Yanks twice blast French shoreline
Hit Calais, Boulogne areas after RAF hits Paris hub, Nazi city
London, England (UP) –
The U.S. 8th Air Force stepped up the tempo of its attacks on the French invasion coast today when Flying Fortresses and Liberators smashed twice within a few hours at German fortifications in the Pas de Calais and Boulogne areas.
Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle’s heavy bombers led hundreds of Allied planes across the Channel by daylight in the wake of a strong British night force which divided 3,000 tons of explosives among the Trappes rail junction outside Paris, the French coast and the German chemical center of Leverkusen.
The two attacks on the stretch of French shoreline across the narrowest neck of the Channel increased to four the heavy blows struck at that area in some 24 hours. The first was a record, or near-record, assault by 1,000 Fortresses and Liberators yesterday.
Strike in two waves
Nearly 500 U.S. heavy bombers escorted by a like number of fighters struck in two waves at the so-called rocket coast, laying a carpet of explosives on the mysterious “military installations” studding the area.
Thunderbolt, Lightning and Mustang fighters accompanied the Fortresses and Liberators in their second straight day of assault on the Nazi targets 20-odd miles from Southeast England. The striking forces flew over a solid cloud blanket and aimed their bombs by special devices.
The Americans met no German fighters over the clouds, but some squadrons ran into intense anti-aircraft fire, including concentrations of ground rockets which seldom have been encountered over the coast.
Tells of rocket attack
Second Lt. Martin Atkin of 115 Beach 74th Street, Far Rockaway, a Fortress co-pilot, said about 20 or 25 rockets were fired from the ground at his formation.
He said:
They left a beautiful white trail of smoke like a trailing bridal veil. They came at a slant and burst into a big ball of white flame.
While the home-based Royal Air Force was carrying out its three-way attack last night, British bombers flew from Italy against Giurgiu, the Romanian oil port on the Danube.
RAF crewmen reported seeing three big explosions at Trappes which blotted out the sprawling railyards with a blaze of multicolored light.
Other RAF planes maintained the campaign of harassment against Leverkusen, the Nazi chemical and poison gas manufacturing town in the suburbs of Cologne.
Mail from Britain is delayed by invasion controls
Washington (UP) –
British and State Department sources said tonight that they believed the recent delay in receipt of letters in this country from Great Britain was the result of transportation problems and pre-invasion censorship of mail.
Americans accustomed to receiving letters have regularly reported in some cases not receiving any for as long as two weeks.
Office of Censorship officials said Americans would have to be patient and added that they thought the public would understand the present difficulties.
The severe restrictions on communications out of the British Isles, which were imposed more than a month ago to prevent pre-invasion leaks, did not apply to ordinary mail, but only to communications in code. But officials pointed out that at the same time stricter censorship of ordinary mail was set up.
That, they said, might have resulted in the holding up of some mail until the flow through the more severe censorship began again. Transportation, always a problem, is believed to be even more difficult at this time.
