This post was prompted by a link in a comment made by Tony S (‘Anonymous’) to my post A bitter Pyl a few days ago. Tony is an old school friend* who I wargamed with for many years (interrupted by my exile down south since the 80s and in this century by his exile further afield). The link he posted was to a book by Malcolm Smith, from which I took the title of this post from. 

It’s a short tome, only 54 pages long, but it does contain lots of interesting detail if you are from those parts or know the area. The book includes as an appendix a transcript of a raid logbook which paints a fascinating series of the emerging situation as reports came in to the central control centre. I couldn’t find any copies of the book available for sale. Just the online version.

The conjoined-twin towns of Grimsby and Cleethorpes did not suffer air raids on anything like the scale experienced by cities such as Liverpool, London or Hull, but for the individuals on the receiving end it must have been just as tragic and devastating.

Being born in the early 60s, my generation was brought up on War stories, a couple of which are covered in the book. Here they are:

7th December 1941, is notoriously 'a date which will live in infamy'.  At 6:15PM a single German raider dropped 8 containers, each containing 36 incendiaries. Most landed on open ground. The Plaza cinema on Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby (close to the docks) was slightly damaged. Now this was the place that coincidentally, so my dad said, had shown Charlie Chaplin’s ‘the Great Dictator’ a few days before.

On 2nd May 1941 a single 1,000 kg was dropped and badly damaged 4 houses in Bursar St, Cleethorpes as well as damaging others in surrounding streets. My mother was in the family Anderson shelter in Clee Rd which backs on to Bursar Street, albeit their house was 200 yards away from the blast. She often recalled the ‘whump’ and ‘earthquake’. The damaged houses were cleared after the war and the site was used for a school annex to accommodate the Baby Boomers for the primary school that I later attended. With declining birth rates the school no longer needed as much space and eventually new houses were built on the site.

More heinously, on 27th February 1941, a lone raider, flying at 200 feet, strafed trolley buses and cars at a busy junction and dropped 3 large bombs. 62 people were injured, and 11 killed.

The worst raid in terms of casualties commenced at 1:43 14th June 1943. It lasted a total of 90 minutes leaving 66 dead and 1000 people homeless. The 1st pass dropped flares. On their return pass the bombers dropped HE and incendiaries. Then a 2nd wave dropped 3000 anti-personnel devices over a widespread area of the town. Overstretched emergency services worked strenuously to extinguish fires, rescue residents and tend to the injured. In the early hours of the morning rescue and recovery teams were confronted with 100s of unexploded anti-personnel devices scattered throughout the damaged areas. Whilst AP bombs had been used before hitherto they had been designed to explode on impact. This was something new. "Painted greyish green or yellow and colloquially known as the ‘butterfly bomb’ because its outer casing opened like wings when descending, the device measured 9 inches in length and weighed approximately 4 lbs." (Smith, Blitz on Grimsby). The slightest movement or disturbance would trigger the timer and seconds later it would explode. Many were found in the roofs of houses which had had their tiles blown off by HE bombs. Many acts of heroism were recorded about those who dealt with the menace. The death toll might have been higher but the government had launched a campaign in March warning people not to touch unfamiliar metal objects. 300 military personnel searched for the butterfly bombs from 14 June to 9 July. The last victim of the raid, a 9-year old boy, was killed on 25th March 1944 when he picked up a metal object in the Old Cemetery, Doughty Road. We were still being warned about this 20 or 30 years later.

A news embargo on the butterfly bombs meant that the Germans were denied accurate information about how effective the weapon was. This is believed to have contributed to the lack of future such raids on Britain.

The last raid on Grimsby occurred in the early hours of 13th July 1943. Incendiaries and HE were used and whilst casualties were not as severe, the physical damage was greater than that caused on 14th June.

I’m indebted for pointing this book out, and for many other things to Tony.

* referred to on these pages as ‘Old School Tony’ not just because he went to my old school, but also for his large collection of Hinton Hunt Napoleonics.

Blitz on Grimsby

by Professor Malcolm Smith 

• Publisher : Imprint unknown; First Edition (1 Dec. 1983)
• Language : English
• Paperback : 54 pages
• ISBN-10 : 0904451232
• ISBN-13 : 978-0904451238