SIX DESTROYED

Evening Star, Issue 25425, 5 March 1945, Page 5

SIX DESTROYED

NIGHT RAIDERS OVER BRITAIN FIRST VISITATION SINCE JUNE (Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, March 4. Six enemy .planes were destroyed over Britain last night. R.A.F. night fighters went into action against the raiders which were the first over Britain since June of last year. Mosquito pilots shot down two of the six destroyed.

One enemy plane crashed on a farmhouse, killing two women. The plane carried away the front part of the house, which was set on fire, trapping the inmates The badly-mangled bodies of two German airmen were thrown clear.

Another raider bombed and machinegunned an eastern district in the north of England. The raider flew in low, dropping a stick of small high-explosive bombs on a village. Two men. were killed and . the school and a number of houses were damaged. The raider returned and machine-gunned the district, killing a man. Another raider, only a few hundred feet from the ground, sprayed an East Anglian town with cannon shells, a warden being wounded. Some residents narrowlyescaped when shells tore into their houses. Small bombs dropped in neighbouring villages, injured an American soldier and a civilian. The Press Association aviation correspondent says (preliminary reports suggest that the German raiders adopted " scalded cat'' tactics. The raids were carried out over wide areas, but the force was not formidable. Some of the raiders penetrating east coast defences seemed to"be spy planes."