GOEBBELS AGAIN

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 183, 30 April 1940, Page 7

GOEBBELS AGAIN

Amazing Adventures Of British Warships CROWNING EFFORT (British Official Wireless.) (Received April 29, 7.5 p.m.) RUGBY, April 28. Following the adventures of the three British battle-cruisers, Hood, Renown and Repulse, through the maze of German propaganda is a bewildering task. The Repulse first received Dr. Goebbels’s attention last October when he claimed that she had been “torpedoed and almost certainly sunk” at Scapa Flow at the same time that the Royal Oak was sunk. In February, however, the Repulse steamed into a British port to give the crew leave after weathering the winter gales. Dr. Goebbels then stated that the Repulse had “come in for repairs” and had a large hole below the waterline.

Thinking, j>erhaps, that he had paid too great a tribute to British seamanship and shipbuilding which had enabled a seriously damaged ship with a large hole below the waterline to keep the seas through the winter months, Dr, Goebbels decided to drop this subject. About a month later, on March lb, came a Nazi raid on Scapa Flow. There was no ship sunk and no capital ship damaged, so the German propaganda was forced to manufacture some sort of success. Consequently the radio station Deutsehlandsender announced on March 17 that three British battleships and one cruiser had been seriously damaged, and on the next morning Zeesen radio informed America that the Hood, Renown and Repulse were the ships concerned. Dr. Goebbels had paid another tribute to British craftsmanship. All Out Of Action. According to his own story, .an “enormous hole below the waterline in the Repulse had been successfully repaired in a month and the ship was back iu Scapa Flow ready to receive the attention of the German bombers, which not only damaged her again but the Hood and Renown as well, thus putting out of action all three battlecruisers. Unfortunately for Dr. Goebbels, the German battle-cruiser Scbarnhorst encountered a British battle-cruiser 24 days later and felt the weight of her guns. The Germans again claimed to have damaged the Renown, and for once with justification. As announced by the Admiralty she received unimportant damage in her action witli the Scbarnhorst. Yesterday Hamburg radio told English listeners “off Andalsnes (Norway) a British battle-cruiser received several hits of various calibres and was put out of action.” This was a little too much, even for Dr. Goebbels, and an hour later Bremen radio rectified the error and announced that it was a “British anti-aircraft cruiser" which had been hit.

Creating an entirely new type of warship and sinking it at the same moment is but a minor achievement to the German Propaganda Minister. Meanwhile, the Hood, Renown and Repulse are available for other putposes than to be sunk by him.

CLEVER U-BOAT

(British Official Wireless) RUGBY, April 28. Last Wednesday the Deutsclilamlsender broadcast to Germany a story of the sinking of the British steamer Armanistan by a U-boat during a cruise from which she bad “just returned." Tiie Armanistan was sunk on February 3 and her crew were rescued by the Spanish ship Monte d'Abril. The Joss of the Armanistan was announced bv ihe Admiralty on February 6

OUTPOST ATTACKED

West Front Activity PARIS, April 28. German patrol activity on the Western Front on Saturday included an attack on a French outpost from which the French withdrew under heavy artillery (ire. 'The Germans were buried under an avalanche of French shells and were forced to retire. The French reoccupied the post last night. French and German guns peppered each other in the Saar and Alsace areas.

A French oflieial communique stales that there is nothing to report except some artillery lire ami a local encounter west of the Vosges in the course of which they inflicted losses on the enemy.