BOMBING ATTACKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 April 1940, Page 5

BOMBING ATTACKS

FROM PILOT’S VIEWPOINT ‘ OBSERVATIONS BY BRITISH AIRMAN. SYLT ATTACK AND OTHER ENGAGEMENTS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.18 a.m.) RUGBY, April 1. Describing the Sylt raid, one of the section leaders said that when they.arrived 20 minutes early, owing to a strong following wind, he spent most of the time trying out new night binoculars. Then, when time was up, he flew over the target, dropped a parachute flare and made the first bombing attack. “It wasn't good, for my observer signalled a dummy run,” he continued, " so I went back and tried again, this time, I think, with more success. I could see a large crane for hauling seaplanes out of the water quite clearly, and I felt the concussion of the bombs as they exploded. I approached a huge line of searchlights, fringing the easternmost side of the island, from the rear, and they looked just like a line of bayonets. The halo cast by them must have shown up my plane, but we were not hit. The searchlights were like a signal saying, 'Come on. Here is Sylt.’ ” He considered, he said, that the ■strongest defences in a German area from the ground were in the Ruhr, where "they oppose us tooth and nail."