CENTRAL LONDON FREE

Southland Times, Issue 24232, 16 September 1940, Page 5

CENTRAL LONDON FREE

MORNING ALARMS ON SATURDAY

(British Official Wireless)

(Received September 15, 6.30 p.m.) RUGBY, September 14.

An air-raid warning in the London area was in operation for 15 minutes from 9.28 a.m. on Saturday. At 11 a.m. the sirens sounded the alert for the second time today, signalling the thirtieth attempted attack since September 7. The alarm was over at 11.16 a.m. and, like the earlier one, passed without the sound of aircraft, bombs or gunfire being heard in central London. These morning raids followed a night during which the London anti-aircraft barrage was intermittently in action throughout eight and a-half hours, the warning period ending at 5.30 a.m.

In South Wales high explosive and incendiary bombs which fell in one town damaged houses and other buildings. Details of the casualties are not yet available. Enemy aircraft were shot down by our fighters during the night.

The circumstances in which a German bomber burst into flames and crashed during a night raid are described in an Air Ministry bulletin. A British fighter was over London by moonlight when the pilot saw searchlights concentrating on a point several miles to the north. A Heinkel 111 was held in their beams. For 20 minutes the fighter pilot chased the enemy; though some searchlights had lost the enemy three or four still held him. When the fighter opened fire the Heinkel dropped bombs to lighten its load. At the same time bullets from the Heinkel’s rear guns hit the fighter’s windscreen and wing, but the fighter’s bullets had struck home and the Hein- • kel dropped flaming out of the sky. Following it down the fighter pilot saw an explosion when it crashed. MONUMENTS SUFFER The indiscriminate nature of the enemy’s night bombing is fully realized only by those who toured London and its suburbs and outskirts. Historical monuments, an ancient church and hospitals suffered heavily in the blind bombing. Many stately houses and other buildings have been struck down, but it is among the humble homes in the mean streets of congested suburbs that evidence of the Nazi fury is most visible. Pathetic tales are told by piles of wreckage to which many houses which were the pride of their occupants a few days ago are now reduced.

A remarkable feature of the pub-

lie attitude towards the repeated attacks is that at the end of a week

of intensive bombing, so far from any weakening of the will to defy the menace, public resolution is strengthened. There is evident a quickening adaptation to the conditions of air warfare; a clearer and more reassuring calculation of chances has been induced as well as a better understanding of how best to escape the danger. The discipline and steadiness of nerve displayed by the public are blunting the edge of what was hitherto the enemy’s most successful weapon —frightfulness. London in the front

line Is steadily improving its defences and adjusting its life accordingly.

The object of all individual actions, all regulations, counsels The Times, must be to see that activities remain as normal as possible and thus deprive the enemy of the satisfaction of lowering output, retarding ' communications or interfering with work of any essential kind. The front lines must be held, supplied, organized and repaired under ’ fire, and both official rules and private actions must be governed by this principle.

Activities in the air over Britain during Saturday, which were on a small scale and intermittent but widely distributed and almost entirely terroristic in character, are described in a long

communique issued shortly before midnight by the Air Ministry and Ministry of Home Security. It stated: “Throughout Saturday morning ineffectual enemy aircraft kept up a series of attacks during one of which bombs were dropped in a London area. Other morning attacks were in southeast England and East Anglia. In one south coast town a hospital was hit and several houses and buildings damaged. The casualties, both in London and elsewhere, were very slight.