RAIDS ON MOSCOW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 September 1941, Page 5

RAIDS ON MOSCOW

LIE DIRECT TO GERMAN PROPAGANDA FEW PLANES PENETRATE DEFENCES. TESTIMONY OF BRITISH OBSERVER. LONDON. September 10. The lie direct is given to the German propaganda stories of the “devastating effect” of the air raids on Moscow by Colonel Guy Simmonds, fire adviser to the Home Office, who has returned to Britain after seven weeks in the Russian capital. In a broadcast. Colonel Simmonds said: “There were 18 raids in the six weeks I was there. I watched most of them from my billet in the heart of Moscow, and I never saw a heavy raid. “There were six or seven fires ' on the most serious night, and sometimes none at all —quite trivial; so the A.R.P. and fire services have never really been extended. “The anti-aircraft barrage round and in the city was amazingly strong. Shell splinters came down on the roof of my billet like hail. “If, as was stated, about 200 planes attacked the city on several occasions, I know how few got. in and how little damage they did. It may have been the intense barrage or the very clear nights, but I know also that when the Germans flew low, as they did once only, the A.A. fire brought down 50.” Colonel Simmonds added that there was shelter accommodation, including the underground railways, to hold 80 per cent of Moscow’s 4,000,000 inhabitants.