IN SPITE OF STORMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 October 1940, Page 5

IN SPITE OF STORMS

RESOLUTE ATTACKS BY BRITISH BOMBERS On Enemy Inland and Coastal Objectives TWENTIETH RAID ON KRUPPS WORKS NAZIS LOSE 23 PLANES ON SATURDAY The R.A.F. made a lightning attack on the Krupps Works at Essen and dropped two tons of bombs, a 8.8. C. broadcast states. Railway yards at several points and an oil plant were also bombed. The raid on the Krupps Works was about the twentieth and that on railway yards at Hamm about the sixteenth _ The pilots had to fly through terrible weather to make the attack and on the homeward journey had to pass through an electrical storm 5000 ft in depth. Wireless communication was impossible. Shipping at Rotterdam and the docks at French ports and a number of ports and enemy occupied aerodromes in the Netherlands were also attacked. Three British machines were lost. . „ ~ . The weather was so bad that German air attacks on Britain were on a reduced scale, though scattered over a wide area. The raiders dived down and made machine-gun attacks on whatever was below them. They can do this only when there are clouds about. At several places the German planes dived down, fired a short burst of machine-gun fire and quickly made off. Few people were injured and there were not many casualties from bombs, which were dropped in widely separated places. Some houses were damaged or demolished. The weather made the interception of the enemy planes difficult, but at least two were shot down. Last night brought no improvement in the weather. In the Straits of Dover there was a howling gale and torrential rain. In Saturday’s operations, three more of the British pilots previously reported missing have turned up, making only two lost and nine fighters lost. The Germans lost 23 planes and 18 of these were brought down in a single hour. Another German bomber was destroyed during the night.