GERMAN CLAIMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 April 1940, Page 5

GERMAN CLAIMS

CRUISER SUNK NORTH OF SHETLANDS AND THREE SUBMARINES IN SKAGERRAK. ’’UNSUCCESSFUL” RAID ON NARVIK. (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) BERLIN, April 14. A communique states that a U-boat torpedoed a Glasgow class cruiser north of the Shetlands, and submarine chasers destroyed three enemy submarines in the Skagerrak. British air raids on Narvik. Stavanger and Bergen have been unsuccessful as regards military objectives. POSITION AT NARVIK ENTIRELY IN BRITISH HANDS. GERMANS RETREATING IN SMALL GROUPS. (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) AMSTERDAM, April 14. Wireless listeners report hearing an unidentified radio message announce in Norwegian that Narvik is now entirely in British hands. The Germans thus far have lost IGGO dead or wounded and ‘:mall groups are retreating inland, pursued by Norwegian troops. Hie Baltic hems in Germany’s northern coast. The other barrage cuts off German shipping from the Kattegat. The biggest minefield stretches 210 miles, from the bottom edge of Swedish waters.,in the west, to the German coast, and the frontier with Lithuania, north of Rossitten. A second field extends from the Danish east coast, near Liim Fiord, eastwards to the edge of Swedish waters. An expert says the minefield bottles up the entire Baltic coast of Germany, covering as it does, except for Swedish walers, the southern part of the Baltic. Extending northwards to a point about 12 miles south of Memel, it joins the minefield already laid in the Skagerrak and Kattegat, exlends through the (wo Danish belts and sweeps round to the Bailie proper. British-laid minefields now cover the entire coast of Germany and German-occupied Denmark. The mining of the Baltic blocks the Nazis’ iron ore route from Lulea at a time when they were expecting to benefit from it this summer as an alternative to tfie route from Narvik.