Army News (Darwin, NT : 1941 - 1946), Wednesday 5 April 1944, page 1


RAF Follows US Raid on Budapest LONDON, Tuesday.— Liberators and Wellingtons of the Royal Air Force attached to the Med-iterranean Air Force, last night followed up the heavy US daylight attack on Budapest, the cap-ital of Hungary, with a strong bombardment of steelworks and armament factories inside the city area, They flew from Italian airfields and most of them returned.

As they turned for home, our bomber crews saw at least five big fires burning. This was the second time in twelve hours that Budapest had been visited by Allied bombers. Earlier, a reconnaissance plane brought back photographs of the effects of the big American raid. These showed the devastation to be tremendous. Budapest's rail yards, aircraft component factories, oil re-fineries and airfields will be out of action or have their output grave-ly reduced, for some time to come. In the American raid, 24 defend-

ing German fighters were shot down. Hungarian Radio has been active, almost frantic, in its orders and ap-peals to the people. Seafarers have been warned of mines in the Danube, some suburbs have been cut off completely by train and others are operating with a reduced service. Roads around Budapest have been closed to traffic and the city is now isolated. Yesterday, the Hungarian Parlia-ment sat twice to consider the situa-tion. Orders for the evacuation of the city are expected shortly.

On the land fronts in Italy, there has been patrol activity only. At the Ancio beachhead patrols of both sides have been probing each other's lines and one of our patrols brought back information that Italian Fascists are serving in-dividually in German units. There was much Allied aerial ac-tivity, our planes making 1900 sor-ties over central Italy, attacking air fields, rail centres and lines of communication and seaports in northern Italy. In the day's operations, 26 enemy planes were shot down while we lost 13.