Almost complete absence of defense from air attacks was noted yesterday by three Japanese offücers who took part in Monday's raids on Nanking.
Lieutenants Mochifumi Nanga and Takashige Ekusa, who led the attacking planes in the first raid of the day, said they saw no Chinese planes and heard only two or three reports of shots fired by the city's vaunted anti-aircraft gun batteries, "Favoured by weather and meeting no resistance," one of the officers was quoted by the "Shanghai Mainichi" as saying, "we spotted our objective, which was the ammonium sulphate manufacturing plant, and calmly dropped our bombs.
Lieut. Sadao Shiraso who led the raid on Nanking at 145 pin. said "complete silence" greeted the attacking planes.
Lieut. Shiraso's squadron bombed the Pukow railway station, tracks of the Tsinpu line, and a freight train of 25 carriages. A direct hit, the officer told the journal, was registered on the train. Some of the carriages were blown to bits while others turned over.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.