MUNICH BOMBED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 September 1943, Page 3

MUNICH BOMBED

R.A.F. & CANADIAN ATTACK $ DESCRIBED AS CONCENTRATED & EFFECTIVE. SUCCESSFUL NIGHT & DAY OPERATIONS. LONDON, September 7. Last night R.A.F. and Canadian bombers made what is officially described as a concentrated and effective attack on Munich in Southern Germany. There was sonic cloud over the target, which made observation difficult. The Germans tried out flares again and used every form of defence. Several enemy aircraft were destroyed. Sixteen bombers were lost, five of them from Canadian squadrons. Besides possessing war factories of some importance, Munich is the transport centre through which passes much of the German traffic to Italy. Allied bombers and fighters in formation after formation were seen starting out from their bases in Britain today to attack airfields, railway junctions and other targets in Northern France and Belgium. United States Flying Fortresses, soon after dawn, attacked an aircraft factory and airfield on the outskirts of Brussels. Others attacked targets at St Omer, in Northern France. Good results were reported. Typhoons caught the enemy defences napping on another airfield and dropped bombs among aircraft parked on the ground, destroying several of them. Liberators attacked a convoy off the Dutch coast. United States Marauders went for marshalling yards in Northern France and R.A.F. Mitchells for railway trucks and locomotives at St Omer. The airfield at Abbeville also had another pounding today. Two enemy fighters were shot down for the loss of one Allied aircraft. BIG OUTLAY COSTS OF CRUSHING HAMBURG • & BERLIN. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, September 7. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr Morgenthau, addressing a bond rally, said that crushing Hamburg from the air cost the Allies 346,000,000 dollars. He added: “We want to blast Berlin from the face of the map. This may cost six times as much.” AIR DEFENCES RUSHED TO ALSACE-LORRAINE REPORTED EVACUATION OF STRASBOURG. LONDON, September 7. The Germans have started evacuating Strasbourg, .in France, says the Geneva newspaper “Journal de Geneve.” Travellers arriving in Switzerland say that the Germans are rushing anti-aircraft defences to Alsace-Lorraine where large cities are at present defenceless. ATTACK DRIVEN HOME DESPITE GERMAN EFFORTS. IN DEFENCE OF HITLER’S ADOPTED CITY. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.42 a.m.) RUGBY, September 7. After their failure to stop the Bomber Command’s heavy atta'ck on Mannheim on Sunday night with gunfire, the Germans once more tried flares to light up our aircraft attacking Munich last night, says the Air Ministry news service. They brought out everything to defend Hitler’s adopted city. Light and heavy flak, together with hundreds of searchlights and squadrons of fighters, lay low until the first salvo of bombs dropped. Then all the defences went into action. A great weight of high-explosive and incendiary bombs was propped in about half an hour. As the bombing became more intense, the gunfire wavered and fell away, but the searchlights held on grimly to gaps in the clouds immediately over the target and tried to cone the bombers for the fighters. Flares dropped from a great height took as long as 20 minutes to fall to the ground. One pilot saw as many as 40 being dropped at time, and several crews described how the Germans tried to make a brilliant path of. light along the route to the city. A large part of the force had bombed and left, by the time the Germans laid the first “flare path” thousands of feet above the city, and the remainder found that the flares often helped them to pick out fighters. One pilot saw three enemy aircraft shot down over the town, and another, towards the end of the attack, saw combats between bombers and fighters going on all round. ’

A Stirling pilot who was one of the last over the target said fires were getting well alight by the time he left. He and his comrades could see thick smoke rolling up at least three miles. When they were 150 miles on their way home, the rear-gunner told him he could still see the glow. From the reports of crews it appears that the Germans used almost every type of fighter in combat. The reports have not yet been checked, but is is known that several enemy aircraft were brought down against the loss of 16 R.A.F. aircraft.

Said the Nazi Minister, Dr. Frank, on December 21, 1940: “We are proud to master the world as Germans. Today Adolf Hitler is called upon to be the leader of the world unhampered by anyone. Adolf Hitler stands before the world as the greatest war lord in history.” Said the German broadcast to England, on April 21, 1943: “The cornerstone of the New Order is ‘government by consent of the governed.’ ” In one number of Colin Wills’s “Australian Newsletter,” broadcast weekly from the 8.8. C., he told of a queer happening at Babinda, Queensland. Somebody presented a news agent there with an egg. After leaving it on ice for twenty-four hours, he put it in his shop window. Next morning he found the window space had become the happy hunting ground of a lively young crocodile, •