CRUSHING DEFEAT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24402, 13 September 1940, Page 5

CRUSHING DEFEAT

AN AFTERNOON RAID NAZIS’ HEAVY LOSSES EIGHTY-NINE SHOT DOWN (By Wireless) DAVENTRY, Sept. 12. London is at work again to-day after the noisiest night in its existence. It was a cheerful noise, however, as it was all of British origin, for the raiders had to contend with the greatest anti-aircraft barrage ever known. Damage was done to two hospitals and a number of houses, and two German night bombers were shot down by the barrage. * Before the night raids commenced a large force of enemy bombers, escorted by fighters, carried out a late afternoon raid and received a crushing defeat. Soon after 4 p.m. a force of 250 machines came over between the North Foreland and Dungeness, apparently heading for the London docks, and another group of 150 planes passed over Southampton and .split up, apparently with the intention of attacking R.A.F. aerodromes. All the formations, however, were so fiercely engaged by Hurricane and Spitfire fighters that they were broken up, and only a few isolated planes succeeded in reaching their objective. The raid ers lost 89 machines, 80 being shot down by fighter'- and nine falling to the ground defences. Twenty-foui British planes are missing, but tht nilots of seven are safe. The Polish Squadron was again in the thick of the battle,-and emerged with a bag of seven bombers £jnd seven fighters, London has had no air-raid alarms since 5.30 a.m. although German planes have been heard over a north-west town. On the south-east coast watchers saw large fires on the French side of the Channel as R.A.F. bombers again attacked Calais. Earlier in the day German planes attempted to bomb a British convoy, which was protected by a balloon barrage, but the was unsuccessful, although approximately 50 bombs’--were dropped.