SHANGHAI

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 10 September 1937, Page 8

SHANGHAI

CONFLICTING EXPLANATIONS OF BOMBING [By Air Mail—From Our Own Correspondent] LONDON, 19th September. Accounts of the Shanghai bombing make grim reading. Yet the political remight have been far more grave had the bombs been Japanese and not Chinese. Conflicting explanations are given for the tragic blunder by the Chinese pilots, who were flying machines newly procured from U.S.A. It is . suggested that the typhoon upset range calculations ; that the bombing gear had been impaired by Japanese anti-aircraft fire; and that the pilots let go their loads indiscriminately to gain altitude when attacked by Japanese planes. Which of these explanations is the true one, it is impossible for distant outsiders to guess. But the last one certainly has a plausible sound. It was stark lunacy for the crowds to be packing the streets in order to view the air manoeuvres, but it was sometimes hard during the War to prevent similar foolishness even by seasoned troops. The Germans used regularly to send over a couple of their airmen at noon, when our men in the Ypres rampart dugouts were having their main meal, and, directly some of our planes sailed up to fight the intruders, the road behind the ramparts would fill with Tommies keen on watching a sporting duel. The German planes would then fly oil, but not before a salvo of German shells had searched that crowded road.