• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

Birmingham air raids

For the benefit of a few members or guests who may still be unaware, it might be appropriate at this stage to pay tribute to two of the major sources of information on which a fair proportion of this and similar discussions is based:

1. "Heroes of the Birmingham Air Raids" by Michael Minton, Brewin Books, 2002, - ISBN 1 85858 211 3
(The result of research by the late author into many Birmingham air raids and the acts of remarkable bravery by many people, civilian, ARP, AFS/NFS, Police, Home Guard etc. etc. which were acknowledged by various awards, sometimes posthumous).

2. The BARRA/Swanshurst website, a wonderful, searchable resource which details all the casualties of the Birmingham blitz.

Neither of these resources does of course include the personal memories of those BHF members old enough to have lived through those nights; and may they long continue to record what they remember for the benefit of all of us - and for future historians!

Chris
 
I was looking at this photo of severe bomb damage in Burlington Road Small Heath and ....
126BurlingtonRd1940.jpg
Looking for information about where it was I could see a gap in a row of houses in this 1945 aerial photo.
Burlington 1945p.JPG
Looking on Google Earth today revealed four semi-detached houses built in that gap between much older houses.
126 Burlingtonp.JPG
Another view of those houses.
Burlnowp.jpg
A search led me to the following information in a post in an old thread about Burlington Road
In 1953 or 1954 my family moved into a new house that had been built on a bombed site in Burlington Road. The new houses became 120/126 Burlington Road and had to have deeper foundations because of the bombing. I had to dig bricks out of the garden and clean off the old morter and with these we built 3 garages at the back of 126. Two of these were rented out to neighbours. Looking up the house site on Google the garages appear to have been converted to accommodation.

The BARRA (http://barra.historynut.co.uk/) site has information about a raid on Burlington Road but not about the address mentioned above.
 
Last edited:
Poss Tyburn Road.JPG A bomb damage WWII photo from the Shoohill Gallery: https://damsdeepzoom.shoothill.com/

This one is marked as unknown location, however I was wondering if we could sort it out.

At first glance it looks like Tyburn Road to me, as these are pre-war system built municipal houses. The tape on the windows show it may be near the factory’s expecting bombing.

There are only a few areas in Birmingham with system built houses like these, around Tyburn Road, Dovedale Road and there were a few around Yarldey Wood.
 
mort have a look at minstead road which is next to tyburn road...2 of my rellies died at bo 19 minstead road as a result of an air raid

lyn
 
Last edited:
It struck me as being Tyburn Road, but I could not say why. Google Earth with the 1945 picture does not help.

Long shot. Maybe it is the way that the roofs of the distant house seem to be going in a curve?
 
pedro that is why i suggested it could be minstead road as it starts to curve at about no 17..my rellies died at no 19...very difficult to know for sure..
 
Hi Froth ... I've just noticed your new avatar ... I also survived a bomb ...:D
Our shelter had not yet been built and we usually shared our next door neighbour's Anderson shelter, but one night my sister and me were sleeping under a concrete slab in our small pantry. Out of the dark sky, 'jerry' decided to drop a bomb and it smashed through the roof of our house. Suddenly awoken, we were surprised to see our dad getting large pieces of wood and a shovel from the coalhouse while shouting to our neighbour to get us into their shelter. Our neighbour pulled us out and rushed us up the garden into their Anderson shelter.
Luckily the bomb was an early type slow-burning phosphorus incendiary which only partially burnt a wardrobe, chair, and bedding before dad picked it up with the shovel and chucked it out the bedroom window while neighbours soon doused the bedroom flames with stirrup pumps.
We did not get much sleep that night and we thought we would have a day off from school but no such luck !
A few months later the Luftwaffe must have realised many people were shovelling up incendiary bombs and throwing them outside, so they started putting explosives and magnesium in the bombs causing immediate blinding fierce flames which could not be extinguished.
 
Hi guys
IT appears for some reason or the other during the birmingham raids we had it seems that sparhill, balsal heath, and
Small Heath, had taken the blunt of a bashing for some reaon or another by the enemy
A continued and persistant bombing for the period of August ,
August 26/ 27 1940,
August 27 /28 1940 , 28/29 ,30/31 st 1940 . 31 st / 1st sept 1940
September 2nd 1940 , 109 incidents reported

23 september Luffwatte reconnaissance of birmingham
27 th of september Fort Dunlop day light Attack
15/16th october 1940 , Heavvy raids on birmingham, start of weeks of raids 59 dead
18th 19th november 1940 raid lasting nine hours and forty minutes B S A works badly damaged 53 dead
26 october /27 th 1940 bomb explodes in front of screen at the Carlton cinema spark
 
My dad worked at the Dunlop making tyres for the aircraft industry. As he wasn't called up he was on fire watch duty after he finished work. It meant that we, my mother and me, were alone most nights. Bedtime was an experience I have never forgotten. I must have slept downstairs until it was time for mom to call it a day.
She would get me ready for bed, I slept in her bed, she then dragged a tallboy, large chest over 3 drawers - heavy, against the bedroom door, then she put the bedroom Lloyd loom chair and the linen basket on top of it.
'There we are, now let to the b...... get us.' Never mind that if there was the possibility of escape, after 'Jerry' managed to find our house with a bomb, we might not make it out of that bedroom!!

You can imagine the panic there would have been if the siren went while we were asleep.

We lived in Witton and apart from Kynochs which was the obvious target, I don't recall seeing any bomb damage. The nearest was in Lozells which we saw when we went shopping, queueing for cigarettes for dad.
 
One of the main things in this discussion is the spirit of the people who lived through these dreadful times. We had an elderly aunt living with us in Sparkbrook and as I've mentioned elsewhere our house was damaged on a couple of occasions. Said aunt wouldn't join us in the air raid shelter but would sit in an armchair and shout up to the German raider's " Go round again you Baa Lambs.
I was only a kid during the war and my father was a fireman with the AFS and NFS as it was later called. I have vague memories of going through Digbeth with him on the bus and as we passed a flattened, smoldering building him telling us "That's one of our saves !". This dry humor was lost on me but maybe shared with fellow passengers.
Cheers Tim
 
Back
Top