GREAT FIRES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1941, Page 5

GREAT FIRES

STARTED IN BUSY RUHR CENTRE BRITISH BOMBERS BLAST DUISBERG. LOSSES IN DAYLIGHT BATTLES. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, August 29. A heavy and concentrated attack was made on Duisberg by the R.A.F. last night. Duisberg is one of the busiest of the Ruhr’s industrial centres of railway and river communications. The attack was made in ’ force. An important railway yard, station and inland docks were the objectives. Great fires were started. The planes met with heavy anti-aircraft gunfire and a variety of other defences. Ten enemy planes, eight fighters and two fighter-bombers were destroyed in operations by the R.A.F. across the Channel today. Ten British planes are missing but one pilot is safe. BOMBERS STRIKE HOME IN SPITE OF TREMENDOUS GUNFIRE. FLAMES SEEN FROM MANY MILES AWAY. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.25 a.m.) RUGBY, August 29. “Road, railway and river communications were heavily attacked by aircraft of the Bomber Command last night,” states the Air Ministry News Service. “The German defences at Duisberg showed how much yet another attack on this centre was feared. Many of the British crews said that never before had they seen such antiaircraft fire. “Some bombers were caught in vast shafts of light. One crew saw their bombs lit up and gleaming white as they fell, so that they looked like ‘huge, deadly flakes of snow.’ Caught in such a concentration of searchlights, a Stirling bomber was shelled for fifteen minutes and then attacked by fighters, until it dived down out of control. But ’at 500 feet, and at the last moment, the pilot got control again. He flew home all the way at that height and landed the damaged | aircraft in England. “The main force got through every barrier. There was no bad weather to defend Duisberg. On the way, some of the bombers ran into storms of rain and snow, but it was clear over the! Ruhr. The industrial part of Duisberg,, an important railway yard and railway station, and the inland docks at Duisberg-Ruhrort were all vigorously! attacked, with obvious immediate ef-1 feet. “On the way home, it was long before the British crews lost sight of the great fires in Duisberg. As one Whitley was recrossing the Dutch coast, the rear-gunner saw an explosion in the direction of Duisberg. 100 miles away, the whole sky was lighted by a red I glow.”