AIR OFFENSIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1943, Page 3

AIR OFFENSIVE

MOSQUITOS AGAIN BOMB

BERLIN MANY OTHER TARGETS ATTACKED SUCCESSFUL FIGHTER SWEEPS LONDON, October 18. Berlin’s air raid sirens sounded again last night as a warning to Berliners that it is necessary to get out of the way of bombs dropped by Mosquitoes. Raids by Mosquitoes are now so much a part of routine operations that the Air Ministry often does not mention them. Other targets were bombed in Western Germany and mines were laid in enemy waters. Four British planes are reported missing from the night’s operations. Bright moonlight over the Channel helped Fighter Command pilots in attacks on enemy shipping. Hurricanes destroyed a tug and two barges off the Dutch coast. Mosquitoes bagged seven locomotives in enemy territory, disabling them with cannon and machine-gun fire. Spitfires based in Britain were out on offensive sweeps over Northern France today. They shot down three German fighters. BOMB VICTIMS NUMBER OF~PEOPLE KILLED IN LONDON STREET OF TENEMENT HOUSES HIT (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.15 a.m.) LONDON, October 18. Rescue squads released Mrs Edith Durrant, aged 26, wife of a railway worker, who was buried for ten hours after a raider last night dropped a bomb on a street of London tenement houses. Members of a rescue squad, after working for six hours, heard a woman’s cry for help and found Mrs Durrant in a basement kitchen, lying under the debris on an iron bedstead. She had thrown herself as a protection over her seven-months-old baby, but the child was dead. Mrs Durrant was pinned so securely by the bed that she could not be moved, despite the efforts of rescuers, who were finally forced to abandon their efforts and await the arrival of heavy rescue squads. The death roll in one London area has reached eight and other people are feared to be trapped.