RAIN OF BOMBS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 227, 23 August 1940, Page 7

RAIN OF BOMBS

TARGETS ON CONTINENT. MORE R.A.F. BLOWS. (British Official Wireless.) Received August 23, 10.23 a.m, RUGBY, Aug. 22. Although weather conditions were unfavourable, further attacks on enemy oil refinei’ies . were carried out last night, states an Air Ministry communique. The chief targets were the important Brabag refineries at Magdeburg and the Duerag installations at Hanover. At Caen and Abbeville France) aircraft bombed the aerodi’omes, causing explosions on the runways and landing grounds, and setting hangars on fire. Searchlight batteries were extinguished by gunfire. Attacks were also made on the aerodromes at Quakenbruek, near Hanover, and the island of Texel (in the Frisian group). Railway centres were bombed in the Ruhr and Rhineland. Bombs were dropped on a tunnel between Nienburg and Verden (north-west of Hanover) as a supply train entered. One of our aircraft has not returned. The Berlin radio alleges that the R.A.F. attempted to bomb the Bismarck mausoleum at Friedrichshaven, which is “far from auy military objective.’’ WRECKAGE AND REIN. NAZI INDUSTRIAL AREAS. EFFECTS OF R.A.F. RAIDS. London, Aug. 21. The aeronautical writer of the Daily Mail says semi-official figures indicate that in the three months since May TO, when bombs took the place of leaflets, the Royal Air Force has made 598 raids on 178 places in Germany and 206 places in the German-occupied territory. In all these operations, in which they have flown over three million miles, our airmen have dropped approximately 158,000 • bombs on military objectives, most of them inside Germany.

It is knoxvn for certain that German industrial areas are devastated, xvhile the damage to her oil depots,'railxvays. docks, canals and shipping, and especially to aerodromes and aeroplanes, 'has been enormous. Some of the objectives have been bombed as many as 50 times.. One of the targets that have been receiving constant attention from the Royal Air Force bombers is the Dort-mund-Ems Canal in Germany (states the British Official Wireless.) This magnificent piece of engineering is a most . important link in the German waterway system, serving her industrial area.

Stretching for many miles across a plain, the aquednet joins one mountain ridge to another and thus enables barges to cross without the delay which would ensue if different levels had to be reached by a system of locks. Linking the industrial valleys of the Ruhr and Rhine wdth the Mittelland Canal, it completes a chain of waterways connecting the new industrial areas in the east and centre of Germany with the old areas in the west and north-west. In view of the. unsatisfactory state of 'her railways, this canal system is of special importance to Germany. Naturally the Dortmund-Ems aqueducts are well defended, and because the target area is small and only susceptible to attack from a very limited number of directions, it is comparatively easy to concentrate the defence. The pilot who was recently awarded the V.C. for his successful attack on this important target (acting-Flight-Lieutenant R. A. B. Learoyd), described the defences as making a lane along the length of the canal, and the fact that two of five bombers which were employed in one recent attack were shot down sufficiently indicates t'he strength of its defences.