DAY RAIDERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23880, 3 February 1941, Page 7

DAY RAIDERS

NIGHT TACTICS USED THREE HOSPITALS HIT NO BOMBING AFTER DARK By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright (Received February 'J, tt.3o p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 2 There was no enemy air activity over Britain on Saturday night. An official communique issued on Saturday morning stated that there was some slight enemy air activity during the early hours of darkness the previous night, but no bombs were dropped. Apart from this there was nothing to report, says a British official wireless message. A later communique issued by the Air Ministry and Ministry of Home Security stated that during daylight on Saturday there was some enemy air activity over parts of East Anglia, and bombs were dropped by single aircraft at several places in Norfolk and Suffolk. Buildings were damaged in some of these places and a small number of casualties was caused, Attack on London Raiders during the day visited five towns and small villages in East Anglia. A stick of bombs demolished buildings, killing the works manager. A few houses were damaged in another town, where six persons were slightly injured. Haiders resorted to night-time methods in Friday's concentrated daylight attack on the London area. They bombed a number of districts in waves. Tho raiders (lew in from several directions, which is a familiar practice at night time. Tho Germans are believed to have been balked in night raiding by the weather and arc attempting night tactics in daylight. More raiders appeared than the previous day, making the London area the thief objective. Royal Air Force fighters were heard frequently during London's succession of alerts. A heavy barrage frustrated the raiders' attempts to machine-gun balloons. Two Machines Destroyed Two enemy bombers were destroyed. A raider was brought down in the sea off Cornwall. Five German airmen, after their failure to bomb children in a playground on tho outskirts of London, were trapped in tho blazing wreckage of their machine, which was apparently hit over London. Thirty members of a London ambulance unit had a narrow escape when a raider directly hit a hospital. It. killed one ambulance member. A bomb hit the boiler house of another hospital. One person was killed. At the third hospital bombed some walls were blown out. A few patients and some of the staff were injured. The receiving wards were filled with persons injured by bombs. The hospital carried on while the raiders droned overhead. A heavy explosive bomb fell in a London square, and bombs elsewhere wrecked a number of houses. Some people were killed and injured. Shoppers' Amazing Escapo A huge bomb whistled over a crowded shopping centre and directly hit a busy street. Miraculously only two persons were injured. Shoppers elsewhere extinguished a shower ol incendiary bombs. A schoolboy was injured when he attempted barehanded to handle an incendiary bomb. So prompt was the action of pedestrians and fire-watchers tackling firebombs in one London area that the regular fire-fighting organisations could watch the volunteers obtain very usefid practice. Bombs dropped on nn East Anglian town destroyed a Congregational church and damaged houses. The casualties included a woman who was killed when her house collapsed. A German communique claims that bombers recently hit the Mildenhall, Wattisliam and Honnington aerodromes in Suffolk, destroyed aeroplanes on the ground and set fire to a munition dump on an army drill ground in the southeast of England. MEDICAL MISSION British Wireless LONDON, Jan. .'ll Dr. Thomas l'arran, Surgeon-General of the United States Public Health Service, is proceeding to Britain with a small medical mission to examine health and social problems arising out of the intensive air raids.