NAZI SLIP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 March 1941, Page 5

NAZI SLIP

STORY OF THE SINKING OF THE ARK ROYAL. NOW ADMITTED TO BE UNTRUE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, March 15. A damaging admission made by the German wireless has not escaped notice in London. It will be remembered that the German High Command claimed that the Ark Royal was sunk on September 26, 1939, by bombs from an aircraft piloted by Corporal Franke, who was promoted and decorated with the Iron. Cross, first-class, for this feat. At 6 p.m. on Friday there was a German broadcast on the career of a German officer, Wing Commander Harlinghausen. He was described as being chief of staff of the German flying corps at the time of the engagement with the English Fleet as early as September, 1939, “when the Ark Royal was damaged.” The supposed loss of the Ark Royal was triumphantly hailed in German as proof of the efficacy of air power against sea power. This belated official German admission that the claim was totally false will be of interest in those few countries where some credibility is still given to German report. Incidentally, it is not irrelevant to German boasts of efficacy of aircraft against naval forces, to note that the number of enemy aircraft destroyed or severely damaged by the guns of ships of British and Allied navies or defensive armament of Merchant ships is now more than 400.