TERRIFIC POUNDING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 259, 30 September 1940, Page 7

TERRIFIC POUNDING.

LORIENT HEAVILY BOMBED.

LONDON, Sept. 28. The. Air Ministry states: “We carried out last night large-scale attacks on enemy invasion ports, and other planes attacked communications in western Germany.’ ... “We wrecked dock buildings and set fire to warehouses and a timberyard during an intense bombardment of Lorient, where we caused fires which were visible 70 miles away. The raid, which was aided by good visibility and a cloudless sky, lasted for three and a half hours, and high-explosive and incendiary bombs fell at the rate of five a minute for over an hour. I'ires spread rapidly among the dockside warehouses, and a huge hlaze engulleci buildings near the harbour power station, lighting up the docks and river. Sticks of high-explosive bombs straddied shipping lying in the basins and at river anchorages. Jno first homo from one stick exploded on the eastern dock and the remainder burst in a line ending on the west dock on the opposite bank. , , “Other night raiders bombed the railway yards at Mannheim and Hamm, and a munitions factory at DusselLorient is a French port and naval base in the Bay of Biscay, 70 miles south of Brest. . , The Romo radio states that the R.A.F. raids on Berlin have lulled 1753 persons and wounded 2049. Planes, of the Coastal Command found the crew of a British bomber who had been adrift in the North Sea in a rubber dinghy m rough weather and acute cold lor 84 hours. German planes several times unsuccessfully attempted to prevent their rescue.

FLIERS’ GALLANTRY.

Sergeant Jolm Hannah who has won aV C ill recognition oi Ins most conS.hcuouV bravery in fighting a fire aboard a bomber, is the first Scotsman to win the award since the outbreak of the war. Pilot-Officer C. A. H. Connor. a Canadian, has been awarded an immediate D.F.C. tor piloting the damaged Hampden to the base. The bomber squadron to which Sergeant Hannah and Pilot-Officer Connor belong was formed in Scotland in 1917 A few months later it began operations in France. In one operation on a stormy night toward the end of the war, six pilots carried out a dan gerous mission, each receiving the T) F C In the present war the squadron lms lived up to its reputation and before the exploit of September lo had earned one D.S.O. for outstanding work at the Dortmund-Ems Canal, and thirteen' D.F.C. s and five D. A • •