HEAVY BOMBING OF TURIN

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23818, 11 December 1942, Page 5

HEAVY BOMBING OF TURIN

Second Attack In

24 Hours

LARGE FIRES IN TARGET AREA

(N.Z. Press Association— Copyright) ’Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 10. 1 A strong force of home-based Royal Air Force bombers last night attacked Turin, in northern Italy, for the second time in 24 hours. Three bombers are missing. No details of the raid are yet available. In the previous night's raid on this important centre of Italy s war industry more of Britain's giant 80001b bombs were dropped. Many 40001b bombs w'ere also dropped, as well as tens of thousands of incendiaries. Only one British bomber is missing from the raid.

Clear w'ealher and flares made conditions ideal for precision bombing in the earlier attack, and the crew's of the raiding aircraft reported large concentrations of fires. One pilot said that as his machine crossed the Alps the peaks w'ere lit up by the flares dropped over Turin, and on the way back fires lit up the peaks. Another pilot who has taken part in 45 raids declared that Tuesday night’s raid w'as one of the best he had seen. When he arrived over the target area there w'ere fires everywhere, but when he left single fires could not be distinguished. There w'as just one mass of flames. After Mussolini’s promise that more guns were coming from Germany to defend Italian industries, the crews of the British bombers were on the lookout for much heavier opposition over Turin, but there were still few antiaircraft guns and about only half a dozen searchlights. Turn twin-engined fighters w'ere seen over the city, but they appeared to make no attack. An Italian communique admits that Tuesday night’s raid on Turin caused "great damage in the centre of the city.” It says that a university and a hospital were hit. The correspondent of the “Daily Mail” on the Italian frontier says that 400,000 evacuees have already left Milan for safer regions, Many have obtained permission to enter French Savoy. Mussolini has issued a decree placing all workers and employers under military jurisdiction and forbidding them to leave their places of employment. .The . decree is designed to stop the panic flight from the danger zones which has threatened to paralyse industries. The decree affects 4,000,000 workers and 154,000 establishments.

An eye-witness describes the flight from Milan as an appalling spectacle Everything is being used, from wheelbarrows to motor-cars.

POPE WILL NOT LEAVE ROME

VATICAN SPOKESMAN’S

STATEMENT

LONDON, Dec. 9. “A spokesman at the Vatican declared that the Pope would not leave Rome should British aeroplanes bomb the capital,” says the Berne correspondent of the “Evening Standard.” The spokesman added; “Diplomats approached the Pope and suggested that he should leave for his country estate, the Castel Gandolfo, in view of the danger of remaining in Rome under present conditions. The Pope refused and said: T have ordered all my bishops to remain at their posts as good shepherds among thei r flocks in this time of national distress.’ ”

The spokesman said: ‘The Pope, who is also Bishop of Rome, does not w'ish'to be the first to disobey the order which he himself has given.”

TARGETS IN PRANCE AND HOLLAND

RAILWAYS ATTACKED

(8.0. W.) RUGBY, Dec. 9. An Air Ministry communique says: | “Fighter Command and Army Co-oper- | ation Command aircraft again attacked | ground targets in France and the Low | Countries to-day. Two locomotives, a I goods train, and several tugs were y damaged. | “In the afternoon Mosquitoes of the | Bomber Command attacked industrial 5 objectives in Holland and railway tar- p gets in France. None of our aircraft f is missing.” If

EUROPE AFTER THE WAR

HELPING OCCUPIED COUNTRIES

(8.0. W.) RUGBY, Dec. 9. Asking what measures were proposed to relieve the shortage of certain necessities in the subjugated States of Europe as soon as they were freed from Nazi control, Lord Strabolgi. in the House of Lords, recalled the suffering during the months immediately following the armistice in the last war, and said the House was anxious that there should be no repetition of this delay.

The Archoishop of York said he felt that the primary question that had to be solved was the possibility of at least one nation being partially exterminated. He urged the Government to state repeatedly and solemnly that when the hour of deliverance came, retribution would be dealt out, not only on the cold-blooded, cowardly brutes who v ere ordering massacres such as in Poland, but on the thousands of underlings who appeared to be joyfully and gladly carrying them out.

Lord Cranborne said that the immediate relief of the people in the occupied countries was exercising the minds of all. There was at present no real sign of any crack in the morale of the enemy, and there was every indication that the war would continue for a considerable time yet. Wars had a way of collapsing suddenly, and it was essential that the Allies should he ready, when the time came, to relieve the suffering of the people in Europe. Good progress had been made by the Allied technical committee in preparing estimates, and a number of Aided technical committees had been constituted to consider the various requirements. A committee had also been set up to enlist and organise assistance for the Society of Friends and other private organisations winch did such magnificent work alter the last war. A pool of the wheat supply had already been agreed upon. Organisations wen' getting into trim and time was not being wasted. Action alter the war was not to be defended merely on humanitarian grounds. None could restore his own prosperity ii his neighbour's was to be ruined.

Views of General Franco “The old Europe at the end of Hie war will be dead—without its capitalism, imperialism, and plutocracy ” said General Franco in a speech at Madrid. He added that hi? regime had . -t shut the door on the return of the Spanish monarchy, but the restoration must be conditional on a continuance of the national evolution. The .mb- international issue at stake was whether the world would have totalitarian Bolshevism. totalitarian Fascism, or some regime resembling the latter. Economic conditions after the war would permit no other choice.