LEIPZIG HAVOC

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21305, 18 January 1944, Page 3

LEIPZIG HAVOC

30 PER CENT WIPED OUT

MAIN INDUSTRIAL ZONE

120 FACTORIES DAMAGED

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, Jan. 16.

Nearly 30 per cent of the most densely built-up areas of Leipzig, Germany’s fifth largest industrial town, were devastated in a single 1500-ton attack by the Royal Air Force Bomber Command on the night of December 3.

Nov/ that the Royal Air Force photographic interpreters have made a full analysis of the damage, it can be seen that only one-tenth of the destruction was in the less fully built-up areas. This great concentration of bombing in the most vulnerable part of Leipzig must have caused extreme and prolonged disorganisation in one of the enemy’s most important industrial centres.

With a population of 700,000, it has a considerable variety of war and essential industries and the Nazis have greatly developed the aircraft industry since the war began. The largest areas damaged are around the enormous central station which itself has been damaged.

Nearly 50 identified factories and 77 smaller works to which names cannot be given have been hit. One of the most important is the woolcombing plant, the Ofleipziger Wollkammereh. the third largest works of its kind in'Germany. At a time when the enemy is desperately short of textiles, the damage to this factory, more than one-third of which has been destroyed, must have been a severe blow. War factories which have been damaged include plants making tank components, armaments, trailers, electric vehicles and magnesium alloys.