QUIET NIGHT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23781, 8 October 1940, Page 7

QUIET NIGHT

LONDON'S SUNDAY GALE DETERS RAIDERS ONLY ONE OVER CITY By Telegraph—Press Association —-Copyright (Received October 7, 11.30 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 7 London had the usual air-raid warning on Sunday night, but it proved very short. People had scarcely settled down in the shelters when the all clear was sounded. It was the quietest -night since the air "blitzkrieg" began. This morning Londoners went to work almost bewildered. So accustomed have they become to the barrage that some found difficulty in sleeping owing to the lull. Wild Weather in Channel A possible explanation of the absence of German raiders is the wild weather in the. Straits of Dover, where rain was accompanied by a full south-westerly gale, and heavy seas pounded the southeast coast. Visibility was almost nil. Small groups of raiders, taking advantage of low cloud formations, were active early on Sunday. Several crossed the coast-heading for London, but were turned back by antiaircraft fire before reaching the centre of the city. Bombs are reported to have been dropped on south-western and south-eastern districts.' Five Killed in Tunnel ~A few. minutes before the first alert in the London area on Sunday morning British fighters intercepted enemy aeroplanes over the north-west area. Single raiders came over the. outskirts of London again in the afternoon. When a salvo of seven bombs was dropped on east London one struck the tunnel of a public shelter in which many persons had been sheltering all night and killed three women and two men. A few bombs were dropped in the east Midlands and East Anglia. At Folkestone and at a town in Northamptonshire high explosives demolished some houses and caused a small number of casualties, some of which were fatal. Machine-gun Attacks

At several other places enemy aircraft dived from clouds and delivered short bursts of machine-gun fire and quickly flew off. A few persons were injured as a result of these attacks. Shortly after dark a single enemy aeroplane dropped bombs on the outskirts of London, causing little damage and no casualties.

Just before dawn to-day (Monday) a few aeroplanes crossed the south and east coasts of England flying singly, but did not penetrate far inland. The few bombs they dropped caused no casualties.

FEW CASUALTIES LOSSES IN PROPORTION LONDON, Oct. 7 "If I were a betting man I would gamble on the number of German casualties so far being far greater than the British," states the Under-Secre-tary of War, Brigadier-General Lord Croft, in a letter to his constituents about air casualties. War works in Germany had suffered considerably more than similar objectives in Britain, Lord Croft continued. One British submarine had sent more German soldiers to their doom than all the people killed in Britain in August. More German airmen had been killed or wounded in the past 12 weeks than the total of civilians killed in Britain. Lord Croft said less British blood had been shed since war began than in a singlo hour of some of the great battles in 1914-18. "One death in 10,000," he added, "is not enough to shako us."

BOYS FOR TRAINING I GERMAN ARMY OFFICERS LONDON, Oct. 7 Boys of 14 years of ago, according to a German broadcast, will be accepted for training as German non-commis-sioned officers next spring.