AN AUDACIOUS FEAT

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 89, 15 April 1940, Page 7

AN AUDACIOUS FEAT

MINEFIELD SAID TO BE COMPLETED

(Received April 15, 10 a.m.) ■ LONDON, April 14. The laying of the new minefield along the north coast of Germany and the Kattegat was completed in the early hours of this morning. It is .regarded as a singularly audacious feat, r The belt in the Baltic hems in Germany's northern coast and the other barrage cuts off German shipping in the Kattegat. The biggest minefield stretches 240 miles from the bottom edge of Swedish water's in the west to the German coast on the frontier with Lithuania, north of Rossitten, in East Prussia. A second extends from the Danish east coast near Liim Fiord eastwards to the edge of Swedish waters. ' An expert says that the minefield bottles up the entire Baltic coast of Germany, covering, as it does, except for Swedish waters, the southern part of the Baltic and extending northwards to a point about 12 miles south of Memel. It joins the minefield already laid in the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, extends through the two Danish Belts, and sweeps round to the Baltic proper. < British-laid minefields now cover the entire coast of Germany and German-occupied Denmark. The mining of the Baltic blocks the Nazi iron ore route from Lulea at a time when they were expecting to benefit from this summertime alternative to Narvik.