BIG REPAIR JOB

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 22935, 4 July 1944, Page 5

BIG REPAIR JOB

Cherbourg Harbour (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, July 3. The chief deep-water berth in Cherbourg Harbour has been blocked by large sunken ships, it is stated at Supreme Allied Headquarters. A tremendous amount of debris will have to be removed. Reuter s correspondent at Cherbourg says that Commodore W. A. Sullivan, the United States Navy expert who cleared Naples for Allied shipping and salvaged the sunken, burnt-out French liner Normandie from New York Harbour. is naval port commander at Cherbourg. He stated: “Things are already under way here. Minesweepers are constantly working in both the inner and outer harbours." Revealing that almost all the enemy shipping in Cherbourg Harbour had been sunk. Major-General Moore. Chief Engineer for the European Theatre of Operations of the United States Army, gave a comprehensive picture of Allied planning for the reconstruction of the port, made long before D Day. of extensive demolition by the Germans, and told how the operations of the Allied engineers were being carried out to put the facilities into working order as speedily as possible. “We had been getting information about the port two years ago and were not strangers when we walked in,” he said. "The Germans did a very clever Job in demolitions. They went very strongly after the deepwater facilities. The walls of the berthing dock between the Quay de Normandie and the Gare Maritiriie are very badly damaged and to repair them will be a very difficult job. There is a 26-feet tide at Cherbourg, compared with two feet at Naples. With the railways the Germans picked out things difficult to repair. They wrecked signal installations to various points and went after the longest bridges."

M. Phlllipe Renault (Mayor of Cherbourg) said that the citizens were hoping to receive meat from the Americans in return for supplying the United States Army with butter and fresh vegetables. M. Renault said that half the population had returned to their homes from the woods where thev hid during the battle. The Mayor said that Cherbourg was now a poor city. It had paid the Germans 2,000,000 francs in war fines. The Germans had seized the bulk of the wine production, foodstuffs and even the townspeople's bicycles.