NAZI INVASION BASES BOMBED

Southland Times, Issue 24244, 30 September 1940, Page 5

NAZI INVASION BASES BOMBED

HEAVIEST ASSAULT YET SKY LIT BY FLAME HOUSES ON COAST OF ENGLAND SHUDDER (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) (Received September 29, 10.15 p.m.) LONDON, September 29. Terrific explosions shook the Kent coast on Saturday night when the Royal Air Force delivered what is believed to be the most violent of all attacks on the 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 coasts of France and Belgium. 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 Air Ministry states: “We carried out large-scale attacks on the enemy invasion ports. Other planes attacked communications in western Germany. We wrecked dock buildings and set fire to warehouses and a timber yard during an intense bombardment of L’Orient, where the fires were visible for 70 miles. “The raid, aided by good visibility with a cloudies sky, lasted for three hours and a-half. High explosive and incendiary bombs fell at the rate of five a minute for over an hour. Fires spread rapidly among dockside warehouses. A huge blaze engulfed buildings near the harbour and power station, lighting up the docks and the river. Sticks of high explosives straddled shipping lying in the basins and at river anchorages. The first bomb from one stick exploded on the eastern dock; the remainder burst on a line ending at the west dock on the opposite bank. “Other night raiders bombed railway yards at Mannhiem and Hamm and a munitions factory at Dusseldorf.”