OUTPUT REDUCED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 279, 24 October 1940, Page 7

OUTPUT REDUCED

RESULT OF R.A.F. RAIDS

HAVOC IN GEEMANY

(United Press Association —Copyright.)

• (British Official Wireless.; (Eec. 11 a.m.) EUGBY, Oct. 23. According to statements issued by the Air Ministry News Service further information received from reliable sources shows that the E.A.F.'s bombing of military objectives in Germany has met with a large measure of success.

The British air offensive has been directed mainly against the enemy's supply of war material, and well-in-formed foreign industrialists say that about 20 per cent. of the total production capacity of Germany has been affected through the repeated and determined attacks of the R.A.F. In Neuhof and Hamburg, for instance, large oil refineries have been forced to close as a result of the constant bombing, and near the Hamburg docks three silos containing about 10,000 tons of wheat have been completely destroyed. The docks arc also known to have been badly damaged, as well as many important dockside buildings. FACTORIES CRIPPLED. Evidence has come to hand, too, of the wreckage of a gas holder at Gelsenkirchen, one of the largest of its kind in Europe. In Berlin a report from neutral observers states that a large factory making precision machinery for the fighting services has been brought to a temporary standstill, while elsewhere, in the city another factory containing machinery of vital importance has also suffered severe damage from direct hits. In the course of a recent raid on Berlin fires were started in several of the target areas, and, in the words of another informcr ; much damage has been done to railway property. The service of the rapid transit system has also been affected, and several of its sections have had to be temporarily suspended.