MANY FIGHTERS OVER LONDON

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

MANY FIGHTERS OVER LONDON

German Aeroplanes Turned Back

(United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) (Received September 15, 6.30 p.m.) LONDON, September 15. Never before has there been so many British fighters over London as this afternoon, when thousands of persons saw large formations race in from two directions to engage heavy concentrations of German bombers and fighters. The British fighters had spent an hour patrolling the areas through which the Germans were attempting to break throughout the day. They turned back 100 during the first desperate attempt in the afternoon to get to London from the south coast. The raiders scattered without dropping their bombs. Two hundred Germans in the second afternoon raid were engaged in the fiercest battle.

Bombs fell in a south-east coastal town, hitting a cinema and killing four children and two adults and injuring others. An air raid warden and a first aid worker were also killed.

Some enemy planes penetrated the London area, hotly chased by Spitfires. The Germans dropped bombs at random, damaging houses and a children’s hospital and partly wrecking a maternity hospital, in which no casualties resulted.

Other raiders concentrated on testing the defences over widespread areas in England and Wales, particularly the south-east coast. A pavilion in northwest England, where children were holding a party was hit. A dive-bomber demolished the pavilion and caused casualties. WEDDING INTERRUPTED A wedding was interrupted in a south-west town when a whistling bomb fell outside a church. The ceremony was completed amid falling bombs, which caused the church to shake and broke windows The couple left to find the bridal car buried under debris. One person was killed and several were injured nearby. Several places affected during the raids of the past few days have now been disclosed. The buildings damaged include Somerset House, the churches of Our Lady of Victories at Kensington, St. Magnus the Martyr, St. Swithin’s in Cannon street, St. Mary at the Hill, St. Dunstans in the East, St. Mary at Woolnorth, St. Clements in East Cheapside, St. Augustine’s in Watling street and St. Gile’s Cripplegate. Rotten Row and Barclay Square have also been affected. About five bombs fell near St. Paul’s on September 12 and one is believed to be a 500-pounder. A southwest suburb is beginning to resemble the East End, where hardly a street is without a crater or craters. Windows are rare for a considerable length along the district’s main road. However, apart from a number of deaths when a shelter was directly hit, the casualties were mostly confined to injuries through being hurled to the ground with or without the assistance of a bomb-blast.

. A fourteen-year-old girl, Mildred Castillo, was rescued alive this afternoon from the ruins of a demolished house in a south-west suburb in which she had been buried since September 9. She was believed to be dead, but a passer-by heard her cries. Among the notable buildings damaged by Nazi bombs in recent raids is the House of Lords. An incendiary bomb struck the House of Lords, but the damage is slight. The bomb was quick-' ly extinguished.