V-Bombs North

The industrial hives of northern England had all but demobilized their air-raid defenses. The people, reading of buzz-bombings in southern England, felt safe and snug in their rows of smoke-smudged brick houses 150 miles and more beyond the usual V-1 and V-2 targets.

Suddenly that comfortable feeling vanished. V-bombs, British authorities admitted last week, had landed in northern England. German authorities identified the target as Manchester, 189 miles northwest of London. Men, women & children had died under cascading piles of brick; Christmas trees, wearing their tinsel and ornaments, had stood exposed in the wreckage.

How the Germans had reached so far was not officially explained. Most-discussed method: Heinkel pickaback planes had carried the bombs close to England before releasing them. Also possible: bomb-launching submarines, operating off the coasts, or a longer-ranged V-bomb. To the people of northern England, the method did not matter much. The reality was that they were being bombed again. Hastily they remobilized their defenses; in one district the old crew reported for duty ten minutes after the first alarm.

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