The Pittsburgh Press (October 25, 1940)
U.S. VESSEL HIT IN JAP ATTACK
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Gunboat Badly Damaged in Chungking Raid
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Chungking, Oct. 25 (UP) –
The United States gunboat Tutuila of the Yangtze patrol was damaged severely today when it was struck by a 400-pound rock dislodged during a four-hour Japanese air raid.
Two British steamships, the Wanliu and the Wanhsien, were struck and damaged by shrapnel.
The Tutuila was the second United States gunboat to have suffered by Japanese air raids in the Yangtze valley. In December 1937, a Japanese plane bombed and sank the USS Panay, also of the Yangtze Patrol.
42 Japanese planes bombed Chungking for four hours, beginning about 10 a.m. They concentrated their fire on the already devastated downtown district of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’s capital.
One bomb dislodged a rock from the south bank of the river, which at Chungking flows between high hills. This rock crashed onto the Tutuila. Damage was described as considerable.
A dozen bombs fell in the vicinity of the United States Embassy, but it was not damaged.
The zone in which the embassy is located and off which the Tutuila was anchored had been designated as a “safe area.”