CITIES BLAZING

Taranaki Daily News, 14 September 1940, Page 7

CITIES BLAZING

By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.

BRITISH HITTING HARD

BREMEN SUFFERS MOST

Received 10.30 p.m. London, beptemoer id. "BREMEN is on fire, and what a fire!" said a Royal Air Force bomber pilot as he left his machine after Wednesday night's raid. Hamburg, too, was heavily bombed, and many fires were caused. An observer of another plane said fires were blazing all over Bremen. They made a solid triangle of flame, one side of which must have been two miles long. Fires were raging in all parts of Ostend when a raid on it ended after nearly four hours. Two huge explosions sent up a solumn of black smoke which pierced the cloud layer 10,000 feet over the harbour.

Details of the Royal Air Force attack on Hamburg show that for nearly four hours relays of aircraft of the bomber command kept up an almost continuous assault on harbour installations, shipbuilding yards and dock basins. The first aircraft reached the scene shortly after 9 p.m. on Wednesday and started a fire in the docks which served as a beacon to the following raiders. Later as the attack developed other great fires were set burning in the dock area and to the west and north-west of Ihe city. A series of direct hits was scored on jetties and docks to the east and west of the great Blohm Voss shipbuilding yards. By 10.45 p.m. visibility, which had been good at the start of the raid, had deteriorated and a bomber coming in from the sea to launch an attack found the target covered by low-lying cloud, above which anti-aircraft shells could be seen bursting.

Cloud Clears. Then the cloud cleared over the northern half of Hamburg, enabling the pilot to make for the docks and release his entire load in a single run across the target. At 1 a.m. on Thursday the crew of the last aircraft detailed for the attack could see a huge fire blazing while still 40 miles away from Hamburg. Over the docks they dropped a stick of heavy bombs across a line of shipbuilding yards but though the explosion of their bombs was seen it was impossible for them to assess the damage caused because of the dazzling glow from the great fire raging beneath them.