NIGHT METHODS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1941, Page 11

NIGHT METHODS

IN DAYLIGHT RAIDS

GERMANS OVER LONDON

FIRE BOMBS DROPPED

ESCAPES IN BUSY STREET

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright.) (Received February 1, 1 p.m.) LONDON, January 31. German raiders resorted to nighttime methods in a concentrated daylight attack today on the London area in which they bombed a number of districts. Waves of raiders flew in from several directions, which is a familiar night-time method. The Germans are believed to have been balked in their night raiding by the weather and are iioav attempting night tactics in daylight. More raiders appeared than yesterday and they made the London area their chief objective. R.A.F. fighters were heard frequently during London's succession of alerts. Two enemy bombers were destroyed during daylight raids on Britain today. Thirty members of a London ambulance unit had a narrow escape when a raider scored a direct hit on a hospital. One ambulance officer was killed and a medical student seriously injured. A bomb hit the boiler house at another hospital and shattered the windows at the hospital chapel. One person was killed. A huge bomb whistled over a crowded shopping centre and landed in a busy street but miraculously only two persons were injured. Shoppers elsewhere extinguished a Shower of incendiaries. A heavy barrage frustrated attempts by the raiders to machine-gun balloons.

Showers of incendiaries fell in another district and a schoolboy was injured when he attempted bare-handed to handle an incendiary bomb. A heavy explosive bomb fell in the afternoon on a London square. Bombs elsewhere wrecked a number of houses and some people were killed or injured. In an East Anglian town bombs destroyed a Congregational church and damaged houses. The casualties included a woman who was killed when her house collapsed. Shoppers took cover as a raider skimmed the rooftops, machine-gunning the streets. A raider was brought down in the sea off Cornwall. Birmingham is hastening its plans for meeting devastating raids and has 60,000 people enrolled for fighting fire bombs, including 27,000 in supplementary fire parties, 16,000 wardens, and 5000 watchers in premises. The Home Guard is arranging to picket areas where the danger is greatest. ' A hundred rest centres equipped with .bedding and clothing are being established for the homeless. An A.R.P. committee is making arrangements' so that at least 10,000 people will be able to get a hot meal in the event of an emergency. The committee will also provide for the removal and storage of furniture from bombed homes. A German communique claims that bombers yesterday hit the Mildenhall, Wattisham, and Honnington aerodromes, destroying grounded planes, and set fire to a munition dump on an Army drill ground in south-east England. The Germans claim to have shot down seven balloons yesterday.