NAZI LIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 January 1942, Page 4

NAZI LIES

REGARDING SPANISH SHIPPING LOSSES FURTHER EXPOSURE MADE BY ADMIRALTY. ANOTHER VICTIM SUNK. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.30 a.m.) RUGBY, January 28. An Admiralty communique states: “Another Spanish ship, the Navemar, has fallen a victim to Axis U-boats, and. as is their practice, the Axis put out broadcasts asserting that the ship was torpedoed by a British submarine.” The Admiralty previously pointed out, in connection with the sinking of the Spanish ship Badalona, that the object of the Axis in making these lying allegations is to create trouble between Britain and Spain. In view of the long record of attacks by Axis U-boats upoii neutral merchantmen, it is obvious where to look for the authors of this latest outrage. Nevertheless, the Admiralty states that no British or Allied submarine was at the time anywhere near the scene of the incident. The circumstances of the sinking of the Portuguese ship Corte Real and the Spanish ships Barcelona and Castillo Oropesa. make it plain that it is the deliberate’policy of the Axis to deal ruthlessly with shipping at the Iberian Peninsula,” states the Admiralty. “In each of the three cases the sinking was clearly premeditated, and in the first two the U-boat responsible was identified as German, while the torpedo which sank the Castello Oropesa was subsequently proved to have been of Italian manufacture. “This new attack, on a ship carrying supplies to Spain from across the Atlantic, may indicate that they are now hoping to cut off Spain from all trade with the outside world. So far from being responsible for the brutal attack on the Navemar, the British Admiralty, mindful of ready assistance given in the past by the Spanish mercantile marine to British seamen in similar circumstances, diverted two British surface warships to search the area where the Navemar was reported to have been attacked. A majority of the crew is now stated to have been saved by another Spanish vessel, so their relatives have been relieved of the cruel anxiety caused by the mendacious Axis reports that the whole crew was lost."