DAYLIGHT ATTACK

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13111, 1 April 1943, Page 5

DAYLIGHT ATTACK

RAID ON ROTTERDAM

Shipbuilding; Yards Hit

Philips Works Again Pounded

London, March 31

United States Fixing Fortresses attacked Rotterdam in daylight today. The targets were shipping and ship-building yards.

Rotterdam was attacked earlier in the week by the R.A.F. Allied fighters supported the American bombers over the target. The weather was not good and although bombs were seen to burst in the target area the results could not be accurately observed. Anti-aircraft fire was heavy but enemy fighter opposition was slight. One of our planes failed to return. Yesterday evening R.A.F. Mosquito bombers attacked the big Philips electrical works at Eindhoven in Holland.

This plant was badly damaged in a big R.A.F. raid last year and since then the Germans had been working hard to bring it back to frill production.

All our planes returned safely. Our pilots said that in the fading light they saw V signs being flashed to them from many Dutch houses. The Mosquitoes flew so low that they had to bank round church steeples and whip their wings over trees. The British Minister for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, told the House of Commons to-day that targets attacked by our air forces were invariably military ones.

In the process of attacking such targets it might be unavoidable that civilian property and life in the immediate vicinity would suffer damage.