and Queen walked amid the scenes of devastation with cheering men, women and children brushing alongside them.

It is now known that in Wednesday’s air battles over England 48 enemy, aircraft were destroyed —one by anti-aircraft gunfire. Two R.A.F. pilots previously reported missing are safe. The British losses for the day, therefore, were twelve fighter planes, the pilots of nine being saved.

MOST SAVAGE YET.

WANTON GERMAN RAIDS

PROPERTY DEVASTATED

LONDON, Sept. 19. Many observers regard last night’s raids on London as the most savage yet. The Germans flew lower than ever and took suicidal chances, frenziedly endeavouring to pierce the vast, hellish curtain of fire around and over London. The raiders made no effort to seek out military objectives, but sought only to unload their bombs as near as possible to the heart of the capital.

The chief gain from this barbaric onslaught was damage to objects of world wide historic interest, and the devastation of private property. Their would-be reprisals have become expressions of blind fury at Britain s reTwo raiders fell with a terrific explosion in a south-west suburb. A stirring scene was enacted in Central London, when a bomb set fire to a famous building. Over 1000 people sheltering in the vaults formed up like a battalion parading and marched in perfect order to nearby surface shelters. . , An Air Ministry communique reports that the enemy scattered high-explo-sives blindly over the capital. Some of heavy calibre caused damage in many districts, but small dwellings in Loudon and the suburbs were the main subject of the wanton attacks. Some houses were hit and wholly or partly demolished. , Preliminary reports disclose "that "trie casualties were heavy; they are provisionally estimated at 90 killed and 350 seriously injured. "NAZIS ARRIVE SINGLY.

The, sirens which sounded London’s eighth warning yesterday had hardly died away before the anti-aircraft guns opened up their protecting curtain of shrapnel against the raiders, who seemed to come singly from several directions, stated an earlier report. The explosion of bombs was mingled with the sharper sound of guns. For the third successive night, heavy bombs crashed in the IVest End area. The raiders tried for three hours to reach Central London, but wore repelled by fierce gunfire time after time. Finally they were forced to seek other inlets, through which some broke. The single planes heard in the heart of the = metropolis met with terrific gunfire. The raiders did not neglect the outer areas and many bombs were dropped in the suburbs at every point ot the compass. , . , T ~ T Two explosive bombs in North Eondon demolished five houses, while numerous bombs nearby extensively damaged property. . 1 ~ A north-west town experienced its fiercest attack since the outbreak of the war. Bombs were rained at random, indicating that the raiders’ chief object was war terror.

FUNDS FOR VICTIMS

NETHERLANDS GENEROSITY

(British Official "Wireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 18

The Netherlands Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance personally visited the Mansion House to hand to the Lord Mayor £50,000 from the Netherlands Government for the air raid distress fund as a token of admiration for the “splendid manner in which Londoners are bearing the ordeal.”

A cheque for £lO5 has been received from the matron, nursing and domestic '.staff of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital “as a thanks offering for their safety and the safety of the hospital” on a date named. A Calcutta message states that Abdul Rahman Siddiqi, who led the Moslem League delegation to the Palestine Conference in 1937, and who is Mayor of Calcutta, at to-day’s meeting of the Corporation expressed sympathy for the victims of the air raids on London. He said that whatever the political differences between India and Britain the hearts of the citizens of the second city of the Empire went out to those suffering from the barbaric and indiscriminate German raids. The corporation appointed a committee representative of all sections of the population, to assist the fund being run in conjunction with the Lord Mayor’s fund.