Britain Overcomes Magnetic Mine

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 60, 11 March 1940, Page 8

Britain Overcomes Magnetic Mine

SHIPS EQUIPPED WITH COUNTER APPARATUS United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON. Mcti rh 8. The enterprise of American journalists in discovering that the liner Queen Elizabeth was fitted with a non-magnetic girdle has resulted in tho disclosure that all British metal-built vessels, Including warships, merchantmen, trawlers and yachts, are being provided with D-G equipment—namely, Be Gaussing apparatus. The apparatus consists of a wire encircling the bulwarks round the upper decks, electrically energised and prc-. jecting a current downward wmch counteracts magnetic mines. The apparatus is believed to be 100 per cent, efficient. None of the vessels so fitted in the past three months have been lost. Meanwhile, the captain of *.he Italian ship Amelia Lauro, which, ir.den with British coal, left the north-east coast for Italy on Wednesday, told a cunous story of Nazi' bombs whe» he and 28 others were landed to-day on the east coast. Three members of the crew were sent to hospital. The captain said that a German raider dropped four bombs, which destroyed the bridge and wireless aerial, injured the wireless operator, and killed one member of the crew, whose body was left aboard. The bombs contained a number of .mailer incendiary bombs. This was not realised immediately, but an hour after the attack, when the crew had been taken aboard another Italian ship, the Titania, the small bombs went off and a wave of flame rose up. Nothing could be done to save the ship. The Titania transferred the men to a lifeboat, which brought them ashore. Members of the crew emphasised that the plane must have seen the ship’i name and flag.