HAVOC IN SHELTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 September 1940, Page 5

HAVOC IN SHELTER

BOMB FALLS DIRECTLY DOWN VENTILATOR NUMBER OF PEOPLE KILLED & INJURED. INCLUDING MOTHERS & INFANTS. LONDON, September 3. A bomb which struck an airraid shelter in East London, in which 1000 people were taking refuge, including many mothers and babies, produced agonising scenes. At least 14 persons were killed and 50 seriously injured. (Another report stated that 40 were killed and some 14 injured were rushed to hospital.) The bomb, by a million-to-one chance, fell directly down the 3ft by Ift ventilator-shaft, the only vulnerable place in a powerfully-protected shelter. Mothers were killed outright and babies swept from their perambulators. Pillars supporting the roof were torn down and the occupants lay stunned in heaps. Civil defence workers laboured fearlessly among the debris. Nine doctors who answered the calls saved lives by improvising tourniquets and dressing wounds in the dim glow of torches. In the shelter three children of one family were killed, but their parents escaped. Rescue workers said that in spite of the chaos in the shelter there was no panic, and the women were wonderful. The shelter today presented a tragic picture. Perambulators and corrugated iron sheeting lay entangled with heaps of bed clothing, pillows, blackened gasmasks, toys, and the remains of meals. Tn the attack on London last night the usual tactics of the raiders were to drop a salvo, including incendiary bombs, dodge wildly away from the searchlights, and swerve for a return dive in which the remainder of the bombs were unloaded. Other raiders merely dropped incendiary bombs and waited till fire illuminated the target area before swooping down for the major attack. Later raiders apparently strove to keep up or increase the first fires, while bombing any new objectives they illuminated, regardless of the thickly-populated area.