U-BOATS SUNK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 February 1940, Page 5

U-BOATS SUNK

TWO DESTROYED BY BRITISH BOMBERS ANOTHER DAMAGED IN COLLISION X ENEMY PLANE ATTACKS ON TRAWLERS. By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. LONDON, February 25. The “Daily Mail” yesterday reported that R.A.F. reconnaissance planes bombed and sank two Üboats which were many miles apart in the North Sea. A third U-boat is believed to have been severely damaged as the result of a collision with the steamer Asiatic (3741 tons), the captain of which said: “It was a glancing blow. We must have given the crew of the U-boat a real shaking.” Reports are current in London that a fourth U-boat was sunk off Scotland. No official details of the sinkings are available. With the return to port yesterday at Lowestoft of the trawler Saxmundham, another fishing-boat victim of Tuesday’s German plane attack was revealed. The ship’s engineroom casing and decks have been riddled with bullets, but the crew escaped injury. “We stopped at sea to finish our trip,” said the skipper, “because we must not let them panic us.” On Thursday night German aircraft made their first night flight toward British shores since November 22. They made no attempts to attack warships, but machine-gunned a small British merchantman, the Gothic, and injured the captain and the second mate. The Gothic returned safetly to port. The German newspaper, “Voelkischer Beobachter,” announces that H.M.S. Nelson was mined in the middle of December, and rushed to port for vital repairs, and then towed to a south of England dock, where she is still being repaired. (Reuter understands this claim to be unworthy of refutation.) Petty-Officer John Shaw, a member of the crew of the sunken British submarine Undine, in a letter to his parents from the German prison camp, says the crews of the Undine and Starfish have been allotted tree-felling, and 60 of them departed for this work on February 12. Others are going shortly. In the meantime the treatment is good. The officers live in a castle.