GENOA ROCKED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 90, 17 April 1941, Page 5

GENOA ROCKED.

BY 1000 SHELLS.

works demolished.

lii V-: .. . houses of town unharmed

If I should 6ee no more; of the war! than this, I shnll have seen one of its ft? days. Behind us as the fleettSj teams away, the targets at Genoa, hammered by a thousand shells, lie emouldV 'beneath a pall of smoke.

Her great Ansaldo arms works;! •quivalen.t to our Vickers Armstrong, j •re wrecked, her oil tanks are on fire, ker main power station is out of action, •rot® the "Daily Express" war reporter •f the famous raid.

'. 'Ships Hit. 1 Docks, railway yards, and ships in 1 the harbour have all had their share of 1 ii: one °* the most concentrated punish- ' 1 ttente of the war. Further down the p| •°ast targets at Leghorn and Pisa have jffcecn bombed and set on fire.by aircraft .the fleet. IM-f ''this was done without interferft ® Dce from a single Italian plane, and— »hich may perhaps snrprise every Italian *®tizen who learns the facts—without . inducing their fleet in its northern bases |&'to leave the shelter of its harbours to Accept battle in defence of their home *®®*tl.ne. Coming after the fall of Bengill* 8 '; no one can judge the effect on llpytrMan morale of this day's work, si I write our fleet—Renown, Malaya, .•Sheffield, Ark Royal and the screen of 'SS t w hich earlier, at close range, ||§ggfed, the weight of even their small to the- bombardment—are still! !| .within range of Italian airfields and wrraan dive-bombers, with which some! ||P» them have been equipped. j

[ But still there is no sign of Italy's Battle Fleet. We have waited long enough for it. Now we are on our way baek.

The fleet airmen in the Ark Royal rose at 3.30 this morning, breakfasted, i, and held last discussions. It was their n job to raid Leghorn and Pisa and main- v tain a fighter patrol of the coast to s prevent any attempt by the Italian Air Force to balk our plans. n They took off in darkness and then i, formed up in the air, section by section, squadron 'by squadron, before heading i for Italy in formation as precise as that a expected in daylight exercises. t In the half-light before dawn the r leaders of one squadron reached Leghorn 0 and discerned the outlines of the Azienda oil-from-coal hydrogenation plant they were, going to attack. ' From the mountains a river flowing t past a factory discharged into the sea t a finger of white mineral deposit which a jutted out from the coastline like the 1 beam of a dim searchlight. _ c They dived down, dropped high ex- c plosives, then a shower of incendiaries. A huge green flash leaped up," then fires g spread everywhere. Other bombs were £ dropped on metal works with similar | effect. ' , < Returning seawards, some pilots , threaded their way through the balloon ] barrage with which the coast is pro- , i tected, the airfield and the important ] : rail junction of Pisa' near by being attacked at the same time. One pilot . ' said: "It was with great reluctance ! that I resisted the temptation to drop ! something near the Leaning Tower, so ; as to straighten it and ruin the tourist traffic#" About the same time we were firing ' opening salvoes off Genoa. The silence - of the city and the hills which enclose j it was shattered by the arrival of the , broadsides while our ships were at that moment rocking with the recoil of the 8 next salvo. ° Strictly Military Objectives. e Our firing was aimed strictly at military objectives. Loss of life should j n have been small, because it was too early for the city to have bestirred i, itself, and, being Sunday, the streets f of the industrial quarter would prob- !, ably not be crowded, as they would 11 have been on an ordinary working day. H ' Spotting through powerful glasses red vealed that our firing was remarkably e accurate, and that practically nothing had fallen beyond the inner harbour

among the white houses of the residential quarter in the narrow terraced streets we could see rising among the foothills.

Our attack took the local defenders by surprise, and for the first few minutes we could see that their gunners were firing straight into the air, presumably believing that planes were bombing them. Then, discovering their mistake, they turned intermittent and inaccurate fire seawards.

Our shells could be seen plunging | into dry docks, warehouses and sheds, and dropping with repeated accuracy on the Ansaldo works and their adjoining rail junction up the valley to the left of the town as we faced it. Tongue of Flame. Suddenly, from a row of oil tanks on the mole to the right of the harbour, a tongue of flame leapt high, subsiding after a full minute into a glow of fierce heat.. A direct hit on a power plant caused a series of explosions to flash in circuit throughout the town.

! The blast from our ships of loin | shells, which stand forehead - high | against the averaged-sized man, was terrific, and the constant necessity to duck one's head as the thunderous reports struck the eardrums made it difficult to keep the target under uninterrupted observation. It was difficult, at least, for an amateur.

Between times, however, one could i [see smoke rising from ships damaged in the haTbour. Ansaldo's was now well alight, and the flicker of this and a dozen other fires in different parts of the city was reflected back by the snowcovered Apennine Mountains, now a brilliant white in the rays of the dawn sun.

Shortly afterwards we withdrew,' while the shore guns continued to fire desultorily through the thick, rolling [smoke , which now covered the burning lharbour.

Judging from our last view of the battered harbour before it was obscured by smoke, it is now ill-fitted for its suggested use as an embarkation point for the German Army seeking to invade- North Africa.

When oUr aircraft returned from Leghorn and Pisa and from the patrols in which, unchallenged, they had dominated more than 80 miles oi Italian coastline for more than two hours, inly one was missing. It was our only j casualty of any kind whatsoever.