SEVERELY DAMAGED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 June 1942, Page 4

SEVERELY DAMAGED

GERMAN BATTLE-CRUISER GNEISENAU LIKELY TO BE OUT OF ACTION FO'R LONG TIME. THREE TURRETS BEING DISMANTLED. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.5 p.m.) RUGBY, June 29. “The German battle-cruiser Gneisenau has been severely damaged by R.A.F. bombing attacks, and repairs will take a long time,” says the Air Ministry news service. Damage was inflicted on the Gneisenau while she lay at Brest, during her passage through the English Channel and subsequently at Kiel. The Gneisenau is now in the Polish port of Gdynia, where she has been photographed from the air. The photographs, under expert scrutiny, show that three of the main eleven-inch gun turrets are being dismantled. The A forward turret has been completely removed. The B forward turret has been partly dismantled, with the guns removed and the Y after turret is being dismantled in the same way as the B turret. A floating crane is working over it. Thirty feet of the forecastle deck has been removed and camouflaged netting has been laid ovex - the stern, and between the ship and the dockside. This work of dismantling is evidence of heavy damage.

Some of the damage almost certainly resulted from attacks on the battlecruiser when she was at Brest. She was taken to Kiel on February 12. to undergo more extensive repairs than could be made at Brest and was hit by bombs while at Kiel, during the latter part of February. In one bombing attack, on February 25, night photographs showed a fire on a linei’ in the inner constructions basin at Kiel. This was the Monte Olivia, or a liner of the same class—a ship 500 feet long serving as the Gneisenau’s depot ship, and it is most probable that she also was hit on that night. The damage done in attacks on Kiel undoubtedly caused the Germans to move the Gneisenau to Gdynia, at the end of March or beginning of April, but Gdynia, unlike Kiel, is not a port where majox - repairs to large naval vessels can be made. The Gneisenau may possibly have gone there so that a careful inspection could be carried out at a greater distance from England and with less risk of another’ armourpiercing bomb confusing the issue. In such a case she would have to go back again for repairs to shipyards within easy range of the R.A.F. Her present state shows that such repairs would take a long time. It may be intended to leave her at Gdynia for the duration of the war. In either case, a capital ship of 36.000 tons, one of the three most heavily armoured ships in the German Navy, is immobilised for a considerable time.