NAVAL BASES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 January 1942, Page 3

NAVAL BASES

FURTHER BRITISH ATTACKS ON BREST & ST. NAZAIRE. SCHARNHORST & GNEISENAU STILL SHELTERING. LONDON. January 8. Last night British air forces made a strong attack on the German occupied bases at Brest and St. Nazaire. Not one aircraft is missing. The raid on Brest, where the German battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the cruiser Prince Eugen are sheltering, was the third in succession and the fourth in a week. There was no enemy air activity over this country last night. THE AIR EFFORT HALF NAZI FIGHTING STRENGTH KEPT IN WEST. SIR A. SINCLAIR'S SURVEY. LONDON, January 8. Sir Archibald Sinclair, Air Minister, said in the House of Commons that British air attacks had compelled the Germans to keep more than half their fighter strength in Western Europe. In the Western Desert our squadrons had bombed and shot their way to almost complete mastery of the air. In the Battle of the Atlantic aircraft of the Coastal Command were out clay and night watching enemy movements, guarding convoys and sinking submarines and supply ships. Our bombers had destroyed enemy submarines in their assembly yards and while refitting. Only once in the. last 15 years had the weather been so unfavourable for bombing operations as it was during this winter. In spite of this, during the last three months of 1941 a 70 per cent greater tonnage of bombs had been dropped on the Western Front than was the case in the same period of 1940. When the weather improved the time would come for a heavier and more sustained offensive against Germany.