DIRECT HIT IN LAMBETH WALK

Southland Times, Issue 24236, 20 September 1940, Page 5

DIRECT HIT IN LAMBETH WALK

The Lambeth Walk street market was one of the targets that suffered two direct hits by enemy bombs in a recent night raid. This humble street is best known as having given its name to a popular - song and dance which has been sung, whistled and danced in almost every country of the world since nearly three years ago when it scored an immediate success in the musical play “Me and My Girl,” which, until indiscriminate bombing necessitated its suspension, was still running at the London theatre where it was originally performed. A narrow little street, along the centre of which runs a quarter of a mile of market stalls lined on each side with small shops, it is the very heart of Cockney London. The true Cockney spirit displayed itself when soon after daylight following the night bombing, shopkeepers and stall-holders were clearing away the debris, preparing to carry on and customers from surrounding streets were crowding in to make purchases. Air-raid warnings were sounded eight times in the London area after .dawn on Wednesday. Most of the warnings were in operation for only a few minutes, the exception being one after midday, which lasted one and three-quarter hours. In all cases the raiders were driven off before reaching the outskirts. The sirens sounded for the eighth time at 7.58 p.m. TOMBSTONES UPROOTED Night raiders’ bombs hit three wellknown Oxford street stores. Hundreds of people sheltering under the stores were unhurt. A' large bomb uprooted trees and tombstones in a central graveyard. Five bombs falling in a building adjoining the Bank of New South Wales set fire to the bank, but the fire was extinguished after the premises had been damaged by fire and water. An incendiary bomb slightly damaged the Spanish Embassy.

During the third warning of the morning the roar of battle was heard over the Thames Estuary. Numerous high explosive bombs considerably damaged one estuary town. There were eight casualties., A Junkers plane was shot down by anti-aircraft guns at Maidstone last night and crashed into two houses. The four members of the crew and one elderly invalid were killed. One force of 15 bombers, surrounded, as one Royal Air Force pilot said, by a sphere of Messerschmitt 109 fighters, was dispersed to quickly when Spitfires met it near the Kentish Coast that only three British pilots got a chance to fire. A patrol of Hurricanes met a formation of enemy bombers heavily protected by Messerschmitts stepped up in tiers above them, near the Isle of Sheppey, on their way up the Thames Estuary. The Hurricanes made a headon attack on the bombers. “They jettisoned their bombs even before we attacked,” one of the Hurricane pilots said, “and went straight out over Folkestone.” STREAM OF RAIDERS The seventh air raid warning in London today, and incidentally the hundredth since the outbreak of war, was given at 5.58 p.m. Three hundred raiders crossed the south-west coast in an endless stream for 15 minutes during the afternoon. Eight fighters escorted each bomber. The gale has dropped over the Straits of Dover, but a big sea is still running. Neutral military attaches and correspondents who have experienced bombings in Warsaw, Barcelona and Madrid agree that London has already taken more punishment than any city, not excluding Rotterdam. They exnress the opinion that the Luftwaffe has failed to achieve its main purpose because the bombs have not disorganized London’s communications. Thus, supplies and reinforcements can still ’be sent to areas which the Germans planned to invade.