AIR RAIDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24448, 6 November 1940, Page 7

AIR RAIDS

NAPLES AGAIN BOMBED ATTACK ON KIEL DOCKS PLANES OVER ENGLAND DAMAGE AND CASUALTIES (By Wireless) LONDON, Nov. 5. (Received Nov. 6, at 1 a.m.) The Air Ministry announces that last night the Channel,, ports of Ostend, Boulogne and. Le Havre were bombed, but operations were not on a heavy scale owing to bad weather. All the plands returned safely. A second attack on Naples was followed ud by the bombing of norts on the eastern coast of Italy and on the Albanian coast. Naples was bombed on Sunday night for the second time within a week, and the attack caused a two-hour alarm in Rome. Fairly accurate antiaircraft fire was experienced, but nevertheless bombs were dropped between the main railway station and the junction and on oil tanks on the southern outskirts of the city. The naval dockyard at Kiel was also bombed on Sunday night, a number of direct hits bejng scored in the dock area.

After a comparatively quiet period of 24 hours, German planes last night renewed their attacks on this country and on Scotland on a fairly heavy scale, and over a widespread area. In London, the casualties were not numerous, and the damage was only slight. Elsewhere, little serious, damage was done, and there were not many casualties. The attack on London continued throughout, the hours of darkness. Early this morning two squadrons of enemy planes crossed the Kentish coast. Bombs were dropped by one squadron on a' coastal town and a score of workers’ houses were damaged. The bombs dropped by the other squadron, also near a coastal town, fell mainly in the fields and open spaces.

EARLIER ATTACKS NAPLES AND KIEL (United Press Association; (By Electric Telegraph -Copyright) LONDON, Nov. 4. Objectives at Naples were again the target of aircraft of the R.A.F. Bomber Command last night. Successful attacks made here and at Kiel were undertaken despite extremely difficult weather conditions. During daylight operations yesterday Flushing and the aerodrome at Soesterburg were attacked, states an Air Ministry communique. Two of our aircraft are missing. Details of the second attack by Bomber Command aircraft on Naples show, according to the Air Ministry News Service, that Italian anti-air-craft guns provided more effective opposition last night than on the first raid.- The city was well blacked out, and as the British aircraft approached they were met with heavy and fairly accurate fire. Though the attack was hampered by cloud, the leading aircraft dropped flares and then came down low to plant a stick of bombs between the main railway station and the junction. Other aircraft attacked the oil tanks at Foggio Reale, on the southern outskirts of the city, and bombed them effectively. Relays of Raiders Adverse weather over the greater part of Germany severely restricted last night’s operations by aircraft of the Bomber ’Command. Early this morning conditions showed some improvement and an attack was launched, states, an Air Ministry bulletin, against the naval dockyards at Kiel, which were heavily bombed for nearly 70 minutes' by relays of aircraft. The first raider reached the target area shortly after 4 o’clock this morning and started fires in the dockyax’d, which were burning strongly when the second wave of the attack arrived later. Bombing through gaps in the clouds, the new arrivals scored repeated hits with heavy-calibre bombs in the dock area and started two large fires which gave off great clouds of black smoke. The pilot of one heavy bomber planted a stick of heavy bombs accurately across the dockyard. Heavy fire from powerful ground batteries greeted each attack.