The War Years

[John Rogers]

that the Germans dropped the largest bomb on the city, which fortunately did not explode, the bomb named SATAN, a 4,000 pound monster, which fell at Beckington Road, Knowle, measured 8ft 11 in long (without tail) and 2ft.2in in diameter. When the bomb disposal unit recovered it in April 1943 they had to dig down 30 feet. Satan rode in the Victory parade through London. . Not the plan the Germans had for the bomb. People killed in these raids were 149 dead and 260 injured.

5 January 1941.
Avonmouth was the target again this night; the attack began just after 7:15 pm, and was concentrated on Avonmouth docks. German records confirm that a 103 aircraft were over the target that dropped 82 tons of H.E. Bombs and 735 incendiaries containers (26,460 small bombs). The raid ended at 10:00 pm. One man died in the raid from Shirehampton.

10 January 1941.
A short raid on Shirehampton lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes, 6:30 pm to 9:15 pm. Two H.E. Bombs were dropped in the center of the village, and one up on Penpole place, near the army camp.

16/17 January 1941. Avonmouth Blitz.
Bristol had something of a respite from the bombing from mid-January to the end of February 1941.but not so for Avonmouth. Germany confirmed that Avonmouth was the main target and planned a concentrated attack on the docks. A 126 aircraft dropped 124 tons of H.E. Bombs and 1.480 incendiary containers (53.280 bombs) on the docks and surrounding area, not a house or street in Avonrnouth came through unscathed. The raid lasted 11 hours, from 7:08 pm unti15:39 am the next morning with only a lull in the bombing around mid-night, people thought the nightmare was over, but the planes were back for a repeat performance. The pathfinder planes came first dropping the flares to light up the ground, followed by waves of planes dropping incendiaries, and last but not least came the bombers bringing the H.E. bombs. Considerable damage was done to the dock and the village, 50 homes were destroyed, and bombs hit several ships. The Parish Church was gutted by fire bombs, in West Town near the entrance to the dock the whole village was leveled, 200 hundred people lived there, they were evacuated while the raid was in progress, the damage was so bad they never re-built the village. In comparison with the violence of the attack, the following casualty list was light; seven people lost their life.

22 February 1941.
Today's raid was very short lasting a mere 13 minutes, and was the one, which gave the people of Avonmouth and Shirehampton the most gratification. It was a wet and blustery day when the alert was given at I: 59 pm. As a German Heinkel approached Avonmouth from the Bristol Channel. Almost immediately the Ack Ack Gunners at Port bury opened up and had a direct hit on the aircraft, it banked over Avonmouth spraying the area with machine gun fire as is began to drop, there was a loud twanging noise as the plane hit the wires on the barrage Balloon then it crashed onto the mud on the bank of the river. The only survivor was the pilot who parachuted to safety, the rest of the crew was killed on impact. The bodies of the observer and flight engineer were recovered and buried in Greenbank Cemetery in Bristol, the remains of the gunner and radioman was never found. Later it was learned that the target for this aircraft was the aircraft works at Yate.

27 February and 7 March 1941.



4.

[John Rogers]

In only five days the enemy attempted yet a third daylight raid on Yate, and this time he was successful with disastrous results. Panall aircraft ltd factory was high on the German target list. After the war it was found out that the Germans were taking pictures of the factory in August of 1939 five days before the war was declared. At 2:30 pm. a single enemy aircraft in broad daylight and unchallenged, passed over Charfield Railway
Station, flying at a low altitude with the Swastika plainly visible. The plane followed the railway line to Yate, with the undercarriage lowered to foil the defenses, and to create the impression that he was a British bomber about to land on Yate airfield. It dropped its bomb-load of six H.E. and one oil bomb before anyone in the factory could take cover, and then escaped into low lying clouds. The casualties could have been higher had it not been for three of the bombs not exploding, and there was 4,000 workers in the factory at the time. On 7 March another daylight raid on Parnalls by a single raider was pulled off again causing much damage and stopping all production. Altogether 52 workers lost their lives in the two daylight raids.



There was very little enemy air activity at night over the Bristol area due to the bad weather; however they began again in mid march.

14 March 1941 one aircraft appeared over the skies of Avonmouth and it was intercepted by a Beaufighter and was hit by machine gun fire and crashed in flames. Following German aircraft dropped their bombs in the location of the burning aircraft; no damage was done to the surrounding area.

16/17 March 1941. Bristol's Fifth Blitz. This was a mass attack and considered Bristol’s heaviest raid of the war so far. Records indicate 168 aircraft attacked Avonmouth and Bristol dropping 166 ton of H.E. Bombs and 33,840 incendiary bombs. The raid lasted eight hours with bombs raining down on the area causing a high rate of casualties. The shelter at St. Barnabas church took a direct hit killing 24 people. At Avonmouth scores of bombs fell on the dock, one cottage near the Smelting works was set on fire and the raiders used the flames to aim their bombs as 78 bomb craters were found in and around the cottage.
.

29/30 March 1941
Estimated 55 1ong-range bombers carried out a fast raid on Avonmouth lasting almost two hours. This raid was centered on the oil tanks, several were set on fire. In Shirehampton some of the bombs hit the Greyhound Inn and it was destroyed, the police station was also hit. Six people were killed in Shire that night and several injured.

3/4 Apri11941.
This was a moonlight raid centered on Avonmouth and Bristol; the raid started at 9:00 pm and ended 1:0 am the following morning. Seventy-six aircraft were reported over the target and dropped 80 tons of H.E. and 19,656 incendiary bombs. The attack began on a line between the Horse Shoe Bend and Filton. Several H.E. Bombs hit Avonmouth and Shirehampton and a military convoy was damaged on the Portway. Over a 1000 homes were damaged. The number of dead for this raid were 22, and 90 injured. One of the bombs hit the A.A Battery at Markham, and one bomb fell on the army transit camp in Pen Pole.

4/5 Apri11941.
Avonmouth was once again the target for the raiders; thousands of incendiaries bombs were




5.

[John Rogers]

dropped over a wide area. Many hundreds burnt on the riverbanks, and many fell on the village of Shirehampton. Several fires were started in the docks and in the Smelting Works. The sky was illuminated buy chandelier flares; fifteen were counted at one time eight were seen over Avonmouth. Antiaircraft fire drove the raiders off their targets, with the results that damage was kept to a minimum. The A.A. barrage, in fact was considered the heaviest yet put up in Bristol. Considering the scope of this raid the casualty were light, 9 dead and 22 injured. Four German bombers were shot down with crash landing at Redding’s farm, near Weston-Super. Mare.



.
7/8 Apri11941.
Single raider dropped H.E. and incendiaries bombs on Shirehampton; slight damage was reported to some homes.

9 /10 Apri11941.
Raiders attacked Avonmouth again with H.E. Bombs hitting the railway station and destroying the Cinema.

11/12 Apri11941. (Good Friday) Bristol's Sixth Blitz.
This heavy two-scale raid was the sixth and final large-scale attack on Bristol. The enemy claimed to have 153 aircraft over the target, Bristol/Avonmouth, dropping 193 tons of H.E. and 34,884 incendiaries bombs. Incendiaries H.E. Bombs were dropped in waves of planes after they had broken through the heavy Ack-Ack fire. The attack started at 10:00pm and lasted 2 hours; at mid-night the all clear was sounded. Thirteen minutes later the enemy planes were back over the city and did not leave unti1 3:52 am. The second raid was far more serious than the first. Bombs fell on Shirehampton and Avonmouth, a large bomb destroyed 10 homes in Richmond Terrace, and a large land mine fell on Priory Rd in Shirehampton killing five people in their homes. Total dead for the night were 180 and 300 injured.

4 May 1941
The RAF, night fighters began to keep the German planes away taking a toll on the bombers. Thirteen of the enemy planes fell to fighter aircraft. And on 7 may 24 more were shot down.

31 may 1941
Avonmouth and Shirehampton was under attack again, bombs destroyed several buildings on the dock, and bombs fell on Park gates and Sea Mills. Two people were killed and 12 injured.

27 July 1941.
When the new RAF airfield at Broadfield Down was built (which is now Bristol Lulsgate Airport), no one in their wildest dreams could have envisioned that the first aircraft to use the new hard runway would be a German bomber.
It was a misty morning on 27 July 1941 when a strange looking aircraft circled overhead above Lulsgate Bottom, which was still under construction. The plane made a perfect landing. The time was 6: 20 am. It taxied up to the workers on the strip. The pilot stepped out of the cockpit and asked the workers what part of France he was in. Apparently the pilot had been following the coastline down from Birkenhead after a bombing mission and mistook the Bristol Channel as the English Channel; he had been driven off course by one of Britain's secret weapons, a radio


6.

[John Rogers]

transmitter at Weston-super-mare giving out false signals. The pilot was told he was not in France but in England, at that point they tried to take off but the workers placed the mechanical digger in front of the aircraft and it was stopped from taking off. Military attached to the field arrived with Tommy guns and took the crew prisoners. The aircraft was a prized capture, a new Junkers 88 with all the advanced equipment installed.

17 April 1941
German raiders dropped four bombs on Avonmouth docks, two fell in the mud at the entrance of the dock, and the third demolished a building near the old Passenger station. The fourth fell on the new oil-jetty under construction. There were two slight casualties.

28 August 1942.
On a sunny morning, flying at 20,000 feet above unsuspecting Bristol, a single German fighter-bomber armed with a 500-pound bomb aimed at the heart of the city. It dropped in Broad Weir; near the junction of Philadelphia Street, the time was 9:20 am at the rush hour.
At such height the plane was thought to be a reconnaissance aircraft and no alert was given until the bomb had struck. Three double-decker busses full of passengers were waiting at the bus stops, with men, women, and children going to work or school. The busses were all destroyed, and the casualties totaled 45 killed and 56 injured. It was the last bomb to fall on Bristol in 1942. .

There were no raids recorded for 1943. Although the German High Command reported that they were again bombing Bristol.

15 May 1944.
This is the last entry in the Official Record of the Battle of Bristol
German aircraft approached Avonmouth at 2: am, thanks to the heavy barrage of A.A fire the planes were driven off target and some dropped their bombs at random to gain altitude. Ten bombs were dropped in Bedminster, five in Abbots Leigh, and two in Kings Weston Lane where a soldier was killed at a searchlight site, the only casualty .The Germans planes turned, altered course for home, and they never came back. Bristol and Avonmouths ordeal was over.

The official details of Bristol air raids were published for the first time in November 1944, when it was disclosed that the total number of warnings had been 548, and bombs had been dropped 76 times. Altogether 1,299 people were killed in the city and 3,305 were injured.
Over 3,000 homes were totally destroyed, and 90,000 properties were damaged. Apart for London, only Liverpool published higher figures.
Most of the rubble was taken aboard ship as ballast and moved to New York City and became the foundation of the East River Drive.
It’s amazing that after all these years unexploded bombs are still being found in and around Bristol, as in the case of one in the playground of the Shirehampton infants school In October 1966,and another a mile from the Severn Bridge in 1988.

The information for this article' The Bristol Blitz: was researched from various sources. The Bristol Website, Official documents, and Books on the Bombing of Bristol. While searching for this data the memories kept going back to when I was a young lad living in Shirehampton and experiencing the bombings first hand. I was 10 years old when the first air raid warnings sounded and the bombs began to fall on Avonmouth. I cannot remember the details of every raid due to my aging memory, but some nights I can remember as it was yesterday. I was playing in the street as most of the kids my age did at that time, we heard the roar of aircraft and looked up to see the sky
7

[John Rogers]

black with aircraft, that date was the 25th of September and the planes were on their way to bomb Filton Aircraft Factory. I also saw the German planes two days later moving in the same direction, this time we knew they were the enemy. We watched as the RAF fighters engaged the bombers and fighter escorts, for a kid of 10 it was quite a sight. As the attack progressed we were ushered of the street by air raid wardens including a smack around the ears for not following their orders fast enough.
I remember well the cold nights we spent in the Anderson Shelter, double layering of clothes to keep warm, (1 guess that was the start of the layer look). Taping over the window panes with tape in order to stop the glass from flying around in case of a bomb blast, covering the windows at night with a blanket to stop the light shinning out or a knock on your door from the warden. I remember the small stubby candles we would buy, they were called 8-hour candles and would last the night when you were huddled in the shelter, also the government said they could be used for heat if you placed the candle in the base of the clay flower pot (the saucer) and turned the pot upside down on top the candle it would warm the clay pot, all it did was to keep your hands warm when you placed them around the pot. Before leaving for the army my father covered the shelter with sand bags and put an old bed frame with springs in the shelter. Then there were the Blackouts, No street lamps to guide us; they were out for the duration.
We were given a button about an inch and a half in size, this button glowed in the dark and you wore it on your coat to stop people bumping into one another. Headlights on the cars and busses were painted black halfway to stop the light shinning into the sky at night. There was also posts Set up in various places in the village and they were painted a pale yellow, if mustard gas were dropped these yellow posts would turn green.
Who could forget the fitting for your gas mask, I see the little kids now, crying because they were scared to death of the ugly masks, and it got worse when they tried to put them on. Then there was the school lunch programs, another government idea, not a bad one, for at times it was the only good meal some of the kids got in those times, but one dessert they could of kept from me and that was the Semolina Pudding, I swear it was made out of sawdust and milk, you could of stuck wall paper up with it.

I cannot forget the school nurse who would make her rounds with that darn( Nit Comb) looking for those little animals in your head, then she would spoon feed you a large dollop of Cod-liver oil and malt to make sure you were not suffering from mal-nutrition.

Enough of the good times let me go back to the raids. The night they dropped the bomb on St. Bernard's school my mother and I was in the Savoy cinema watching a film,

Suddenly the film stops, we thought it had broken, a very common thing back with the old projectors. The lights came on and the manager walked on stage and reported to us that a air raid was in progress and if we wanted to remain seated we could or we could leave but he would not run the film until the all clear was sounded. As he finished speaking there was a large explosion the building shook and the exit doors blew open that was the cue my mother and I needed to get the heck out of there. We ran down the street as fast as our legs could carry us to our home and the shelter. While running home we stopped a couple of times and took shelter in the gutter or a wall when the noise of the bombs and the AckAck fire became fierce, a lot of steel was falling from the sky and we could see the German aircraft caught in the beams of the search lights. Next morning I found out the bomb had hit the playground of St Bernard’s school not 50 yards from the Cinema.

[John Rogers]

It was common practice for the kids to go out after an air raid and look for souvenirs, bomb fragments, shrapnel, and tail fins from the incendiaries bombs and of the unexploded A.A shells that fell back on the ground. It was like show and tell, and we would trade for items we didn't have. Then one day at school the bomb disposal team had a little talk with us and told what could happen if that prized shell we had exploded in your hand or in your house, after that a lot of the boys were not so keen on collecting.

On 16 January 1941 my relatives lost their home in Avonmouth, they lived across the street from the park, they lost everything, but felt very lucky because two doors away people lost their lives.

On the night of 11 /12 April 1941 the family was already in the shelter when the bombs began to fall, the ground was shaking with the large explosions, we were peeking out of the shelter door when the ARP man came to the shelter and told us that three fire bombs had gone through the roof of the house and landed in the front bedroom, lucky for us one did not go off and the other two were put out very fast by the firemen by placing sand bags over them, the only damage was broken tile where they came through the roof and two burned spots on the floor. The smell of the phosphorous remained for a long time in the bedroom.

A hundred yards away a large bomb reported to be a land mine had dropped by parachute behind the homes on Priory Rd, the explosion blew down 10 Row houses, the blast was so tremendous it blew a piano in one house clear across the street, through the front wall and landed in the back room of the house. Five people were killed in the homes, one of them a little boy I knew and played on the street with. For months afterwards we would play on the rubble that once lived one of our playmates. It was years later before they re-built the homes back to where they were original. I believe one day in the future they will find many more bombs still buried in the mud of the Avon River and in the fields around the smelting works, that land was once covered with water and it is very soft.

This data on the bombing of Bristol was put together in 1970 for a Bristol Ex Pats chat board group who were interested in the air raids on the city; the paper was updated in June 1997 for spelling and dates.


FOOTNOTE:

Bristol was the fifth most heavily bombed British city of World War II. The presence of Bristol Harbour, Avonmouth Dock and the Bristol Aeroplane Company made it a target for bombing by the Nazi German Luftwaffe who were able to trace a course up the River Avon from Avonmouth using reflected moonlight on the waters into the heart of the city.
Between 24 November 1940 and 11 April 1941 there were six major bombing raids.on the city, In total Bristol received 548 air raid alerts and 77 air raids with:
• 919 tons of high-explosive bombs and myriad incendiary bombs
• 1299 people killed, 1303 seriously injured, 697 rescued from debris



10

[John Rogers]

Years ago I belonged to an Ex Pats board and most of the members were from the Bristol area,
they started chatting about the Bristol bombing, I told them that I had done some research on the Bristol Blitz and I would post it for them to read
The following replies/posts were from some of the people who lived thru the bombings.

[John Rogers]

Memories of the Bristol Blitz
John
I lived in Mardyke, Hotwells Road. My family had a cafe there. We used to have a group of Cockney dockers lodging with us. They came down to work at Bristol and Avonmouth docks after London was blitzed. That night some planes came over at about 6pm and dropped flares. The dockers knew what it was, they’d seen it in London, and they knew our Blitz was coming. It was quite hellish – it lasted about 6 hours. It started before the theaters opened. I looked up the town from where I lived and all I could see was a mass of flames.
Olive C
The whole of Bedminister Down was lit up by incendiary bombs. A house was bombed near by and all these bricks came into our house and through my bedroom ceiling. When the town was bombed we used to go onto the Bridgwater Road and watch the town - it was all lit up. We would watch the bombs and the anti aircraft fire.
John
The German planes came over and dropped flares first then incendiaries to get things going.
Rhoda
The first Sunday it was mostly incendiaries there were few bombs.
John
The fire brigade concentrated on putting out houses. They let the shops burn.
Doris
I got off a tram from Westbury-on-Trym. I was going out. I spent all night sheltering in the crypt of the Quakers Meeting House. I watched Barton Warehouse collapse. All Old Market was gone. The next morning I remember walking over all these barrage balloon wires that were lying on the ground. It was very frightening.


Rhoda
I was going to a Show at the Kings Theater that night. We were having coffee in a place opposite St Peter’s church. I saw a parachute thing all alight coming down. There were some soldiers in the cafe they told us to get to a shelter. They’d been in the Blitz in Coventry two days before so they knew what was coming. We tried to get into the Castle Street shelter but couldn’t because it was locked and nobody had the key. We went to a shelter in St James instead. It was brick built and had a blast wall. We looked out and it was like an inferno. Everything was alight. As soon as the all clear went we came out and walked home. There were walls and pieces of wood falling all around us. The firemen were putting fires out.

[John Rogers]

Olive P
I heard the planes coming over. My husband made up beds for our girls in the Anderson Shelter. We spent the night in there.
Doris
You could smell all the burning.
Olive P
There was an explosive smell.
Peter L
I was 14 on the day of the Blitz. My mum had gone into town to go window-shopping with a friend. I was at home with my Granddad when the sirens went. We stood at the bottom of the garden and watched the flares coming down over Bristol. We rushed to the front door to continue watching them when we heard this noise like an express train over our heads and then a bomb dropped 20 yards from where we’d been standing in the garden. My mum came home about 2am – we’d never thought we’d see her again. Her knees were cut and bleeding. She ended up in an air raid shelter outside Temple Church – the leaning church. Every time a bomb had dropped they’d dropped to their knees.
Esme
I come from Southville. I joined the army when I was 17. When I came back to Bristol I worked on gun sites at Rodway Common, Burwalls (by the Suspension Bridge) and Whitchurch. I came out of the Hebron church in Hebron Road, Bedminister that night about 11:30, I looked over the city center and the sky was blood red. We heard bombs coming down and went into the bomb shelter in the vestry. When we came out we ran down Melville Terrace and then ran back because there was a plane above us.
Win
I was going to go out that evening with four friends. One of my friends was a sailor on leave. We were intending to go down to Temple Meads Station at about six that night to see him off. A siren went off and we didn’t think much of it because sirens were always going off and we didn’t have any bombs. Well, as we got to the door there was a whoosh bang! So we scampered back into the house and spent the rest of the night in the shelter. We sat there and we could hear all these bombs. After the all clear went, we went up onto Devon Road Bridge - it’s a high place over Whitehall. I’ve never seen anything like it – the whole town was on fire. The next morning I went off to work as usual and when I got there it was all gone. It seemed like all of Castle Street was flat – there were firemen and hosepipes everywhere. We didn’t know what to do. Then the boss came along and said, “We’ll get in touch with you, and you’ll have to go home”.

[John Rogers]

Dorothy
We were staying in Bristol the weekend of the Blitz. We had been to the Downs for a walk in the afternoon and I think the sirens went about 6pm that was the first raid. We had a brick shelter built into the bank of the garden. We had the bunks in there and we felt we were quite comfortable compared to Anderson shelters. We had a very good view of the Blitz – it was very dramatic because we lived on top of St Michael’s Hill looking right down into the city. My dad was out there on the front waving his fist at the planes. Not that it did any good but I guess that’s what he felt like doing.
Jeanette
I wasn’t scared during the Blitz. We just watched Bristol burning the whole city was red. We lived on a bit of a hill and we could hear it crackling and burning. When Castle Street was bombed, just the walls were left standing.
Peter S
My grandmother lived in Fairfield Street looking over the railway. We were all gathered in one of her rooms with an uncle who was in the RAF. When the bombs started to fall we just sat there but my RAF uncle dived under the table every time a bomb dropped because that’s what he’d been trained to do. There was a Butler’s oil depot near the station about 300 yards from us. They stored barrels of oil. It was wonderful as a kid to watch these drums explode. They were like giant Roman Candles, flying into the air and down again.
Ray
I came home one Easter in 1941 for a weekend leave and we had a big Blitz on Bristol. I lived down at Easton where we had a land mine dropped in a little narrow street called John Street, which was cobbled. My house was about a quarter of a mile from John Street and one of these cobbles came through the roof and landed on my bed. They bombed the bus depot at the back of Berkeley Street, Croydon Street, and Easton Road. They also had the railway there going up to the Midlands and down to South Wales. A land mine dropped on the Friday night (the Good Friday Blitz) and I spent my Saturday helping people trying to crawl out from under the rubble - we pulled about three out. It was our duty in the forces to help out the Civil Defense when we were home. All the windows were blown out and we had an unexploded bomb. I spent the weekend in the Church Hall.
Jeanette
I lived off Redland Road and there was a house there that was bombed right at the beginning, bombed, and then burnt out. From that day until years after the war it was still standing. There was bedroom furniture and curtains hanging out the window. The curtains used to blow in the wind. There was a lovely dressing table in the window but no one dared go and take anything because it was only one wall.
Ray
I remember they were machine-gunning the barrage balloons. The barrage balloons were there to keep the enemy planes up so the hope was they’d miss their target. They never had the sights they’ve got now where they lock on like, they had to manually drop the bombs. They had a field day bringing all the barrage balloons down, they were just machine gunning them. It was a moonlit night and I could see the bombers coming over. I remember a double-decker bus landing on the on the vicarage roof.
Jeanette
The biggest land mine dropped on the Downs was right by the ‘White Tree’. It made a crater big enough for six double-deckers to go in. We kept going up for months to see it. All the houses were blown by it. It was on that piece of grass between the ‘White Tree’ and those big houses.
Black out
Peter L
You had to whitewash the curbstone outside your house so you wouldn’t trip over it. You also had to paint your number on the house and keep a bucket of sand or water underneath it for putting out incendiary bombs. It was very difficult going out in the dark because we couldn’t use a torch and there weren’t any batteries anyway. We had to have the torch shielded. Motor vehicles had to have the top half of the headlights covered as well.
Tony
We were all issued with small phosphorescent discs that we stuck on our lapels so you could see people coming towards you in the dark.
Esme
There were no railings round the water so people fell in the docks.
Tony
There was a man called Roach used to make his living from fishing bodies out of the dock. 5/- for a person and 10/- shillings for a cow.
Fire Watching
Esme
most buildings had their own firewatchers. Each business had a rotate for their employees. It was voluntary you did a days work and then had fire watching duty in the night.
Betty
I was working in an insurance office in the center of town. We had to do fire watching duty once a week so we stayed at the office over night. We slept on the top floor - two women and one man in camp beds. We were able to hear the rats running about because the building was old. The Ack, Ack gun was in the center just a few yards from where we worked. I remember one occasion running around with the shrapnel pinging off our helmets. We still had to be at work the next morning. Soon as it was daylight we could go home and have something to eat but we still had to be back to work by nine.
Tony
There was a firewatcher’s station opposite Electricity House in Colston Avenue. Anyone unfit for military duty was encouraged to be a firewatcher or go into the Home guard.
Mabel
Some people were responsible for certain roads. It could be hard for the men who’d done hard days work and then had to go on duty over night.
Peter L
We were sheltering at a neighbor’s house under the floor when an incendiary came through upstairs. They were trying to put it out when the bucket fell over, the water came through the floorboards, and we all got soaked.
Esme
We spent hours under the stairs with a candle. It was the safest place in the house.
Tony
My dad was a firewatcher in Clifton. After one raid he came home with a mini tea chest banded with metal and made out of plywood. A warehouse had been bombed and when they went in they swept all the tea and sugar up and took it home.
Mabel
There wasn’t anything about the Blitz in the papers. The day after the big Blitz in Bristol I was taking my daughter into town to be photographed at Jerome’s in Castle Street. We got the little bus that went into town and it went a funny way round. When we got there I got off the bus and looked round and there was nothing there except smoke and rubble. Everything was down. Nobody had told us what had happened – it wasn’t on the radio or anything.
Terry
After the blitz you didn’t see buildings entirely flattened. What you would see were three or four walls down. It would be in a dangerous condition. It was all temporary buildings in the center.
3

[John Rogers]

https://www.shippinghistory.com/atta...1&d=1549724533

[Harry Nicholson]

That is a great archive, John. All those facts and personal evidence are a vital history. Thanks for posting it all.
I've a memory of a raid on Hartlepool:
One night, when we were fire-bombed, I'd been stopped from fighting off the bombers. The cornfields opposite our house were in flames, you could even see the blaze through the thick blackout curtains. We'd taken shelter under the heavy kitchen table. I was indignant. I grabbed my wooden spinning top and, yelling: 'Me bomb Hitler back,' rushed to the window. I was about to hurl the top at the German planes, straight through the blackout curtains, when I was grabbed from behind. Dad pulled me back under cover and held me down. The old table was our air-raid shelter that night; the proper one (the corrugated iron Anderson in the garden) had flooded.

Mam came home one night in a state. In the pitch dark of the blackout she had wandered off the path and fallen into a bomb crater. Soldiers heard her cries and pulled her out

[Tom Alexander]

Ah! The Anderson shelter -- ours had been covered by a generous layer of rocks and dirt -- and I don't know how it got there but it had a plum tree growing out of the top which produced much good fruit over the years. After the war, when a young teenager, I ran an electric line down to the shelter and used it as my "boy" cave. Had my fretwork saw down there, and even did my homework down there at times. Was a bit musty but worked for me. My Mum, Grandma and I moved into the house in 1942 after Dad had been shipped off to North Africa.

[John Rogers]

The plumb seed got there because of a bird, liked the shelter and made a deposit. We had ours covered with sand bags full of dirt, over the years the bags rotted and it look natural.

[Ron Stringer]

We had the poor relation, the Morrison shelter. A sort of steel version of a big kitchen table, with steel mesh sides between the 'legs' to form a cage. When the air raid warning sounded, the family were supposed to squeeze inside and wait for the All Clear. In our house, sitting on the track for German bombers heading for Manchester and Salford docks, it was normal to ignore that instruction and to stand at the front door to watch the aircraft go over. It was possible to see the red glow from the engine exhausts as the passed.

One night a confused bomb-aimer suffered from premature ejection and dropped a stick of HE bombs, landing in a line starting over a mile away to the East of us and heading straight for our house. Fortunately the last one of the stick fell some 300 yards short. Apart from the first one, which fell into the storage pond of a textile mill (but didn't explode and wasn't found until the mill was being demolished in the 1960s), each bomb took out a house at intervals along one road.

The Morrison shelter sat in our front room for several years after the war - my father had great difficulty in dismantling and disposing of it so that we could recover the use of the front room.

A school friend whose house also had a Morrison shelter in the front room was much envied by me. He had an extensive Hornby Dublo (three rail) layout on the top of it and was given full use of the room. We spent many enjoyable hours there after school in the early 1950s.

[Makko]

From discussions with my Nan (RIP) re: WW2:

My grandfather was a sergeant in the Royal Artillery, but spent the entire second WW as an Ack Ack gunner on convoys in the North Atlantic.

During the frequent bomb raids on Wallasey, almost every night, my grandmother's front door (No.6 Rankin Street) was blown off the hinges. She said that she appreciated the fact that almost every day, civil contractors would come around to replace broken windows etc. and rehang the door. In the end she got a bit tired of the attention and she made a curtain which hung in place of the front door. One night, when the air raid siren sounded, she got a "feeling". Instead of going to the shelter in the centre of the road, she decided to pass the raid under the stairs with my mother and uncle. That night, a wayward bomb fell on the shelter. The victims were mostly mothers and children. Quite sobering and a miracle when one considers. My grandfather returned with a serious case of PTSD, totally unrecognized at that time. Of the little that he said about his wartime experience, when he saw my model of "Hood" in dazzle camouflage, he simple said,"That was how they were painted". He then told me that he was in the fllowing convoy and commented that he was shocked by the number of bodies in the water for days. My mother, following comments by her, was quite affected by her father's PTSD and what happened at home.

On another note:

My Dad, whose father was a "guest" of the Germans at Milag Nord, following the bombing and sinking of the "Dalesman" at Crete in 1941, would also wander in search of souvenirs. He had a fragment of shrapnel bomb and a Swastika arm band, given to his father after the liberation of Milag Nord. His road, Gorsedale, adjacent to the railway tracks, suffered various destroyed homes. He did mention once his sadness, when in search of mementoes, seeing dead kids, that he had known, being recovered from the rubble.

One day, remembering that his father was a POW, he wandered with his mates onto the construction site of a school in front of his house. There was a tall, young, well built blonde guy digging and carrying roof joists. Their natural juvenile curiousity aroused, they got close to the guy and started to ask him questions. It turned out that he was called Hans, a German prisoner of war and had been assigned to the building of the school. It ran through my father's mind that he hoped that his father (who he didn't really get on with) was so blessed.

Many people ask,"Why remember?". I would answer that it is the human aspect of a conflict, the wives, the children, lack of food and inherent, undeserved danger that accmpanies any conflict. I think that is a reason to remember and think twice before taking the final step and launching bellic action.

Saludos, Uncle John!

Rgds.
Dave

[tugger]

In our little Welsh Village near Swansea I remember sitting on the outside toilet when all of a sudden there was this roar I ran outside just in time to see two German Messerschmidt bombers going over the roof nearly knocking the chimney down, they fired on the tin and steel works, it was believed that they were taking photos of the tin and steel works, later we got a raid, two bombs landed in the local farm, and boy was the farmer screaming as it killed all his pigs, there was some damage to a few houses. One boy had a lucky escape he didn't want to go to the shelter but his father picked him up and carried him down, when the raid was over it was found that a huge piece of shrapnel had destroyed the boys pillow.
Tugger

[John Rogers]

Thank you all for your replies they all make good reading.Todays youth and generation have no idea of what us kids and our parents went through.

[Tom Alexander]

One of my friends and a close neighbour had a Morrison shelter, but it was in the living/dining room and served as the dining table -- don't remember how they got there knees under it as it did have the mesh sides. His Hornby railway set was upstairs in the back bedroom.

We did have a V2 (the forerunner of the Scud) land in our school field -- luckily on a Saturday when no kids there.