OCEAN RAID

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23810, 11 November 1940, Page 8

OCEAN RAID

CONVOY ATTACKED RANG ITI Kl INVOLVED SOME SHIPS ESCAPE By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received November 10, 0.30 p.m.) British Wireless LONDON, Nov 9 'A An Admiralty communique issued on Saturday night refers to the report which was in circulation earlier in the week of an attack on a British convoy by an enemy com- ' merce raider. This was to the - effect that an American radio station had intercepted distress signals from the New Zealand Shipping Company's liner Rangitiki which stated that she was in a convoy which was being shelled by an enemy raider of the Graf class • in mid-Atlantic. .The communique says: "As reported last Tuesday, one of our convoys was attacked by an enemy surface raider. In spite of the enemy's claim to have annihilated this convoy, it can now ba stated that a number of ships successfully eluded the raider. "Owing to the necessity of-maintain-ing wireless silence, no other details are yet available." In a Berlin communique and over the German radio on Friday it was claimed that a British convoy, totalling 86,000 tons, had been destroyed:;: in the North Atlantic. ' »■; BOMBING ATTACK ■ > EMPRESS OF JAPAN DISTRESS CALL INTERCEPTED (Received November 10, 10.20 p.m.) NEW YORK, Nor. 0 A correspondent of the Japanese newspaper Nichi Nichi Shimbun on board the steamer Fushimi Maru re- . ports to New York that a distress call has been picked up from the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Japan reporting that she was being attacked by a bombing aeroplane off the west coast of Ireland. INFLUENZA CURE TEST OF NEW VACCINE v VOLUNTEERS IN BRITAIN 'V ' (Received November 10, 5.5 p.m.) •• ; " I/OSDOX, Not. (i Post office workers, in Britain-have; i .! volunteered for a, test of a new . in- / fluenza vaccine which it is hoped will - prove the means of conquering the,ail-. j ment. • .<• ■■ ■ ; >j j The vaccine is a blend of the anti- J i influenza and anti-distemper viruses. . j The relationship between influenza in humans and distemper in dogs has. long been suspected. Deaths from, influenza in the first's three months of. 1940 in London and 126 _- : large towns numbered 4000, with 2468 in 1939. These tests and /oilier?.-/' measures are part of to safeguard the people's health ddrii£ ;: the coming winter. ' •" "They have been doing an immense, amount of researcn work lately on. | virus—or rather viruses—of influenza,'' ;;/ { said a medical authority to whom this j report was referred. It had long been:, \ known, he said,•that there was a close;.' j relationship between the virus of dis-| temper and the virus of influenza, \ although he had not seen any reference g| in medical literature to the combined. vaccine described, that was a very likely j line of experiment. The vaccing -for dis-, < ? j temper in dogs had been in use m.W/ j Auckland for some time past. : j