SINGLE RAIDERS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 263, 4 October 1940, Page 7

SINGLE RAIDERS

GERMAN CAMPAIGN

'AGAIN LITTLE DAMAGE

(United Press Association—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.)

£Rec. 11 a.m.) RUGBY, Oct. 3. Once again to-day the. enemy attacks have taken the form of .visits by single aircraft. These are described in an Air Ministry jand Ministry of Home Security communique.

Reports received up to 5 p.m. indicate that bombs were dropped at random in a number of London boroughs and several houses were demolished,, but it is not expected that the casualties will be heavy. Elsewhere bombs were dropped at various points on the Thames Valley, Essex, Kent, and Cornwall, but no serious damage and no fatal casualties aro reported in any of these districts.

A number of casualties, including a few fatal injuries, were caused in a city in the Midlands and another small Midland town where a number of bouses were demolished, but little ether damage is reported. A train was machine-gunned and u few persons were slightly injured. A single enemy aircraft was shot 'down in an attack on a town in the Home Counties where a number of persons were killed and seriously injured by bombs and machine-gun bulJets. VISIBILITY REDUCED. Heavy rain and a dense mist reducing visibility to a few hundred yards (drew a curtain over the English Channel this morning and reduced the .German aerial activity to isolated jraiders, which appeared in the vicinity of the Midlands, also north-east and south-west towns.

A solitary bomber flying low over a Midlands town released a row of explosives and incendiary bombs and damaged a factory and a large school .with a number of casualties. A.R.kP. squads rescued many children and factory workers from beneath the wreckage. Bombing indiscriminately, a small number of raiders kept the London anti-aircraft defences in action for the longest period since the outbreak of the war, road traffic and pedestrians carrying on as usual. Some bombs were dropped in a south-east district. The daylight raiders also dropped bombs near South-East England and East London hospitals, shattering windows, also wrecking shops and bouses. A Gorman bomber was shot down in the afternoon near Hertford and the four members of the crew surrendered to farmhands. , The plane narrowly missed woods aifd crashed through, a hedge into a field. EXAGGERATED REPORTS.

To combat exaggerated stories of London’s ordeal which evacuees had carried to the provinces, the Government took a party of journalists from all parts of the United Kingdom on a tour of the worst bombed areas of the capital. The journalists were unanimous that the devastation was bad enough in places, but on the whole was not nearly as bad as had been thought. The worst sight was in Dockland, where there aro lines of shattered brick and rubble which were once streets or houses.

The Duke of Kent to-day visited a number of London Fire Brigade centres. During his tour there was an air raid warning, and heavy gunfire could be heard. He went to the London Fire Brigade headquarters, and other centres visited were in south and east London.