NORTH SEA ENCOUNTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 7

NORTH SEA ENCOUNTER

ENEMY FLYING-BOATS AND NAVAL SQUADRON One Plane Shot Down and Another Captured NO BRITISH SHIP HIT BY BOMBS ADMIRALTY DENIES GERMAN CLAIMS (By Telegraph. —Press Association. —Copyright.) (Received This Day, 8.45 a.m.) LONDON, September 27. It is officially stated in Berlin that German planes attacked a British fleet in the North Sea and destroyed an aircraft carrier and damaged one battleship. These claims were denied by the British Admiralty and Mr Winston Churchill, m the House of Commons, said twenty German aircraft attacked a British naval squadron in the middle of the North Sea. No British ship was hit and-there were no casualties on the British side. One German flying-boat was shot down, another was damaged and a third flying-boat was captured after a forced landing. , The Berlin High Command later explained: The aircraft carrier was hit by a heavy bomb,” adding: “That did not mean that it was sunk.” A Daventrv broadcast states that the first mass attack on units of the British Fleet, at. sea was a complete failure. The attack was made' by a squadron of German planes 150 miles off the Norwegian coast. According to the German High Command an aircraft carrier was sunk and a battleship badlj damaged while German planes suffered no losses. The commander of the British Fleet states that in the middle of the North Sea. a squadron of British capital ships, accompanied by an aircraft carrier, cruisers and destroyers, was attacked by about twenty German planes. No British ship was hit and'there were no British casualties. One German flying-boat was shot down and another badly damaged. A third German plane, according to Mr Winston Churchill, First. Lord of the Admiralty, came down in the sea afid a British destroyer captured the crew of four. MR CHURCHILL’S STATEMENT Report by Commander-in-Chief Quoted (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) RUGBY, September 27. Mr Winston Churchill’s House of Commons statement on the North Sea engagement was in reply to a question and the facts quoted were from the report as wirelessed by the Com-mander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet. The British squadron that was attacked by German warplanes comprised British capital ships, an aircraft carrier, cruisers and destroyers.