STETTEN AND KIEL

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22785, 8 January 1944, Page 5

STETTEN AND KIEL

Attention From Bomber

Command

Targets Well Covered

By Telegraph—N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright LONDON. January 6.

Alarmed at the danger to Berlin the Luftwaffe again sent fighter packs to defend the capital last ~ night, leaving the door wide oper for a great force of Lancasters, with a smaller number of Halifaxes. to get through to Stettin.

More than 1000 tons of bombs were dropped on Stettin. The Germans seemed hopelessly confused by a light force of Mosquitoes which bombed Berlin a quarter of an hour before the attack on Stettin, which is less than 100 miles from Berlin, and from almost any point of the last stages of the journey the main force might have turned’ and made for the capital. Ger-, man 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 in davlight, and then laid the target in.dicators. The anti-aircraft fire was not sufficient to interefere 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 more than 150 miles away. Judging from what happened 'said a Roval Air Force station commander) the Germans become so rattled whenever bombers approach that Berlin comes first and the rest a long way behind. -■ ■ Stettin is the capital of Pomerania, and the targets included shipbuilding yards, machinery factories, chemical and cement works, and an oil-refining plant. Mosquitoes were also over Western Germany during the night. Fifteen aircraft are missing. ■ . Roval Air Force bombers and fighterbombers attacked targets in Belgium and Northern France this morning. Two enemy machines were destroyed and three British machines are missing An Unassigned Target . A small force of Flying Fortresses yesterday shattered the vital factory of Bauer and Scharute near Dusseldorf. which produces about half the high-grade nuts and bolts used in the German war industry. The British United Press correspondent at a United States Army Air Force bomber station says that the Flying Fortresses did not start out to bomb the factory. They found”. i< through a gap in the clouds after an unsuccessful attempt to bomb ...their assigned targets. Swanns of rocket-firing Messer schmitts came up to meet the United States raiding force and the Germans laid a smoke-screen over Kiel. In spite of this, pilots claimed that- the bombing was accurate and that, fresh fires were started. The Americans claimed 95 German fighters shot down. The bombers destroyed 62 and the escorting fighters 33. The Allied losses were 25 heavy bombers and 12 fighters.