HAMBURG ABLAZE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 September 1940, Page 5

HAMBURG ABLAZE

DOCKS METHODICALLY BLASTED BY ROYAL AIR FORCE BOMBERS. ATTACKS PRESSED FOR OVER THREE HOURS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 9.50 a.m.) RUGBY, September 9. R.A.F. bombers which made a concentrated attack on Hamburg last night were over the docks and shipyards in relays for over three hours. Methodically pinpointing their targets, they released salvo after salvo of heavy bombs and hundreds of incendiary bombs. Repeatedly sticks of heavy bombs were seen to crash across docks and port installations. Many sticks of high explosives straddled the Blohm and Voss yards and fires broke out in many parts of the wide target area. Although some died down again others caught on and burned fiercely. The crew of one aircraft saw the wharves and a railway station on the north bank of the Elbe burning, another fire at Hanshafen and the glow of a third downstream, near Altona. One of the early raiders, who dropped a stick of bombs across the docks, saw two fires begin, about 500 yards apart, on the north bank, close to the mouth of the Elbe tunnel. By 11 p.m. a low cloud forme .1 and a pilot arriving then said: ”We could see little owing to clouds, haze, darkness and heavy anti-aircraft fire, but we did see that our bombs had straddled the docks.” Bombs could be seen bursting among dockside buildings, while a fierce anti-aircraft barrage continued. More fires broke out and they were burning fiercely as the'bombers left. A glare in the sky over the docks could be seen from 60 miles away by the raiders on their homeward journey. Before the war Hamburg was one of the most important commercial ports of Germany. Now it does only a trickle of trade, but it is still the centre for oil refinery and oil stores and also carries on some manufacturing, all of which are important military targets.