Japanese naval authorities in Shanghai yesterday morning emphatically denied press reports from London alleging that a British Imperial Airways passenger plane had been subjected to anti-aircraft fire from Japanese warships south of Hongkong last week.
Two aircraft with British insignia had, however, been driven away from ihe vicinity of a Japanese naval anchorage on two separate occasions on Monday, February 21, a spokesman for the service revealed.
The appearance of the British aircraft over the Japanese anchorage, he added, had been made the subject of a note to the British authorities despatched on February 22. Pointing out in the communication, the spokesman said, was the danger of friction arising from such flights as the Japanese naval vessels were apt to regard any aircraft nearing them as hostile machines. The British reply to the Note was that the machine involved was a passenger plane.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.