1941-02-22 — Page 9

THE CHINA MAIL, FEBRUARY 22, 1941

SAGA OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS: CAN'T BE SUNK

(By Larry Allen Aboard Aircraft Carrier Illustrious with British Mediterranean Fleet)

THIS SCARRED AIRCRAFT CARRIER, AT- TACKED FOR SEVEN HOURS BY GERMAN DIVE BOMBERS, CAME INTO A MEDITERRANEAN PORT UNDER HER OWN POWER.

Forty to fifty Nazi 'planes, making the heaviest attack of this war upon a single British warship, flung torpedoes at the Illustrious's sides and 100,000 pounds of high-explosive bombs at her flight deck in an unsuccessful attempt to sink this newest of Great Britain's carriers.

The German pilots, diving head! on, plunged into a great wall of guntive. They spattered the decks bullets and with machine-gun dropped scores of bombs on the port and starboard sides of the ship.

Seven hours of this violent as- sault ended at dak.

The German airmen dived so low that the markings could be easily seen on their big Junkers planes They dropped bombs all around the deck. Bomh splinters flew about the bridge and the rest] of the carrier like hailstones. Near

misses so shook the Illustrious that it seemed they would hurt

her over on her side.

The Germans attacked while the Illustrious and units of the Bri- tish Mediterranean feet were es corting a large eastbound convov and after a British cruiser had sunk the 642-ton Italian destroyer Vega.

"Fires of Hel!”

At 12:30 p.m. the marine bugler sounded a warning, and a voice over the loud-speaker system called out: "All hands to action

stations

over

til, with smoke hanging her flight deck she tooked like a moving monster of fire. Bombs fell to port and starboard, at how and stern.

Another bomb crashed, causing casualties, including one Royal Air Force officer whe had come to sea as he termed it. "just for a week's rest."

"We Are Hit"

Windows in the entrance to the captain's

glass-inclosed bridge blasts were shattered by bomb and the explosions of the ship's guns. A dive bomber swooped just in front of the bridge on the star- board sid, and a bomb threw a column of water over the bridge. the blast blew me down hatchway to aviation intelligence quarters one deck below. A sheet of firs burned my face

The

Anollier German dived head on for the carrier. The bomb creased the side of the carrier.

an

"We are hit." mumbled officer, his face pressed against the deck floor.

Between 2 p.m. and 7.30 there never were more than a few min- utes free of the sound of prejectiles crashing about the Illustrious, her gun crews flinging shells en and on at the attacking plants in the face of machine-gun fire.

I reached the bridge just as a heavy German bomb Struck the ship. There was a shatter. ing blast. Almost simultaneous-

Just before dusk mall columns ly a 1,000-pound bomb crashed alongside, and a blinding flash of smoke poured from the flight bomb seemed to envelop the ship. deck. Shell casings and

The British announced in Lon-1 splinters formed a strange carpet don that the 23.000-ton Illustrious, | there.

In the engine room the

men

the 9,100-ton cruiser Southampton and the 1,335-ton destroyer Gal-kept one turbine and then another lant had been damaged, and that operating, and then

ever

the

resorted to

at least twelve of the attacking steam pressure to keep the Illus- trious going steadily on eastward 'planes were shot down.}

the nearest Mediterranean One officer put it this way: "It to

port was near was the most tremendous, port. When that

bombers terrifying thing I have

German torpedc scen. 11 seemed like all dived again, the fres of Hell had been kindled. A blast of a 1,000-pound bomb is so crushing, so incredible, that there are no words to describe it."

the Germans,

The first bomb fell almost at the moment some British fighter 'planes had taken off to engage Another bomb tore holes in the carrier's side. Still another crash- ed, and fragments from a near miss struck a gun crew at a pom- pom station. They stood up un- flinchingly

14C German machine-gun fire and pumped shells as fast as they could into the | bonibers. Every gun on the Illus- trious roared at the Germans, but they kept diving in, bombs and torpedoe, narrowly missing the cartier.

to

Deadly Drone

Torpedo Attack

Rear Admiral Arthur L. St. George Lyster watched the Ger- mans dive in and shouted orders to his aides while shrapnel and machine-gun bullets peppered about him. On the bridge below Capt Dennis Boyd puffed his pipe and again ordered: "All hands to action stations."

Three Germans dived in and dropped torpedoes. A moment before, the captain had order full speed, and the torpedoes cut harmlessly through the water a few feet off the stern,

During all the struggle by the Illustrious the British 'planes which had taken off from her decks had made the Germans pay. The final score in Nazi 'planes shot down was twelve.

Soon after the Illustrious reach- ed port, fire squads had extin- British battleships, cruisers and guished a small fire in her interior, destroyers attacked both German while shipwrights plugged the and Italian bombers. Huge bomb hrles, getting her ready to splashes from near misses helped go to sea again.

ers.

to hide the ships from the bomb- The dead on the Illustrious were The entire crew of the Illustri- taken out for burial at sea in the

areas where they had fought.

ous, except the officers on the Even in port German and Ita- bridge and crew firing the pom-lian planes have tried to sink the poms (multi-barreled anti-air-illustrious. They have found her craft guns), gathered to help wounded companions and carried guns still fring.

them across the fight deck 10 medical stations under direct fre

of machine-guns and bombs. As

soon as a few surviving seriously HITLER

wounded mechanics were pulled out of the wreckage their com- rades dashed in to get others.

The few fighter planes which the Illustrious was able to get into the air before the first bombs struck forced the Germans oft temporarily, but that short respite was the only break in the attack'

POPULAR

IN JAPAN

during the whole afternoon. Less · HERR HITLER WAS ONE OF than an hour later the Nazis re- THE MOST POPULAR AUTHORS turned to drop more bombs, IN JAPAN IN 1940.g

Again there was the deadly According to statistics compiled vibrating drone of bombers. by the Hibiya municipal library, Again flame grunted in sheets the German chancellor's Mein from all the carrier's. guns une, Kampf-was-among 82 mmoja tu wakala wi

SHARE ICELAND WITH U.S.

That Britain should share, the defence of Iceland with the U.S.A. is suggested by Mr. Wedgwood, M.P. for. Newcastle- under-Lyme-

on

He is to ask the Se- cretary for War "whe- ther he can give estimate of the cost of the defence of Ice- land, and will he con- sider sharing the oc- cupation with, or handing it over to, the United States America so as to re- duce our expenditure and free our troops?"

of

by read books in the nation last yem.

There were only two other for- eign books in this list, namely, Tota Ichimaru's translation of war in the Pucille, and the biography of Dr. Hideyo Nouchi by Gustav Eckstein,

Reflecting the rise which female in recent writers have achieved

literature, six

years in Japanese of the 32 best sellers came from the pens of women-Router,

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