REPEATED ATTACKS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 139, 13 June 1940, Page 9

REPEATED ATTACKS

R.A.F. BOMBERS

ENEMY REAR HARASSED

INTENSIVE ASSAULT

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 12. An Air Ministry communique states:

During yesterday medium bombers of the R.A.F. made repeated attacks on enemy motor transport columns, armoured fighting vehicles, and troop concentrations in loops of the Seine east of Rouen and adjacent wooded areas. The enemy's movements were harassed both by bombing and lowflying machine-gun attacks. In the course of these operations two enemy fighters were shot down. Four of our aircraft are missing.

Night operations included the bombing of key points such as railway junctions and ammunition dumps in the rear of the fighting zones from the sea to the Meuse. Enemy concentrations in the neighbourhood of the Seine were again bombed, the crossings of the Somme suffered further damage, and woods were set on fire in the Hirson-Givet area.

Other aircraft attacked military objectives at Cologne and elsewhere in western Germany.

One heavy bomber is missing from operations over northern Italy.

British fighters were active over France yesterday. At least eight enemy aircraft were destroyed. One fighter is missing.

High-explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped at the rate of over a hundred a minute during one ten-minute action yesterday by R.A.F. medium bombers in one series of attacks directed against enemy concentrations advancing on the lower Seine southeast of Rouen. Attacking in sections at heights varying from 6000 to 800 feet, the R.A.F. released salvoes of bombs on their targets, wrecking convoys, scattering mechanised columns, blocking road junctions, and setting woods ablaze. Hits were scored on a column of lorries, and 20 armoured fighting vehicles on a road received a full salvo of high-explosive bombs, and ten large tanks standing by the roadside at Suzay were enveloped in smoke and flying debris when heavy-calibre bombg exploded on a road. Other targets which were successfully attacked during this ten-minute intensive assault included an anti-aircraft battery and a mechanised column.

At the height of this raid one bomber's starboard airscrew was shot off and the engine disabled, but after dropping their bombs on their targets the crew returned safely on the one undamaged engine.