MUCH DAMAGE DONE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 August 1941, Page 6

MUCH DAMAGE DONE

IN GREAT BRITISH RAID ON PRUSSIA INDUSTRIAL CITIES LEFT ABLAZE. MACHINES OF LATEST TYPE USED. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.35 a.m.) RUGBY. August 15. “Last night’s R.A.F. offensive rrwd cn to the great manufacturing cities of Prussia,” states the ,Air Ministry News Service. “The largest of three attacking forces was sent to Hanover, but two other capitals of German provinces, Brunswick and Magdeburg, each was heavily bombed.

“Not only were the British bombers out in great numbers, but the latest types of Manchesters, four-engin-ed Stirlings and Halifaxes were among them. Hanover, with a population of half a million, is a centre of heavy industries. Its iron foundries and factories, now given over to air production, lie mostly in the north and southwest of the city. From fifty miles away the pilots of successive waves of bombers could pick out fires started among these objectives by the first arrivals. When their turn came to bomb, a bright moon lit up buildings and railway lines. There was little cloud. The bombing was steady- and accurate and the report of the last crew to leave Hanover spoke of a great triangle of raging fires left in the city. The fires in. Hanover were seen by crews striking yet more deeply into Germany. Their objectives were Brunswick, a town with many factories, making machinery asd motor transport, and Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony, another great industrial city and centre of railway and river traffic. Here the clouds were thicker. ;At Brunswiock, too, the British crews overcame the weather and returned, with satisfying reports of damage done.