GESTURE OF DEFIANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 June 1942, Page 3

GESTURE OF DEFIANCE

BEAUFIGHTER SKIMS PARIS ROOFTOPS NAZI MILITARY HEADQUARTERS SHELLED. PEOPLE IN STREETS WAVE AND CHEER. LONDON, June 16. A Beaufighter has been “roofhopping” over Paris. It flew low over the roof-tops, circled a churcn towerj and, as a gesture of defiance to the Nazis, dropped a Tricolour near the Arc de Triomphe. A burst of cannon shell was fired into the building occupied by the German military headquarters. After dropping another’ Tricolour, the plane flew for home. Many of the people in the streets waved and cheered. Spitfires were out again over occupied territory, and attacked a goods train. Loaded barges between Bruges and Ostend were set on fire. One of our planes is missing. Of the enemy planes over Britain last night, two were destroyed. Last night an entirely unsuccessful attack was made on one of our convoys off the south-west coast of England. One enemy aircraft was destroyed. An earlier Vichy message stated that: “An unidentified plane, believed to be Free French, flew over Paris at noon on Saturday (United Nations Day), dropped a Tricolour on the Unknown Tomb in the Arc de Triomphe, and afterwards flew over the Champs des Elysees and the Place de la Concorde, and machine-gunned the German sentries outside the Ministry of the Navy.”