SUSPECTED LAIR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 241, 12 October 1942, Page 3

SUSPECTED LAIR

U-BOATS OFF AFRICA

Stories Of Neutral Supplies

For Enemy L'nii.cil Press Association—Copvright Rec. 2 p.m. LONDON 7 , Oct. 11 Nearly a dozen Allied ships are known to have been sunk around Cape Palmas (Liberia), says a Renter's correspondent in a message from a United Nations base in West Africa. The Germans were using a small type of U-boats off West Africa, and apparently were receiving supplies and assistance from proGerrnan countries, which were technically neutral. The Associated Press reports that one trader said that he saw in August two U-boats in the roadstead at Port Bouet (French West Africa), which is an important shipping centre on the Ivory Coast. An airline pilot saw a submarine refuelling near the same city. Other submarines were reported at Konakry and off Dakar.

Three Vichy merchantmen and one destroyer sailed north-ward around Cape Palmas shortly before three submarines fired on an Allied plane in that vicinity. Vichy ships possibly carried fuel for a rendezvous with the submarines.

A rubber planter said that it was common knowledge that nativeowned surf boats went to sea nightly from neutral territory, loaded with meat, and returned in the morning empty. It was also suggested that it was not coincidence that bush fires, visible far out at sea, broke out when Allied ships were at ports, and were extinguished after ships sailed.