Hit By Our Bombs

Northern Advocate, 28 June 1943, Page 3

Hit By Our Bombs

(.Special) ' LONDON, June 27. Concentrations of bombers over targets in Germany are frequently so heavy that aircraft are sometimes hit by bombs lrcm aircraft over them. This happened twice to K Smith. D.F.M. (Auckland) who recently was promoted Pilot-Officer. He carried out 31 raids in Stirlings and.is now instructor. While over Wilhelmshaven an incendiary hit the oil tank of the port inner motor and set. fire to it. Pilot-Officer Smith feathered the motor and dived, putting out the flames. Another time an incendiary went clean through a wing, leaving a neat hole but causing no damage. v Pilot-Officer Smith raided Berlin and Turin and “all towns in the Ruhr except Dusseldorf.” He was awarded the D.F.M. in April. 1943.

latest raid on Elberfeld has brought the Bomber Command’s total weight of bombs dropped on the Ruhr since the great experimental battle started three and a-half months ago, to between 25,000 and 30,000 tons.. The R.A.F. has lost 532 bombers, and more than 3000 air personnel, many of whom must be*prisoners, but the results have already exceeded expectations. Grim Satisfaction “A mood of grim satisfaction spreads through the nation as the damage wrought by air bombardment is appreciated,” says the “Daily Express,” in an editorial. “Cur satisfaction contains the joy of revenge. It is not the R.A.F. policy, but it is so with the people. We have suffered cruelly, and still suffer from bombing, and it would be unnatural to see in the Ruhr agony no element of just retribution on the arrogant Germans who launched this air kvar on the weak, and. who squeal ,now when they get it back many times from the strong.”