NEW TYPE OF ATTACK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1942, Page 4

NEW TYPE OF ATTACK

ON AMERICAN MERCHANT SHIP

GERMAN RAIDER USES TORPEDO-BOATS.

SPANISH VESSEL REFUSES AID TO CASTAWAYS.

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) NEW YORK. August 19. A United Press correspondent at a New England port says a German surface raider of 9.GCO tons, using two torpedo-boats in a pincers attack, sank a medium-sized American merchantman in the first such attack of the present war. Fifteen of the crew are believed to have been killed and twenty were taken aboard the raider. Eleven wounded men were rescued by a United Nations merchantman, after sailing 450 miles in a s lifeboat. The survivors said the attack occurred at night, in the South Atlantic and was launched simultaneously from three sides. Sixty, rounds of heavy shells were fired by the raider as the torpedo-boats fired four torpedoes and machine-gunned the merchantman. The United States Navy has announced the sinking of three more merchantmen —a small and mediumsized British ships torpedoed off the northern coast of South America, and a medium-sized United States vessel off the west coast of Africa. The survivors of c British merchantman torpedoed in the Caribbean revealed that a Spanish ship passed close to their lifeboats after 1 the sinking, but ignored their pleas for help.