Th
THE CHINA MAIL, DECEMBER 20, 1940
VISIT TO THE NAZI BOMBERS' GRAVE
r.
PEOPLE WHO find it difficult to credit the staggering successes of the R.A.F. ought to be shown the graveyards of the Nazi aircraft we have destroy- ed, writes a special correspondent.
ནན་
pion of cooperation between em- ployers and workers,
Mr. Hichens was educated at Winchester and New College, Ox- ford, being made a Fellow of Winchester College in 1933.
. He leaves a widow, three sons three daughters. Mrs. Hichens is the youngest daughter 'of the late Gen. Sir Neville
Lyttelton.
I went to one of these graveyards to-day, and and the scene was unique. Here lie the remains of enemy bombers which came to shower death on women and children, and were shot down in the process. With them lie crumpled Messerschmidts.
You have to come to a gigantic scrap heap like this to apprecinte the bringing down alone of 188 enemy aircraft on one day and 48 on another. Not all of them, of course, reach the dump. Sume disappear for ever in the Channel; others are blown to bits; others, again, muy come down in places not easily accessible.
But the
majority come in the end to the dump, to provide solid evidence of the destruction wight
we hav
Stricken Dornier
SHIPPING CHIEF KILLED
Mr. William Lionel Hichens, Chairman of Cammell Laird and Co., a director of the L.M.S. Railway and other large indus- The colossal accumulation of trial concerns, and a member of wreckage speaks for itself. I the Carnegie New York Trust, looked at the big wing of a Dor- has been killed in a London air nier, with its black and white raid. He was 66. cross standing out forlornly.
Nearby were German airscrews It was at a critical time in the that had been twisted into fan-history of the great shipbuilding tastic shapes. Some of the blades even had bullet holes through them.
Smashed fuselages, bits of cupolas, retractable undercar- riages, odd wheels and tyres, att figured in a collection of junk which contained а high pro- portion of sheets of strong me- tal. It had for the most part been concertined as if it were tissue paper.
My guide pointed to a rough piece of fused metal resembling a heavy lump of clinker. "That is a common enough sight here," he remarked. "When the machine has caught fire the heat reduces parts of it to a blackened mass. What had once been a beautifully formed radiator is now revealed
as a poor shrunken thing with the honeycomb tightly pressed into a solid block,
·
Daily Addition
As I wandered round, a goods tram pulled into the siding about 100 yards away. Each of its long line of open trucks was load- ed with a fresh consignment of crashed aeroplanes. These trains arrive so regularly that the giant heaps are added to daily.
The constant Influx would prove overwhelming but for the anergetic way in which hundreds of workmen apply themselves to systematically recovering all that is worth while.
Steadily they reduce the aluminium alloy to small pieces which are promptly taken to the adjacent furnace. Pre- sently you see the result of the smelting. Ten tons of little ingots of the valuable alloy were ar- ranged in neat piles, the work of half a week.
Ingots of this kind have helped to make many new Spitfires and Hurricarics in recent months. And many more will follow.
BOY SAVED FATHER
to
When an incendiary bomb fell on the bed in, which he was sleeping, twelve-year-old Joe Chown, of a south-west village, thought first of his invalid father, who was in the next, room..
Having got his father safety, Jod got a bucket of earth, returned to him bedroom and coolly put out the blazing bed.
Sparks were flying near my eyes and the glare was terrible, but the earth got the better of it,' he told a reporter.
Officers and men and their girl friends were dancing in a road- house in the same district when a shower of incendiary bombs rüibed down.
concern of Cammell Laird, in 1910, that Mr. Hichens became chairman. Under his control there was extensive reorganisa- tion, and the task was completed before the outbreak of war 1914. He was also a director of the British Steel Corporation?
There was no warmer cham-
One fell on the roof of the ball- room, but was safely removed by a naval officer guest. The dancers were unaware of what had hank
in
NOW IN STOCK
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.