HEAVY BARRAGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 September 1940, Page 5

HEAVY BARRAGE

OPENED BV LONDON DEFENCES BOMBS START MANY FIRES. TENEMENTS AND HOSPITALS STRUCK. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, September 9. Two minutes before air-raid sirens sounded last night enemy planes were reported over the south-east of England, and immediately after the warning one of the heaviest anti-aircraft bombardments since the beginning of the mass raids opened up in an outer district of London. Raiders also approached London from another direction, and anti-air-craft guns also went into action in central London within a few seconds of an alarm, after which came the scream of falling bombs. Another wave of raiders approached the East London area three-quarters of an hour later. The all-clear signal sounded after nine hours and a half. It was evident that the scale of tonight’s raid exceeded that of Saturday night. Further salvos of bombs produced more fires, which are blazing in many parts. A bomb landed outside a big London newspapers office, where the workers, who were in a shelter, escaped injury. A later message states that a highexplosive bomb hit a nurses’ home in an east London hospital, but there were no casualties. Another hospital building of five stories was hit, the top two stories being damaged. The windows in two wards were blown in and some patients received superficial wounds, but they showed remarkable calmness throughout the incident. In another district an incendiary bomb fell on the roof of a garage, where some people were sheltering. They were taken to another shelter while fireman put out the fire. In central London a bomb fell on a tenement building in a narrow street. It is feared that some residents in the shelter must have been trapped under the debris. A large block of working-class flats was also damaged. In a south-east area it is feared that a number of people were killed when a heavy bomb destroyed a shelter.