LOSSES AT SEA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 135, 8 May 1940, Page 8

LOSSES AT SEA

SINKING OF BLUCHER. BELATED ADMISSION. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) LONDON, May C. Captain Vian was not hurt when the British destroyer Afridi was sunk by a bomb. The German newspapers now admit that the Oskarsborg batteries sank the cruiser Blucher at dawn on April 9. A 10,000-ton vessel, completed in 1939, she was the most modern of Germany’s medium cruisers, armed with eight 8-in. guns and having a speed of 32 knots. Three Grimsby trawlers —the Pen, Hercules, and Leonora, each with a crew of nine—are overdue and are presumed to have been lost. The French Admiralty states that German aircraft attacked a troop convoy in the North Sea. None of the ships was hit, but an escorting destroyer, the Bison, was sunk. Many of the crew have been saved. A British Official Wireless message says there is some speculation as to whether the sinking of the French destroyer Bison does not the basis for the reiterated, hut untrue, Nazi claim to have “sunk a British battleship,” which, according to German reports, was accompanying a transport off Namsos on May 3