SABOTAGE PLOT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1940, Page 7

SABOTAGE PLOT

SUSPECTED IN BRITAIN POWDER FACTORY EXPLOSIONS DAMAGE DONE OVER SPACE OF MILES. POLICE & SOLDIERS GUARDING DISTRICT. jy Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright LONDON. January 18. Officers of .Scotland 'lard art* investigating a suspected sabotage plot in the Royal Gunpowder Factory al Waltham Abbey. 12 miles north of Ijodon. in ■which two terrific explosions occurred at 10.30 a.m. today.

The latest casualty list shows five persons killed and 30 injured. A vast trail of ruin marked the course of the furious blast from the explosions. Steel girders were thrown 500 yards. The shock was felt 25 miles distant and reverberations were heard 90 miles from London.

The damaged part of the works covered a circumference of seven miles, but windows were shattered and doors and fences torn down far beyond. Scores of people we?e thrown off their feet.

Police and soldiers are guarding the district. It is understood that three attempts were made to damage the factory recently, and the police have interrogated hundreds of workers in the past few days. Inquiries have been extended to other Government factories.

It is understood that the authorities received anonymous information that accidents might happen at the Waltham Abbey factory and others throughout England.

At the explosions thousands of people believed that an air raid had begun. Flames shot up high after the explosions, followed by a dense pall of smoke.

Waltham Abbey, or Waltham Holy Cross, is in Essex, on the Lea. and has a population of several thousand. Only portion of the former magnificent cruciform abbey church remains. The Royal Gunpowder Factory is in the immediate vicinity. Government works were built in 1890 at Quinton Hall, half a mile west of the town, for the manufacture of cordite, and the place also possesse gun-cotton and percussion-cap factories, flour mills, malt-kilns, and breweries. POLICE REPORTS (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 9.35 a.m.) RUGBY, January 19. Senior Scotland Yard officials engaged in investigating the circumstances of the great explosion at the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey, in Essex, have made preliminary reports to the authorities. It is stated that sabotage is suspected.