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Torpedo Sleds. Because the great battle of Shanghai was being fought in the midst of a modern city under the eye of dozens of foreign warships, it has been one of the most accurately observed engagements since the War. Because the International Settlement has its own wires direct to the world, it is the first major engagement of modern times to be reported without censorship. Yet military observers and reporters both missed one event that all navies have been waiting for. Over the week-end long-awaited Japanese army transports arrived off the Whangpoo-Yangtze juncture and, protected by the bulk of Japan's navy, attempted to land an estimated 50,000 troops in the face of withering Chinese artillery fire. Quickly word came from Chinese headquarters that speedy sea sleds 45-mile-an-hour motorboats, each carrying two torpedoes and a light machine gun, had sunk an indefinite number of Japanese ships. No foreigners saw them, all foreign naval officers wanted to, for such torpedo sleds have been a heavy investment of Germany, Britain, and in particular Italy, and this was their first test in active service. Nationalist China has at least twelve, six of British and six of German make, waiting to be tested against larger future orders.
Wing On & Sincere. Eleventh day of the battle of Shanghai shoppers in the International Settlement crowded into the two leading department stores on Nanking Road: Wing On & Co., and Sincere Co., Ltd. across the street, all anxious to lay in stores against the continuing siege. Shopping together went the New York Times' veteran Far East reporters, Hallett Abend and Anthony James Billingham, 35,* Correspondent Abend waiting on the curb in his car while Correspondent Billingham purchased a pair of field glasses. With a warning shriek like an express train, a huge naval shell burst just above the street. Both storefronts crumpled like paper, over 300 people in the two stores were horribly mutilated and killed. Limping on a torn foot Correspondent Abend was able to make his way into the Wing On building. He found Correspondent Billingham, who had just forced open the elevator doors, spouting blood from a torn artery in a shattered left arm and with three shell splinters in his chest. A.P. Correspondent Morris J. Harris, passing on the sidewalk, wrote:
"Hundreds of bodies lay in piles. It seemed as if the force of the blast had gathered them up and rolled them together. . . . Pools of blood glistened in the streetcar tracks and gutters. Fragments of heads, legs and arms plastered building fronts. Some were scattered in the street two blocks away."