Hankow, July 19.
The devil's own handiwork in the form of bombing aeroplanes appeared about 8.30 this morning and, while I cannot state first hand what took place in Wuchang and Hanyang, l will simply report what I observed, much of which is burned into my memory.
When the sirens sounded, giving the usual warning, the streets and other open places were cleared in Hankow as usual. The planes were observed in sets of nine, flying well in formation and rather high. The first and second sets of nine planes veered off as far as Hankow was concerned, and I noted one dog fight in the region of the aerodrome. This fight was between two planes, and one (nationality not known) was downed. The third set of nine planes crossed over from Hanyang and appeared above Hankow not far from where the Han River joins the Yangtze. Bombs were dropped on the practically deserted arsenal en route, as also on the large boat colony in the Han River. The planes continued their flight towards the air-feld, dropping heavy bombs every few hundred yards as they went. From a tall building a half mile away I could easily see the smoke caused by the bomb explosions, but only in two instances were conflagrations started. The planes continued to bomb the airfield and there did some damage to the nearly deserted field. It happened that most of the Chinese planes had left on bombing expeditions when this raid took place, so there was little resistance.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.