Wednesday 10 February 2021

Blitz on Grimsby

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

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

13 comments:

  1. Here in Bristol and its environs, there is lots of evidence of the Blitz, but hard to find at times (as the post War urban planners did more damage than the Luftwaffe according to a friend of mine!) due to modern rebuilding in the '50's onwards. Thw most obvious area is the Castle Park where beautiful old buildings where, but all went up in flames in one devasting raid early in the War. Shame it wasn't rebuilt like the did in Europe as it would look superb.

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    1. An area of Bristol was featured on a documentary series on the Beeb a couple of years back that focused on one specific devastating raid in each of five cities. As well as Bristol, there was London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Hull.

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    2. We saw that and it was very good, with lots of photos of the Castle Park area before it was bombed. Hardly anything is left from before the raid, which is a great shame:(

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    3. At least in that area of Bristol they had an excuse for the new buildings. The Bull Ring (an apparently a particularly attractive) area of Grimsby was demolished in the 60s. It hadn’t suffered any significant bomb damage.

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  2. Interesting - really very interesting. Funny how it's possible to turn up positive and negative aspects of the wartime press restrictions. I've got a book here which was recently published as a facsimile from a private journal kept by a guy who was an editor at the Liverpool Post during the war. Liverpool did get a bit of a thumping - especially in May 1941 - not related to the Battle of Britain, simply trying to put the port out of action. This little book gives a fascinating tie-in with bomb-sites that were still visible during my childhood (and right into the Thatcher years, of course!), but if it had come to light during the war, the author would have been in very serious trouble, even for keeping a private record. HM Govt were determined that the Luftwaffe should not know how close they came to shutting the place down, so you can see that there was a point to this - very heavy censorship. I'm not sure that Herman Göring would have cared too much about how many houses in Bootle lost their roofs, but there's a point of principle involved.

    I can see that.

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    1. I suppose the principle was that somewhere along the line there would be some useful information that Hermi, but it was easier just to deny him almost everything than try editing out the key bits without revealing that they had been edited. If you catch my drift? Keep it honest but very vague.

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  3. It is interesting if you look up as you walk down, say oxford street in London how much shrapnel damage there is on the pre war buildings, we never usually notice it but it's all up there!
    Best Iain

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    1. Never noticed, and art from on buildings where it’s been specifically pointed out to me. I’ll try to remember next time I get up to Town. It could be some time!

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  4. That's a most interesting account of history that, as you say, we grew up with since parents lived through it (in some way shape or form). Your story is like an episode of Danger UXB, which I re-watch last year. Such a fine programme.
    Regards, James

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    1. There must thousands, millions of such stories out there. That book is just one town in one country. As our parents generation is fading fast (there are not many left of the generation who were adults in the War) it's goof to get as many of these down as possible. The BBC did a good job a few years back with its oral history of the War project.

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    2. My dad was interviewed by someone from the Imperial war museum, I guess it was late 1990s, when they were trying to record as many surviving veterans as they could, so there should be a decent archive.
      Best Iain

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  5. Remembering the privations you suffered in wartime Britain helps keep the effects of the Pandemic in perspective, as disruptive as it has been.

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    1. Indeed. Many have drawn parallels. And there are lessons for us. At the moment some of our politicians are lobbying the government to do the equivalent of ending the blackout because enemy bombers are not killing as many people. Hopefully the government will hang on for those new “fighters” to be rolled out fully and we keep making improvements to ‘radar.’

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