GERMAN REPORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 October 1940, Page 5

GERMAN REPORT

ON BRITISH “AIR TERROR” 'OPERATIONS. HEAVY DAMAGE ADMITTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 12. The Berlin radio announced that the first of today’s planes returning from London reported that large fires had been started. A German communique: “Bombs from light bomber formations over London yesterday caused fires which guided heavy formations for reprisal attacks. Many medium and heavycalibre bombs caused more fires between the Thames elbow and Leyton. Another large scale attack directed on harbour and industrial areas in Liverpool and Manchester resulted in several fires. -We successfully bombed several armament and supply plants in the Midlands and on the east coast of Scotland. One important factory on the east coast was burnt to the ground. “Our long-distance batteries dispersed a convoy off Dover. Our planes hit an 8000-ton merchantman and bombed another convoy south of the Hebrides, hitting two ships. A U-boat sank three ships, totalling 21,000 tons, forming part of a convoy. “The British Air Force, carrying out terror operations on a number of Dutch towns, caused big material damage and loss of life. The rest of the enemy’s activity was limited to a few night flights over the Heligoland Bight and the north German coast. “The, enemy yesterday lost 13 planes. One of ours is missing.” German officials stated that U-boats operating from an undisclosed port attacked a British torpedo-boat flotilla off the Isle of Wight yesterday. The British Admiralty says it has no comment to make on this matter. NAZI LIES AN EFFECTIVE EXPOSURE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 12. An interesting feature of the comment in the German news services on the Air Ministry communique of last Tuesday, which exposed the German High Command technique of admitting each day only a fraction of Germany’s heavy air losses over Britain, has not passed unnoticed here. Germany violently assailed this British communique, which gave details of the personnel and types of machines destroyed, but it is observed that the unconvincing German reply to the plain statement of incontrovertible fact, though it received much attention in foreign broadcasts, finds no place in the German services for home consumption. In order, presumably, to check any tendency that might be shown there to question the accuracy of the High Command communique, the topic has been withheld from the German public, which remains in ignorance of the extent of the German air losses in the attacks on Britain. ONLY TWO PILOTS LOST IN SATURDAY'S ENCOUNTERS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.30 a.m.) RUGBY, October 13. It is now known that only two British pilots were lost in yesterday’s encounters over Britain, which resulted in the destruction of eleven German planes and the loss, of ten British aircraft.