HEAVY ATTACKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24416, 30 September 1940, Page 5

HEAVY ATTACKS

BRITISH BOMBERS WIDESPREAD TARGETS INVASION PORTS INCLUDED (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, Sept. 29. (Received Sept. 30, at 1 a.m.) Terrific explosions shook the Kent coast to-night, when the R.A.F. delivered what is believed to have been the most violent of all attacks on German invasion ports. Vivid orange and red flashes and sheets of flame lit up the sky as hundreds of bombs burst in an unbroken line on the French and Belgian coast. The flashes were bigger than anything yet seen from England, indicating that more powerful bombs were used. Houses on the coast shuddered continually for hours.

The Rome radio states that R.A.F. raids on Berlin have killed 1753 and wounded 2049.

The Air Ministry states:—"We carried out large-scale attacks . on enemy invasion ports while other planes attacked communications in Western Germany. We wrecked docks and buildings and set fire to warehouses and a timber yard during an intense bombardment of Lorient, where fires were caused that were visible for 70 miles. The raid, which was aided by good visibility, lasted for three hours and a-half, and high explosives and incendiaries fell at the rate of five ;a minute ; for over half an hour. Fires spread rapidly among the dockside warehouses and a huge blaze engulfed buildings near the harbour power station arid lit'"up the docks and the river.

" Sticks of high explosives straddled shipping lying in the basins and river anchorages'. , The .first bomb 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 nightraiders bombed railway yards- at Mannheim and Hamm and the munitions factory at Dusseldorf."