DOZEN SHIPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1942, Page 4

DOZEN SHIPS

LOST BV THE ALLIES OFF WEST AFRICA

NAZIS USING SMALL U-BOATS

WITH AID OF OSTENSIBLE NEUTRALS.

SOME SUBMARINES SEEN REFUELLING.

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 1.15 p.m.) LONDON, October 11. Nearly a dozen Allied ships are known to have been sunk around Cape PalmaS (in West Africa, at the point where the French Sahara meets Liberia), says Reuter’s correspondent in a message from a United Nations’ base in West Africa. The Germans are using a small type cf U-boats off West Africa, and apparently are receiving supplies and assistance from pro-German countries which are technically neutral. The Associated Press reports that one trader said he saw in August two, Üboats in the roadstead at Port Bouet, which is an important shipping centre on the Ivory Coast. An air line pilot saw a submarine refuelling near the same city. Other submarines have been reported at Konakry and off Dakar. Three Vichyite merchantmen and one destroyer sailed northward around Cape Palmas shortly before three submarines fired on an Allied plane in that vicinity. The Vichy ships possibly carried fuel for a rendezvous with the submarines. A rubber planter said it was common knowledge that native-owned surf boats went to sea nightly from neutral territory, loaded with meat, and returned in the morning empty. It is also suggested that it is no coincidence that bush fires, visible far out to sea, broke out when Allied ships were at ports and were extinguished after’ the ships had sailed.