USED BY GERMANY

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 92, 20 April 1938, Page 11

USED BY GERMANY

MAJORCA AS AIR BASE

Hitler, as well as Mussolini, is now using Majorca as an' air base for war on Spain, says the Barcelona correspondent of the "News-Chronicle."

At the end of February forty German war planes flew over France to take part in the Aragon offensive. Altogether Franco has 700 ■ German and Italian planes at his disposal. Apart from volunteer detachments, 60,000 soldiers of the regular Italian Army are now fighting in Spain.

These are some' of the outstanding items of information which the Spanish Government has been able to compile in the past few days by (a) interrogation of prisoners; (b) examination of captured material; (c) ; direct observation and the usual.channels of "intelligence." . ■

One of the seaplanes which bombed the British steamer Stanwell at Tarragona, killing two of her crew and wounding a Non-Intervention observer, was afterwards brought down by antiaircraft fire at Vinaroz. Four men aboard, 'escaping unhurt, sprinted towards the beach, hpping to get away in a small boat.

They were pursued, however, and captured by carabineers. These prisoners were Germans serving in the Portuguese Air Force.

Th,e commander ,qf the, seaplane has been questioned; .He is Rudolf Rucker, aged 25, and 'born, .at Hamburg. .

It has been thought -that Majorca was being used only by Italians, but according to Rucker the Port of Pollensa, with its excellent bay on the other side of the island from Palma, has been assigned as a base for German seaplanes. Rucker, who flew from Berlin to Rome by the Lufthansa line and thence to Majorca by the Italian airline, carried orders from the German Air Ministry, .