Fleet Street, Wednesday.

A time-bomb exploded in the grounds of Buckingham Palace at about half-past one yesterday morning. It had been dropped twenty-four hours earlier, during the Sunday night raid over London. The King and Queen were not in residence, nobody was hurt, and only slight damage was done. Members of the household and of the servants’ staff were in their shelters when the bomb fell and when it exploded. Before it exploded they were kept away from the threatened wing of the Palace.

British, Dominion, and American journalists visited the Palace to-day to be shown the effects of the explosion. The bomb had fallen in the ground by a small colonnaded building at the north-west corner of the Palace which was once a conservatory and which was turned into a swimming pool four or five years ago. The explosion caused a crater about ten feet deep and twenty feet wide in the path that runs round the Palace, smashed columns of the building, and broke nearly all the windows in the Palace’s north wing. It burst into the swimming pool, twisting the tubular steel diving tower and the girders supporting the roof. The shelter under the pool was undamaged, and the water in the pool was still there to-day.

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Wire netting behind the Palace windows prevented damage to the interior by flying glass. There was slight damage to the masonry round the window of the Chinese drawing-room, which is on the first floor nearest to the pool, and to the corridor window immediately below. Small holes were made in the roof by flying masonry and broken glass fell into the picture gallery. The pictures had been moved at the out-break of war.

Gas, water, and electricity services were undamaged. Workmen were still inspecting them to-day, and others were clearing up the debris and repairing windows and window frames.

In the middle of the north wing is the bow window of the Queen’s drawing room. This was broken. Below is the glass veranda over the garden entrance, from which the King and Queen come out to meet their guests at Buckingham Palace garden parties. Although all this glass was shattered the glass lamp that hangs from it was intact. The window of the King’s bathroom was broken.

Most of the ground-floor windows are those of offices, in which work was going on as usual to-day. Other windows broken are those of the Belgian suite in which visiting sovereigns are lodged in peace-time. The King and Queen inspected the damage yesterday with Mr. Winston Churchill.

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