MOSQUITOES OUT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25428, 8 January 1944, Page 5

MOSQUITOES OUT

WESTERN GERMANY BOMBED REPORTS OF STETTIN RAID (Rec. 10.30 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 6. Bomb-carrying Mosquitoes of the R.A.F. last night attacked targets in Western Germany and Northern France. None of the planes are missing. Military objectives on the French coast were again bombed in daylight by medium bombers and fighterbombers. Six planes did not return. Referring to Wednesday night’s R.A.F. attack on Stettin, the Press Association’s aviation correspondent says Stettin is Germany’s chief seaport on the Baltic for supplying the armies on the Russian front. It is also the centre of shipbuilding machinery, chemicals, cement, and oil refining; The last heavy raid was last April, on the night of Hitler’s birthday, when a large force devastated the industrial heart of the town and extensively damaged the dock's. The latest raid had an added significance in view of the Germans' serious position on the Russian front.

Alarmed at the danger to Berlin, the Luftwaffe again sent fighter packs to defend the capital, leaving the door wide open for a great force of Lancasters, with a smaller number of Halifaxes, to get through to Stettin. Judged from what happened, said an R.A.F. station commander, the Germans become so rattled whenever our bombers approach that Berlin comes first and the rest a long way behind. Over 1000 tons of bombs were dropped on Stettin.

The Germans seemed hopelessly confused by the light force of Mosquitoes which bombed Berlin for a quarter of an hour before the attack on Stettin, which is under 100 miles from Berlin, and almost at any point of the last stages of the journey the main force might have turned and made for the capital. The German fighters started to arrive at Stettin as the attack finished.

The bombers had brilliant moonlight over the target. Pathfinders dropped visual markers, illuminating the target almost as brilliantly as daylight, and then laid target indicators. The flak was insufficient to interfere with the bombing, and Stettin was well alight, said a pilot. All the fires seemed to be in the middle of the target area, and the glow on the clouds could be seen over 150 miles away.