RANDOM BOMBING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1940, Page 6

RANDOM BOMBING

LONG RAID ON MERSEYSIDE REMARKABLY FEW CASUALTIES. ATTACK ON LONDON-BOUND TRAIN.

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.20 a.m.) LONDON, October 11. Forty high-explosive bombs and many fire-bombs were dropped on Merseyside last night in the longest indiscriminate raids yet experienced. No military damage was done and there were remarkably few casualties. Two hospitals, several packed cinema's and an old folks’ home were slightly damaged and rlprrowly escaped direct hits. A raider bombed a London-bound tube train while it was travelling in the open air, before going underground. A stick of four bombs missed the train, but derailed two coaches 200 yards from a station. Fifty passengers, hearing three other bombs > explode a few seconds earlier, had thrown themselves on the floor. As a result no one was hurt. All thereafter followed the driver and guard along the line to the nearest station. London had three alerts in the morning. Raiders were chased away from the suburbs. A raider on a south-east town in the morning machine-gunned a street as it dive-bombed over homes and shops. A few persons were injured.

GERMAN REPORTS (Received This Day, 11.20 a.m.) LONDON, October 11. A German- communique says: “London was again the centre of retaliatory raids yesterday. Numerous explosions and large fires were observed in London, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Manchester and Merseyside and also in centres in South England and the Midlands. “Enemy attacks on towns and industrial plants in North-West Germany caused no military damage.” The Berlin news agency says a hail of bombs dropped on Hamburg last night in the most violent R.A.F. < raid yet. There was devastation over 1 an area of half a square mile. Many t houses were destroyed. Three persons i were killed and a large number in- i jured. The R.A.F. heavily raided ( Amsterdam, where 18 persons' were 1 killed and twenty wounded. c I v