FLYING-BOAT’S EXPLOIT

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 164, 6 April 1940, Page 11

FLYING-BOAT’S EXPLOIT

Six Junkers Engaged

ONE BAGGED, OTHERS

DRIVEN OFF

Spectacular R.A.F. Action

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright

LONDON, April 4

The Air Ministry announces that a Coastal Command flying-boat encountered six enemy planes of the Junker type over the North Sea yesterday afternoon and shot down one, which was seen to fall into the sea. The others broke off the engagement. It is learned that the British plane was a Sunderland flying-boat, which returned with some of its controls shot away. Two of the officers were injured. The battle is stated to have been one of the most spectacular that has been fought over the North Sea. It is the first time that a flying-boat has been in combat. The Sunderland found that au enemy plane was shadowing a convoy and engaged the German, which made off. An hour later four Junker machines appeared, but gunfire from the ships frustrated Nazi hopes of bombing them, and the Germans made off. Then six Junkers appeared and two of them attacked the ilying-boat, whose guns blazed, driving off the Germans.

The other four Junkers came in and sent a bail of bullets past the Sunderland, whose tail gunner held his fire until the Junkers were 100 yards distant. Then lie fired with all four guns. The leading Junker spun down into the sea on fire.

Another swerved away and later landed in Norway. A third fruitlessly bombed the Sunderland as soon as tlie others withdrew.

The British Admiralty confirms that no damage was done to the convoy. Trawlers Attacked. Nazi bombers attacked British trawlers fishing in the North Sea yesterday. The crew of the Aberdeen trawler Gorspen took to the lifeboat when a bomb fell nearby, apparently damaging tlie ship, and were picked up. One fisherman was injured. The Gorspen was still afloat when it was last seen. No other vessel was damaged. The same German aircraft also bombed the trawlers Corennie and Delila and dropped two bombs and seven aerial torpedoes, all of which missed. The trawlers fired on the raiders, and the crews believe that one was hit. The planes made off when a British fighter approached. The German day communique claims that one destroyer, one patrol boat, and two merchantmen of a total tonnage of 7000 were seriously damaged in an attack on a convoy yesterday, and adds that three patrol boats and one merchantman of 5000 tons were destroyed by incendiary bombs and that one patrol boat and three merchantmen of a total tonnage of 17,000 were damaged by bomb hits. Two German planes made forced landings, the crews being saved. One plane is missing, and one British fighter was shot down.

[The British Admiralty announcement about this attack was: “Enemy aircraft attacked a convoy this afternoon and dropped 15 bombs without hitting any ship or doing any damage. Tlie aircraft, were driven off by the fire of the escorting warships. One Heinkel attacked another convoy, but was driven off by the Fleet air arm aircraft.”]

GERMAN RAIDERS’ LOSSES

Cautious Satisfaction

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, April 4.

The fact that the total number of enemy aircraft, -brought down since the outbreak of the war in Britain and home waters yesterday reached 52, against the loss of only one R-*Ll‘ • machine, is regarded as highly satisfactory, though “The Times” says it would be foolish to exaggerate either the scale or the nature of the losses inflicted upon these tip-and-run raiders. “The loss in raiding machines,” says “The Times,” “is negligible to an air force of any size, and the only features of the story which deserve any emphasis are the loss of trained crews, the technical disparity at the moment between the German bombers of the types used and the British lighters, and the complete discrediting of the German claim to be masters of the North Sea. “Nor must it be thought that the casualties in all kinds of air operations are so one-sided or that the strength of the German air force as a whole is necessarily an exploded myth.”

PILOT OFFICER KAIN

On Leave In England

LONDON, April 4

An airman unobtrusively sitting in a corner of a restaurant today proved to be Pilot Officer Kain, the ace aviator from Wellington, who is home on his first leave. He walked the street with twenty pieces of shrapnel in his left leg and one in his left hand, relics of his most recent battle. Kain saw a newsreel of himself and then visited a farm in Sussex to see the mother of a comrade who had been killed.

ROYAL PALACES

French Canadians To Mount Guard (British Official Wireless i RUGBY, April 4. Canadian troops will mount, guard at Buckingham Palace and St. James's Palace on eight days this month. French-Canadians who are among the guard will be making history, lor this will be the first time troops of the British Empire, but not. of purely British descent and not speaking English as their mother tongue, have guarded the residences of the Sovereign,