FLAMING CHAOS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 May 1943, Page 4

FLAMING CHAOS

IN STRICKEN DORTMUND AFTER HEAVIEST BOMBING IN HISTORY. GERMAN PAPER’S REMARKABLE ADMISSION. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received. This Day, 11.20 a.m.) LONDON, May 25. Ambulance trains, columns of motor vehicles, emergency kitch ens and supply convoys are being rushed to Dortmund, which on Sunday night received more than 2,000 tons of bombs from the R.A.F., says the Stockholm correspondent of the “Evening Standard.” The city is reported to be still in a state of flaming chaos. Thirty thousand people are homeless and a great number were killed, al though no authoritative estimate is yet available. Berne reports say the heaviest bombing attack in history caught Dortmund completely off guard Twentyfive per cent of Dortmund’s A.R.P. personnel and fire-watchers were last week hurriedly transferred to the Ruhr for flood rescue work. One result of this was that sirens were not sounded in Dortmund until several minutes after the attack commenced. The “Voelkischer Beobachter,” in one of the few admissions of the extent of the havoc caused by the Allied bombing offensive, says: “There is not one German in Essen, Duisberg, Dusseldorf, Dortmund or the surrounding area who has not suffered personally, or not had property damaged, as a result of R.A.F. bombing, or not had to bear relatives’ misfortunes.” The aviation writer of the “Daily Express” says Dortmund became a priority target because much of Essen’s crippled war production had been switched there.