R.A.F. BOMBERS

Grey River Argus, 31 July 1940, Page 7

R.A.F. BOMBERS

RAIDS ON CONTINENT Many Fires Started [British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 29. An Air Ministry communique states: Bombers last night continued attacks on military objectives m •northern and western Germany, targets included oil depots, docks, ano ('.goods- yards. -- Seventeen aerodromes ■' hi Germany; ' Holland, Belgium, an 1 northern France were also attacked. Three of our aircraft are missing. Coastal Command aircraft again raided the Cherbourg oil tanks, last night. Many fires were started. Oui aircraft i eturned safely. An aircraft of the Bomber Command yesterday made a daylight attack on the Leeuwarden aerodrome, in Holland. A number of enemy aircraft on the ground -were damaged. On the return journey, this bomber was engaged by four enemy one of which was driven down. Our aircraft. returned safely. There was a yellow glow over the Cherbourg oil-tanks, when the pilot of a Coastal Command Blenheim sax them through the haze of s™ early this morning. Others of his squadron had been there before him with heavy and incendiary bo ™ bs ; He dropped his load, and there big explosions on the ground. Blenheims had scored many direct hits on tanks. The pilot of another Blenheim vvas worried by a ring of searchligh sbombed them and the lights went ° U A German-occupied aerodrome on the Dutch coast was also attacked last night, this-time by Hudsons of the Coastal Command. Many hres were started on the airfield. Broadcasting, a young Canadian pilot, who has served with an K-A.r. bomber squadron since the be S mni "g of the war said: “My last raid a days ago—was my thirty-fourth sortie against the enemy. ■ It is a remarkable thing that m course of all those operations, my aircraft was hit only once; that was at Bergen when we were after a couple of German cruisers. A good many times I would have sworn the aircraft must have been absolutely riddled, anti-aircraft fire was coming so 'close all around us, but when we got back, there has not been a mark on it.

“On this thirty-fourth raid, we managed to bring off quite a decent effort. Our target was at Hamburg. We got over the city all right, but there was a lot of low cloud about, and we could not find our objective, so we went up to Wilhelmshaven. We were after the docks there. On the way to Wilhelmshaven, we increased height, then when we got close enough to reach it in a glide, I gradually closed the throttle and dropped. By this time we were pretty w'ell on the target. We dived and let go the bombs. They sailed! right across the corner of the largest dock. They put up a heavy antiaircraft barrage of course—down below the tracer —then on top of that, bursting all over the place, was heavier stuff. When it is concentrated, it shoots up at you, as though it is coming out of the mouth of a volcano, but that was one of the thirty-three times we did not get hit. The barrage was pretty intense, but to my mind, a target like that is relatively easy, compared with locating and attacking say, a factory in the Ruhr. For one thing, it’s bigger and stands out better, and for another, you get away out to open sea, when you have bombed, and you have not got to cross a whole lot of enemy country. Don’t think I mean by that that we are at all shy about going

into the Ruhr. They get a pretty good pasting there most nights in the week.”

[British Official Wireless] RUGBY, July 29.

The Canadian pilot in his broadcast continued: “On these trips it is a grand thing to know you have got a good crew to back you up. I’ve been lucky there. Right from the start I kept the same crew up to the time I left the squadron, except for the second pilot. He was with me until about five weeks ago. Then they made him captain of an aircraft with a crew of his own. He was a Canadian, too, and came from Cal-1 gary. Of the crew of six, two were Canadians, two Scotsmen, and the other two Englishmen, so we were a pretty representative lot. One of thej Scotsmen had such a strong accent that at times, until I got used to him, I could not understand what he was saying. The other one was not nearly so bad, so I used to get him to interpret. The first time we flew over enemy territory was back in the win ter when we did leaflet dropping. That seems a very long time ago now. In between there has been the Norwegian business. Then followed the invasion of the Low Countries, and we were operating there, and after that we were working in direct support of the Allied land forces in the attempt to hold up the German, advance into France. More recently we have been concentrating on Germany itself. We have given them something to think about. There is no doubt about that. During our operations over France we have had what was probably our most spectacular efforts. We have been attacking enemy depots and troop concentrations in the area round Hirson. We saw another of our bombers' getting heavily fired at from woods, so we thought we had better go and have a look. Having stopped a machine-gun post where fire was coming from, we silenced four of them. Then we hit an ammunition store or petrol dump with a couple of bombs. That sent the whole works up. Every now and then on the way back my windscreen was lit up by the light of another explosion. By the time the last went off we were two miles away.” THE GERMAN ACCOUNT. BERLIN, July 29. A German communique states: The British, last night, dropped only a few bombs in north Germany and west Germany. No damage was done, except that one bomb fell in the residential quarter of Hamburg. The efficiency of the A.R.P. minimised the damage. SUNDAY AIR FIGHTS. GERMAN VERSION. BERLIN, JUly 29. A communique states: In Sunday’s air battles over the Channel, we shot down six enemy planes, losing one of ours.