AIR CO-OPERATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 June 1940, Page 6

AIR CO-OPERATION

ACTIVITIES OF THE R.A.F. FULL SUPPORT FOR ALLIED ARMIES. MANY ENEMY POSITIONS ATTACKED. (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) RUGBY, June 3. The Air Ministry announces: “In support of the Allied armies, R.A.F. medium' bombers made a series of attacks on enemy gun emplacements, roads, railways and troop concentrations in the Dunkirk area throughout yesterday. These operations were continued during the night by heavy bombers.

“At the same time, other formations of heavy bombers attacked enemy aerodromes and other military objectives in North-west Germany. All our aircraft returned from these operations. “Our fighters continued to maintain offensive patrols over the Dunkirk area.

“In the Narvik area, on June 1 and 2, six enemy aircraft were shot down.” “Marshalling yards were bombed, an oil tank and wagons set alight and troop convoys machine-gunned by lowflying' bombers, ■in the course of Sunday night’s extensive raids over North-west Germany. At Soest, an important railway junction east of Dortmund, a line of high explosive bombs fell across the centre of a crowded railway yard. Moving trains were hit and brought to a standstill, and direct hits were registered on loaded goods wagons.

In another successful attack on a marshalling yard, carried out shortly after midnight, a group of oil tank wagons standing in the middle of the yard was first wrecked and then set alight by incendiary bombs. The fire kindled by the bombs spread rapidly and clouds of smoke were seen rising from the yard some time after the raid.

“Road and rail junctions at Osnabruck were heavily attacked for the second night in succession. Direct hits were scored on a goods yard at Hamburg and at Hamm, south of Munster, one end of a bridge over a canal was reported to have been demolished and nearby railway tracks torn up by three heavy bomb explosions. "Enemy air bases at Rotterdam, Devener and Wesel were also visited by night raiders. At the Rotterdam Aerodrome (Waalhaven) a group of building which had survived an earlier Allied bombardment was destroyed by a salvo of heavy calibre bombs. At Wesel, in an aerodrome used by German bomber squadrons, bombs seen to burst on a large hangar resulted in a violent explosion and fierce outbreak of fire, as if from a petrol dump nearby.

“Other sections of heavy bombers on their way back from successful raids came low over enemy territory to carry out machine-gun attacks against troop concentrations located by parachute flares. A long convoy of armoured vehicles caught on the road near Aachen zin the early hours of Monday morning was first heavily bombed with high explosive and incendiary bombs from a height of 2,000 feet and then, in the light of slowly descending parachute flares, it was subjected to machine-gun attack. Salvos of bombs were seen to burst in the midst of the convoy, on the road ahead of it and in adjoining woods. A series of heavy explosions continued to break out for some time after the attack, as ammunition or petrol lorries in the wrecked convoy were ignited by incendiary bomb fires and blew up.”