RAIDERS TRAPPED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 255, 25 September 1940, Page 7

RAIDERS TRAPPED.

NOISY NIGHT IN LONDON

LONDON, Sept. 24

German raiders last night swept on London and many parts of the provinces. Over London the raiders repeated new tactics of dropping calcium carbide incendiary bombs to illuminate the ground. The searchlights were active, and the guns and lights co-operated perfectly to trap and destroy two planes over the inner London area. Bombs fell in Central London and also the outskirts. Raiders twice attacked a town on the South-East Coast, two towns in the north-west of England, and towns in the Midlands, Wales and North-East England. After several noisy hours, London’s night raid developed into a series of. comparatively quiet and intensively active periods. The raiders persistently attempted to evade the barrage on the outskirts and penetrate inner London, and they bombed the outer suburbs. at random when they found it was . impossible to elude the heavy fire. Some bombs, however, fell in Central London, and A.R.P. squads tackled incendiaries, while raiders were heard overhead, amid the exploding shells. Two banks, a post office, and a block of luxury flats were damaged in a northwest suburb.

An armed British trawler drove off a German plane in the English Channel this afternoon, after which the raider plunged into tho sea in flames. The weather is fine in the Straits of Dover and the sea is calm, with a gentle westerly wind and a slight mist. BRITISH EXPERTS AT WORK.

It is authoritatively stated that Britain’s best scientific brains are concentrating on the task of beating the night bomber, and the practical application of the recent improvements in the defence measures already justifies the hope of fulfilment of the prophecy of the Air Secretary (Sir Archibald Sinclair) that the pleasure of night bombing will cease to be attractive to Goering. ’ Scientists are studying the problem from several directions—improved anti-aircraft fire, higher balloon barrage and searchlights, and speedier fighter interception. New inventions aro being searchingly investigated, but contrary to rumour no entirely new weapon has yet emerged. It would be a mistake to concentrate on finding a solution that would be applicable only in certain conditions, and the defenders’ aim is to make the reception so hot i.n all weathers that even indiscriminate bombing will ’become so profitless and dangerous that it will be strictly confined.