ITALIAN AIR RAID.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 3 September 1917, Page 5

ITALIAN AIR RAID.

POLA SEEIOUSLY DAMAGED HUGE EXPLOSIONS IN ARSENAL. LONDON, August 6. Mr Percival Gibbon, the British war correspondent on the Lalian front, telegraphs an account of > - ast and startling rights of the new giant aeroplane s against Pola, the caiei naval station of Austria Hungary near the south end of the peninsula of Istria, 105 miles tsouth of Trieste.

Each aeroplane carried a crew cf four or five men, and the fleer was led by Gabriel e D'Annimzio, Italy's acclaimed poet. On Thursday 36 machines, including fast fighters , and with motorboats escorting them, crossed the Adriatic and reached the Austrian coast unobserved owing to a fog. Before midnight the squadron was manoeuvred over Pola amid a tangle of searchlight beams arid a hurricane of panic-stricken gunnery. The Italian airmen dropped big bombs ranging from 701 b to 2001 b on the dockyards, arsenal and anchored ships. Three waves of aeroplanes went over. The last two saw a huge explosion in the arsenal and a grear fire either in the arsenal or the submarin depot. Six and a half tons of bombs were dropped, and there would have been more, but the third wave, failing to find a military target, dropped no bombs. All the machines returned freckled with and not a man was missing. On Friday night, when there was another raid, the machines dropped eight ton s of bombs, with entirely satisfactory results. On this occaion, when the squadron arrived over Pola, the Austrian guns ceased firing It is believed that this was because the enemy had exhaustd his ammunition. The aeroplane s thereupon descended to a height of only and destroyed napt-ha depots, causing an immense sheet of flame.