U-BOAT OFFENSIVE

Grey River Argus, 28 April 1942, Page 5

U-BOAT OFFENSIVE

ALL U.S.A. SEABOARD Turned into Military Area [Aust. & N.Z. Cable Assn.') (Rec. 8.50). NEW YORK, April 26. Lieutenant General Hugh Drum, U.S.A. Eastern Defence Commander, has announced the establishment at an early date of an Eastern Military Area, along the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, with the Army taking .immediate control of the problem of dimming out the shore lights and also of regulating the conduct of enemy aliens. The Eastern Military Area includes sixteen States, and the District of Columbia. It .is similar to the Western Defence Command on the Pacific Coast. There are 112 thousand Japanese being evacuated from the Pacific Coast areas to points inland. General Drum asserted that a mass evacuation is not, however, contemplated on the U.S. eastern seaboard, since the regulation of conduct is the keynote of the plan. General Drum will command *the entire eastern areq, with the assistance of the commanding generals of the four existing Corps areas in the territory. U.S. FREIGHTER SHELLED. CREW ALL SAVED. (Rec. 8.0). WASHINGTON, April 26. It is reported from Portland, in Maine, that the U.S. Navy has announced that thirty-five ..shells and one torpedo from a German submarine sank a medium-sized United States freighter in the North Atlantic on Monday last, Apri] 20. The entire crew of thirty-five have arrived at Portland. Uninjured, the members of the crew revealed that there was a fire in the freighter's smokestack five minutes prior to the attack. This made the ship a huge beacon and an easy target for the submarine,

Allied Freighter Sunk (Rec. 8.0) MONTREAL, April- 25. Twenty-one survivors from the crew .of a United Nations’ freighter have been lande'd at a North Atlantic port. They were picked up by an escort vessel. The freighter was torpedoed. There are twenty of her crew missing. BASE IN FRANCE. LONDON, April 27. The secret headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the U-boat fleet, Admiral Doenitz, are in an underground blockhouse on the French Atlantic coast. U-boats have an under-water entrance. A correspondent of the “Evening Standard” says that the U-boats’ crews have never seen the headquarters’ port because they enter submerged, and a huge concrete structure towers over all the buildings. All U-boats receive- their orders from Doenitz individually by means of a central radio, which operates inside the house.

Every U-boat captain must report to Doenitz when he returns to port and account for every drop of petrol used'. If a U-boat has to return for more torpedoes, it is ordered by wireless to give its surplus fuel to\U.boats which are still operating.