SUBMARINES OFF WEST AFRICA

Southland Times, Issue 24873, 13 October 1942, Page 5

SUBMARINES OFF WEST AFRICA

Aid From Neutral Countries (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, October 11. Nearly a dozen Allied ships are known to have been sunk around Cape Palmas, says Reuters correspondent in a message from a United Nations base in West Africa. Hie Germans are using a small type of U-boat off West Africa and apparently are receiving supplies and assistance from pro-German countries which are technically neutral. The Associated Press reports that one trader said he saw in August two U-boats in the roadstead at Port Bouet, which is an important shipping centre on the Ivory Coast. An air-line pilot saw a submarine refuelling near the same city. Other submarines have been reported at Konakry and off Dakar. Three Vichy merchantmen and one destroyer sailed northward around Cape Palmas shortly before three submarines fired on an Allied plane in that vicinity. The Vichy ships possibly carried fuel for a rendezvous with the submarines. A rubber planter said it was common knowledge that native owned surf-boats went to sea nightly from neutral territory loaded with meat and returned in the morning empty. It was also suggested that it was no coincidence that bush-fires visible far out to sea broke out when Allied ships were at the ports and were extinguished after the ships had sailed.