DAMAGE BY SINGLE RAIDER

Southland Times, Issue 24237, 21 September 1940, Page 5

DAMAGE BY SINGLE RAIDER

A slight mist was hanging over Dover Straits on Thursday. The sky was overcast and a stiff south-westerly was blowing. The Air Ministry stated that British .fighters shot down three enemy bombers on Thursday.

A single German raider bombed the London area on Thursday afternoon, doing considerable damage. Southeast England was also bombed, but apart from isolated attacks which caused several casualties German activity over England has been exceptionally slight. A number of the windows in the Home Office were broken by a blast. A flat owned by Miss Ellen Wilkinson, M.P., was bombed twice in her absence. SCENES OF DEVASTATION The King and Queen once again spent the morning visiting areas, this time in south-west and west London, which suffered from the bombs of the Nazi night raiders and once again they were greeted by smiling faces and undaunted enthusiasm. The police made no attempt to keep the people away and the King and Queen walked amid scenes of devastation with cheering men, women and children brushing alongside them. An Air Ministry and Ministry of Home Security communique states: “No largescale air action has been reported during tire day. Two enemy aircraft dropped bombs in districts in south-east London, causing some damage and casualties. Both were engaged by our fighters and one was shot down. Bombs are also reported from the coastal areas in Essex and Sussex and at one point in the west of England. The number of casualties is small. In spite of bad visibility our fighters successfully intercepted a large proportion of the enemy and five enemy bombers in all have been destroyed.” The daily occurrence of people spending the day waiting for their release

from beneath the debris of razed buildings has been repeated in several districts. A man who was rescued from a buried motor-car in a West End garage died in hospital. Twenty-five hours after a bomb had wrecked a shop rescuers heard faint baby cries and it was ,a four months-old child lying in a drawer, its parents and grandmother having been killed. Scores, clad in their night attire, extinguished a series of fires which a Molotov breadbasket started in a northern residential area. The heaviest casualties resulted

from an enormous explosion following the crashing'of a raider fully loaded with bombs. Numbers of buildings were demolished. A

rescue party was struggling all night to release persons imprisoned underground when a wall collapsed.

The Inner Temple Library, the Public Records Office, the British Museum courtyard, the Wallace Collection courtyard and Peter Robinson’s store are among the latest landmarks bombed. A majority of the treasures, including the Doomsday Book housed in the Public Records Office and also those in the museums were removed to safety after the outbreak of war. COUNTY HALL HIT

A bomb in a suburb destroyed a Methodist Church and five adjoining houses. The County Hall, the headquarters of the London County Council, was hit by a bomb. The fabric of the hall was damaged, but the civil defence and other services are being maintained unimpaired. A bomb caused a 30-foot crater on a terrace nearest Westminster Bridge. Two waitresses were killed and there were a dozen other casualties.

Lord Croft stated that many incendiary bombs had fallen on the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. No casualties had been caused and the buildings were undamaged.