AIR “BLITZ”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 March 1941, Page 5

AIR “BLITZ”

SIX MONTHS’ EXPERIENCE IN LONDON ALERTS LAST 1,286 HOURS. LONGEST RAID FOURTEEN HOURS. (By Telegraph —Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, March 6. It will be six months tomorrow since the air "blitz" began against London. The alerts have lasted a total of L 286 hours. The longest raid was 14 hours 4 minutes, with almost continual bombing, and (he shortest alert has been nine minutes. There have been either day or night warnings on each day between August 23 and December 12, with 57 consecutive night raids. A hero of today’s raids was Mr Jack Riches, who, when a stick of bombs straddled eight houses in an East Anglian town, went into a house to rescue three children. He carried two of them downstairs when a bomb made a direct hit on the next house, burying Riches and the three children under debris, but he managed to get the children out of the house before it collapsed. LITTLE DAMAGE NAZI RAIDS IN ENGLAND. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.55 a.m.) RUGBY, March 7. An official communique states: “At dusk yesterday an enemy aircraft dropped bombs on a town in the west of England. Several houses were damaged and a' small number of casualties caused. In the early hours of darkness bombs dropped elsewhere did very little damage, and no casualties are reported.