BOMBING HAVOC

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20270, 11 June 1940, Page 8

BOMBING HAVOC

BRITISH RAIDERS ENORMOUS DAMAGE TROOPS AND SUPPLIES OIL DEPOTS SET ON FIRE ROAD AND LINES BLOCKED (British Official Wireless.) Reed. 9 a.m. RUGBY, June 9. Details contained in bulletins issued by the Air Ministry indicate that the Royal Air Force was intensely active during the day and night on Saturday.

Enemy transport columns were scattered and Hung into confusion, lines of tanics were heavily bombed, armoured cars and motor lorries were reduced to twisted wreckage from direct hits, troops on the march were machine-gunned, anti-aircraft guns were attacked and silenced, and a petrol dump hidden in a wood was blown up when British bombers ranged over the right wing of the Ger- | man onslaught in the region of the ! Bresle add the Somme on Saturday. ! A series of deep and shallow dive bombing attacks spread destruction and chaos at many points behind the enemy's iines.

Just before midday columns of Ger- ■ man motor vehicles and troops were | caught by British medium bombers on | the roads between Amiens and Aumale and within a few minutes hundreds ; of bombs were falling on and about j them. The raiders scored a direct j hit on the head of a column of tanks j and motor transport vehicles on the * road.

in the Hornoy region a stationary column of lorries was bombed and a direct hit was scored with a heavy bomb on a road and railway crossing, Troops and Vehicles Near Hallivil.lers a line of a few tanks was heavily bombed. Lorries moving along the road near Poix were reduced to scrap iron by direct hits. Troops and transport vehicles caught in the village of Pissy also came in for heavy attacks, bombs falling right in among them. A salvo of bombs i launched on a tightly-packed column jof armoured vehicles south-west of Quevauvillers straddled the objectives, and elsewhere in the region accurate bombing resulted in direct hits and : casualties to motorised columns, both moving and stationary, on the roads, in woods and in villages. Later in the evening another force of bombers carried out an attack on a petrol dump in a wood north of Abbeville. High explosives and nearly j 100 incendiary bombs were dropped, j With a tremendous roar the dump | blew up. j Between nightfall until shortly before dawn on Sunday, Royal Air Force heavy bombers were almost continuously in action against military objectives in Germany and in the battle zone of northern France. Enemy reinforcements moving up towards the I line of the Somme offensive were ! bombed and harassed by machine-gun fire, ammunition dumps were destroyed, and lines of communication in many parts of the back areas were cut by low-level bombing attacks. Railway Junctions Other sections of the raiding force penetrated the German defences and attacked marshalling yards and railway junctions at key points between Rhenish Prussia and the Belgian | frontier, setting goods wagons alight, blocking tunnels, and disorganising rail traffic. Abbeville was heavily attacked soon after dark by a section of heavy j bombers, one of which scored two i direct hits on the main railway bridge, | completely demolishing one end of it. ! In the second raid on the town two i hours later the main roads were hit ! with high explosive bombs and one j salvo, over-shooting the bridge at I which it was aimed, apparently struck ! ar. ammunition store, for the terrific

explosion which followed it lit up the town and violently rocked the aircraft above.

In an attack on St. Valery, eight miles west of Abbeville, a railway and read bridge over the Somme estuary was repeatedly hit, one salvo bursting on top of an anti-aircraft battery which was defending it. A parachute flare dropped after the attack showed the northern span had completely collapsed. Bombs dropped on a column of heavy vehicles in a forest at Boulern. struck an ammunition lorry, which blew up and set the surrounding woods ablaze. A convoy moving towards Bray on the Albert road was repeatedly bombed from a low level, and a few minutes after a. salvo had been dropped on moving lights in the Bois de Chimay a series of explosions occurred, as though ammunition or petrol dumps went up in flames. Eight Direct Hits • Eight direct hits on the railway junction at Charleville wrecked the main line of the track, demolished warehouses and set a petrol container alight. A railway siding crowded with loaded goods waggons was straddled by a salvo of bombs and left blazing. . , At Valenciennes an oil storage plant was bombed by the light of a parachute flare and exploded in a vastsheet of flame. In Germany, the marshalling yards near Essen, Duren, and Gelsenkirchen were among the objectives raided in the early hours of the morning. Another aircraft returning from Germany encountered a large convoy of vehicles near Wavre. Having no bombs left, the captain decided to attack the convoy with machine-gun fire. The gunners opened fire from a height of 150 ft. and for 20 minutes kept up an almost incessant fusillade on the convoy. , , Enemy-occupied aerodromes at Abbeville and Eindhoven, in Holland, were also raided during the night. At Abbeville a fierce fire was seen to break out following heavy bombing attacks, while at Eindhoven more than 2000 rounds were fired in the course of a series of low-flying machine-gun attacks on the aerodrome and buildThese are but a section of some of the successful activities carried out by the Royal Air Force during a period of some 24 hours.