SHIP SET ON FIRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 March 1940, Page 5

SHIP SET ON FIRE

It is learned that the plane flew over in the light of the waning moon with its full navigation lights on, and the crew of the Domain thought it was a British machine till it swooped down 40 feet from the decks and dropped the bombs. Within 20 minutes the ship was ablaze from stem to stern. The Domain was also machine-gun-ned.

The Domain’s quartermaster said: “The first bomb missed, but the other three scored direct hits, the second shattering the bridge. The plane then machine-gunned the decks for a few minutes. It was like hell let loose. When the Domala’s gunner fired a first shell the plane sheered off, but it-re-turned and machine-gunned the men in five small lifeboats and those clinging to rafts.” Many, are believed to have been killed as they slept.

The Domala's British Indian passengers were Lascar seamen who were serving in German liners when the war broke out and who had since been interned.

A message from Amsterdam states that two Dutch steamers, the Schieland (2249 tons) and the Limburg (345 tons), which had left Newcastle with cargoes of coal, were repeatedly raked with machine-gun fire by a plane near the mouth of the Humber. The plane passed and repassed over them. Neither suffered casualties.

The plane then attacked and sank an unidentified British ship.