UK Bomb Damage. (Still visible now)

Two of Lewisham's worst incidents during the war are mentioned here with a few pic's.

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/great-britain/16097-south-east-london-during-blitz.html

 

its easy to miss, gotta stay awake. Next time im there I will take a pic. There is a pic somewhere of whopping parachute mine

Kev, think this is the one you mean

P

 

Hi,

I have done some basic work simply through cross-referencing against my understanding of current areas in coventry. I look at the above website and then go to google street.

I have located bomb damage and repairs from the comfort of my armchair. For example; Some info gave street names of victims. I checked the location and found that there is now a park where 10 terraced houses once stood. It is also interesting to see pictures of houses that were bombed, repaired and are still being used by residents who are standing outside the house as the google car goes by.

I have a basic understanding of bomb locations and it is relatively easy to trace bomb patterns over key areas. Several thousand houses were damaged in Coventry and it is interesting to see that houses were miles apart. Some of the social history is important to me as well. I enjoy listening to people's accounts of the bombing.

My parents lived in Leicestershire/staffordshire and could see Coventry being bombed on that beautiful evening of 14th November 1940. Having heard other accounts of eyewitnesses from Banbury and Oxfordshire it brings the raids in to focus.

My mother-in-law was evacuated and tells us that her mother hitched a lift in to Coventry and then walked home to Lawrence Saunders Road, Radford. She found doors blown off and windows without glass. Several building were hit and the local church was hit, killing 4 people inside.
Coventry lost 1300 lives overall. The main raids were in 1940 and April 41

Coventry was a beautiful city before the blitz. But, the planners in the 1920's had already made a mess.

There are places in cov where you can see bomb damage as detailed on the link.

I worked in a factory where steel girders were mangled in in one section. It was possible to walk around the site and see where explosions has done damage.

 

I have a section on the Bombing of Bangor on my website and over the last 2 weeks I have started a new "Belfast Blitz then and now" section.

Like most places much of the damage has now gone however you will always find something with good research.

 

One place that could use a good bombing is the NEW and IMPROVED Bull Ring of Birmingham - what the designer of that building(sic) in the centre was thinking about God only knows as it looks like a real abomination - wonder if he was carried off somewhere quiet ?
Cheers

 

In the Ealing area, can't remember exactly which road, but you can see which houses were bombed as they have been rebuilt in a newer style

 

having been introduced to the
"Then and Now" books here on the forum

you do get a lot of info from them
the volumes in question
are The Blitz Then and Now vol 1,2,3


Then are expensive but you return to them time and time again

 

there is a massive crater in a field from a v2 near chertsey in surrey

 

I live in Thanet, Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate plus outlying villages, but Margate and Ramsgate took a good pounding during the war and up to 10 years a go there were still plenty of old overgrown bomb sites being held in land banks by developers. The side wall of my Nan's house and her neighbour's back in the 1970s still was peppered with bullet holes from a plane that shot up the street during that time.

 

Try York Road, The Drove, Ferndale Road in Swindon....houses now rebuilt, but by looking ar roofs, you will see where they are rebuilds, especially 39 York Road, the house in which I was trapped as a child when a stray bomb exploded just outside.
Tony

 

Plenty of scars about if you know where to look. Here's an example in London (Exhibition Road, on the Victoria and Albert Museum), and one in Liverpool (Pier Head, the Marine Engineers Memorial).

Peter

 

You might care to look at this article I posted on the BBC WW2 Archives:
BBC - WW2 People's War - The night our house was sliced in half

The story tells of the night my wife, as a 14 year old, was in her house while it was being bombed.

A few years ago I took her back to try and identify exactly where the house had been and the pics below shows the gap in the terrace of houses.

By one of those really amazing coincidences that sometimes occur, the chap with whom I shared a wireless truck in 1943/1944, one Lew (Larry) Fox lived just a couple of doors away from my wife and also lost his house that same night by the same bomb!

As far as the house where I was born, Boreham Street in Bethnal Green, that too was flattened while I was living at Houghton Regis and so no blue plaque will ever say "This is where Ron lived"

 

Here's the only bomb crater that I know of locally:



Quite far out so I guess the blackout must've been having a good effect.

 

We have what is known as Dover,s Tidy Ruin, Old St. James Church, in Dover. It was used by the Cinque Ports Brotherhood and was one of the oldest in Dover. It was severely damaged by enemy action and after the war the bell tower collapsed. It was then kept as a "tidy ruin" . Canterbury has similar ruins. Derek

 

There's also the bombed out church at Charles Cross in Plymouth. Plus the Naval dockyard perimeter wall shows plenty of splinter marks from when it & the barracks were bombed.

Charles Church, Plymouth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Google Maps

Bomb craters near Coombe Country Park. Outside Coventry. Not sure if they were made in the November 1940 raid or the april 41 raids. Dropped by bombers who are said to have mistaken them for a city centre target!!! Don't believe it though. The lake nearby was used by German pathfinders as a marker for the city in Nov 40.

 

The front of the "Belfast Telegraph" Newspaper offices in centralBelfast - It even has a nice plaque telling that although the bombs were falling the workers kept the printing presses going!!