BATTLE OVER CHANNEL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 November 1940, Page 5

BATTLE OVER CHANNEL

TWENTY GERMAN PLANES DESTROYED Six British Machines Lost BUT TWO OF OUR PILOTS SAFE NUMBER OF HEAVY ATTACKS MADE BY BOMBER COMMAND The Germans lost 20 planes yesterday, a 8.8. C. broadcast states, when a large number of fighters and seme bombers came over the Channel in an attempt to attack shipping. One squadron shot down 15 enemy planes. Six of our machines were lost, but the pilots of two are safe. Upwards of 50 enemy raiders were over the Thames Estuary. British fighters were quickly on the scene and, after being chased ,the enemy planes scattered seaward. A contest resembling a game of chess was engaged in by opposing aircraft in the blue skies over the Straits of Dover. Messerschmitts attempted to lure Spitfires out to sea, where a much larger force of enemy fighters was waiting to pounce on them. Eventually the enemy formations made off in the direction of the coast of France when more Spitfires went up. INDUSTRIAL AREAS BLASTED Machines of the Bomber Command made a four-hour raid on the Ruhr, wrecking workshops and other military objectives in Western Germany. Hundreds of incendiary bombs were dropped, and the fires could be seen 60 miles away. The illuminations guided other bombers to their objectives. One pilot saw a fire a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. LIMITED ATTACKS ON BRITAIN Tons of bombs were dropped by British planes on the submarine base of L’Orient and fires were started which were still visible from tlie attacking machines when they had been flying half an hour on their homeward journey. An attack on the Krupp works at Essen is described by the Air Ministry as exceedingly heavy—the first time this expression has been applied by the Ministry to a bombing attack on an enemy objective. A synthetic oil plant at Cologne, the Dortmund-Ems Canal and a number of aerodromes and other targets were also bombed. From all of these operations all the British planes returned safely. An Air Ministry communique issued at 5 p.m. yesterday said that enemy air action against Britain had been on a comparatively small scale. A few bombs dropped by a single plane at a point in the Midlands and in another place caused no damage or casualties. A small number of raids penetrated to London, where there was little damage and the casualties were few. Ford’s Hospital in Coventry received a direct hit from a bomb. The inmates were mostly old people. Six were hit and 10 injured. Early yesterday morning men and girls proceeding to work on the outskirts of London were bombed and machine-gunned by an enemy plane. Tire attack lasted for only a brief period and most of the workers proceeded on their way. In Thursday night’s raids on London a hospital, shops and public utilities were damaged. Casualties were few. In recent raids the Tower of London and St Clement Danes, in the Strand, were bombed. The British Minister of Supply, Mr Herbert Morrison, said yesterday that the Germans were getting poor returns for bombs and flying hours in their raids on Britain. Citing- the example of a damaged factory in which one-quarter of one per cent of the original material had had to be replaced, Mr Morrison said that was a fair sample of the extent of the damage to British production.