NARROW ESCAPE OF PALACE

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

NARROW ESCAPE OF PALACE

BOMBS JUST MISS BUILDING

(British Official Wireless)

(Received September 15, 6.30 p.m.)

RUGBY, September 14.

The Press was invited to Buckingham Palace and saw evidence of yesterday’s deliberate air attack on the King and Queen and their home. The German pilot who dived through the balloon barrage released six bombs from a height of 1000 feet and failed by a miracle to bring murder and devastation to the palace. Apart from bombs which directly hit the Royal Chapel, the damage resulting from this cold-blooded assault was less than that which a time-bomb caused earlier in the week, but the three bombs which landed in the quadrangle missed the palace proper by inches. If they had landed a few feet either to the right or the left’Buckingham Palace would be mostly in ruins today. The representative of the Australian Associated Press, who saw the tom metal railings fronting Pall Mall and the ugly crater in the quadrangle, says that at least 100 windows were shattered around the court. One bomb made a large hole. The south-west corner, through which countless debutantes have filed, received the full blast of a bomb and looked more like a cloister than a corridor, but among the priceless paintings covering almost every inch of the walls he found only one badly torn, namely a portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge by an early Victorian German artist. Strangely, an ugly portrait of the Tsar of Russia, which Edward VII described as a “portrait thrown on a landscape,” was directly in the path of one explosion, but was unharmed. Some other canvases were spattered with dirt and rubble from the quadrangle. There were three casualties among the workmen sheltering under the chapel, which it is considered, cannot be repaired. A bomb dropped nearly through the roof and left the walls standing, but completely wrecked the floor and altar, together with all the priceless sacred emblems and furnishings, on which crashed a ghastly heap of masonry. TIME BOMB EXPLODES One of the bombs which fell on the roadway outside the Palace was a time bomb, which exploded early on Saturday morning, completely destroying a big stone pillar at the gates with part of the iron railings in front of the Palace. Precautions had been taken immediately this bomb was located and a bank of sandbags erected in order to minimize the effects of the explosion.

The priceless Goblins tapestry depicting the baptism of John the Baptist still hangs undamaged on the wall where the altar stood in the wrecked chapel. On Saturday morning sunshine flooded into the crater below where the force of the explosion shattered the stout outer wall and revealed the tangled litter of almost unrecognizable ruins. Hidden away in the debris is a famous mother of pearl cross which stood on the altar, but the Bible which Queen Victoria presented to the chapel and the book which contains a record of all the births of members of the Rqyal Family since its presentation were picked up completely undamaged. However, the lectern on which the Bible rested could not be found. The King’s colour of the 3rd Scots Guards on its standard attached to a cream and gold pillar also stands undamaged among the ruins, but the regimental colour which stood beside it is buried in a pile of rubble. In the gallery the King’s pew is undamaged. Only a jagged hole, roughly two feet square, in the beautiful coffered gilt ceiling shows where the 1001 b bomb tore through it to burst just, before the ■altar rail. ' ■' The following telegram was sent by the War Cabinet to the King today: ‘“The War Cabinet offers hearty congratulations to their Majesties on their providential escape from the barbarous

attack made on their home and Royal persons.” The King replied: “The Queen and I are grateful to the War Cabinet for its kind message. Like so many other people, we have now had personal experience of German barbarity, which only strengthens the resolution of all of us to fight to final victory.”