BOMBS ON MUNICH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 59, 12 March 1943, Page 5

BOMBS ON MUNICH

FIVE HUNDRED TONS HE4VY RAID BY R.A.F.

Recd. 6.30 p.m. Rugby, March 10. Last night aircraft of the Bomber Command made a heavy attack on industrial objectives in Munich. Other aircraft bombed targets in western Germany and laid mines in enemy waters. Eleven of our aircraft are missing.

The Air Ministry news service says that well over 500 tons of high explosives and incendiaries were dropped on Munich. Besides being the headquarters of the Nazi Party, Munich is a centre of railway workshops and a town of great engineering and armament factories.

A pilot who arrived mid-way through the bombing said the whole centre of the main target area was obscured by smoke. There were great masses of fire glowing through the smoke and other fires were scattered round the main concentration. One huge explosion rose over 1000 feet and a great jet of flame was seen going up from what seemed to be a large round tank near one of the marshalling yards. There was a great display of searchlights around the town, but they were not all so well supported by flak as in the past.

Two German fighters were destroyed. Our fighters made sweeps over the Channel and northern France this afternoon, in the course of which they destroyed one enemy fighter without loss. In yesterday’s dusk attacks on targets at Le Mans by Mosquitos, a subsidiary Renault factory near the Le Mans marshalling yard was bombed from a low level.

Originally this was one of the* subsidiary armament and traction factories of the great Renault works at Billancourt, on the outskirts of Paris. Before the fall of France the Le Mans factory was making crankshafts, tank tracks, and links, as well as repairing motor vehicles. After the widespread destruction at Billancourt by R.A.F. bombings, large additions were made to the Le Mans works, and whatever machinery could be salvaged from Billancourt was probably moved to Le Mans and the factory began to produce tanks, lorries, armoured fighting vehicles and aero engines. The factory has seven widely-spreqj buildings linked by a rail to each other and to the main railway line. The Mosquitos bombed from heights between 1500 feet and 50 feet. The attack was all over in two minutes just before the light began to fail, and in that time one of the main buildings in the northern part of the target collapsed, while the roof of another was blown off. In the southern part of the target there was a violent explosion and clouds of dense black smoke.—B.O.W.

BERLIN RAID DAMAGE

SEVERAL DISTRICTS TO BE EVACUATED London, March 9. The damage in Berlin in the big R.A.F. raid on March 1 was far greater than was at first thought, says the Daily Telegraph. The German Building Security Commission has ordered the evacuation of several districts of the German capital. These include parts of the western residential district of Wilmersdorf, parts of the working-class area of Neukolm, official quarters in the Wilhelmstresse, and the main shopping centre in the Leipsigerstrasse. More than lt)00 people were injured when an arcade linking the Unter den Linden with the Friedrichstrasse collapsed.