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Bombing Brum

Frothblower

Lubrication In Moderation
I was looking through youtube and came across this.
I don't think it's been posted before?
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwhMEaIEAA4&feature=related[/ame]
 
Thanks most interesting. I was on the receiving end of all Luftwaffe raids on Brum. As kids, my sister and me were asleep under the stone slab of our 1940's pantry when 'jerry' dropped an incendary bomb on our house, it certainly woke us up ! Don't know why we weren't evacuated but most kids in our road weren't.
 
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A little eerie watching that. Wonder if it was one of that lot that bombed my nans, killing their dog Spot.

Ann
 
You can't help but wonder Frothy. Sorry about your aunt, obviously a much greater loss than my nan's dog. But, as a child growing up, dad would say about the night they were bombed out and about Spot, and I always felt so sad about this dog, because I was just a child. One of my cousins sent me a photo last year of herself with Spot, outside the house that was bombed in Warwick Rd. Greet, and it reminded me of dad's stories. It was a miracle that all the family were out.
But as I said very eerie watching that video. How many died that night or lost their homes.

Ann
 
You can't help but wonder Frothy. Sorry about your aunt, obviously a much greater loss than my nan's dog. But, as a child growing up, dad would say about the night they were bombed out and about Spot, and I always felt so sad about this dog, because I was just a child. One of my cousins sent me a photo last year of herself with Spot, outside the house that was bombed in Warwick Rd. Greet, and it reminded me of dad's stories. It was a miracle that all the family were out.
But as I said very eerie watching that video. How many died that night or lost their homes.

Ann

Don't worry about my Aunt, I didn't know her
 
Thanks Frothy, this was on the same YouTube page that you posted.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG8J03MMty8"]YouTube - Birmingham Bombers[/ame]​
 
I don't know whether I have written about this before, and it's not strictly bombing Brum either, but I thought someone might be interested to read about what records they have of air raids in the National Archives at Kew. I few years ago I did a favour for someone interested in air raids over their home town, Magdeburg in Germany. He showed me a book that had already been published in raids in Freiburg in The Black Forest and asked what material I could find on the Magdeburg raids at Kew.
I was not entirely successful. They had a copy of the briefing notes for all raids after about 1940, but they were rather tatty and not as complete as the ones I had seen illustrated for Freiburg, and did not have as much detail ashe had got from a library in Germany for one particuler raid. They did produce record maps after the event showing routes and timings, with details of where bombs were dropped, location of German radar beams, incidents en route (eg AA fire from the ground, interception by enemy planes).
All in all, I didn't do as well as I had hoped, although I spent several hours there.
It would be in interesting to see the equivalent briefing given into German bomber crews before they came to British towns. Somewhere I have a copy of one of the copies of a small-scale British OS map superimposed with the location of 'strategic' targets, all colour coded. I was going to scan it a fewe years ago before presenting it to the Black Country Museum (the map covers the area around Swan Village and Hill Top), but it has got mixed with other papers.
The way I got this and other maps is fascinating - a fellow tramway enthusiast in Berlin gave me them about 40 years ago. He told me that in 1945 when he was about 14 or 15 he and other boys went scavenging round the many vacant ruined buildings, with an eye for what they could pick up. Although they had no value as barter at that time, he took as many as he could carry, and kept most of them. He also gave me a very simple map of the western Soviet Union, a bit of Norway, and also South East England (about 1/2 inch scale - mainly Kent, again with strategic targets overprinted).
Some years after that I was looking an old street plan of the Czech town of Plzen (Pilsen, where the beer comes from), and tried the Royal Geographical Society library in London. They let me photocopy an American copy of one of those German maps like the ones I had for England, but with the superimposed notes crudely translated into English.
Anyway, I'm afraid I have strayed far from the title, so I will say no more now.
Peter
 
Hello Frothblower

somewhere in the Blitz thread there is more you tube footage of the Birmingham raids. (It was probably from the same site and in the conversations about the bombing maps) I was curious about it being actual footage so I nicked the frames showing the groundstrikes and skewed them on photoshop to see if they would overlay on the bombing maps. Think the shots down on Birmingham are authentic.

cheers
 
Well, we gave it back to them a hundred-fold - and we were condemned for it! All I can add is that we should think ourselves lucky that the Nazis never developed a long-range heavy 4-engine bomber.

On a lighter note, my aunt claimed she was machine-gunned by a lone German fighter somewhere in the Perry Barr area. She said she dived over someone's garden wall. Once, when she was relating this (possibly tall) story, my dad asked her why she didn't take the plane's number so she could report him?

Big Gee

PS: there were snowflakes in the cockpit of that Junkers 88 on the YouTube clip...wasn't that cold, was it?
 
Big Gee ,I don't think it was a tall tale on your Aunt's part.My Mum told me how my Uncle Tom was on leave from the Fleet Air Arm and was walking up Woodthorpe Road at Alcester Lanes End ,when they had to dive for cover as a German Aircraft came in very low machine guns blazing.I think it probably happened quite often.
Barb
 
Hi Sleepybarb,

The reason I suggested it might have been a tall tale was that my aunt only came out with it when she'd had a G&T or two....but yes, I'm sure it did happen.

Big Gee
 
I don't know whether I have written about this before, and it's not strictly bombing Brum either, but I thought someone might be interested to read about what records they have of air raids in the National Archives at Kew.......(see Post #10)
How fascinating Peter. I visited the Church(I think it may be a cathedral) in Freiburg a few years ago. Inside they have an ariel photo of the area after the war the only building you could see standing was is the Church. We were told that these were often avoided as it was where people took shelter.
I know my aunts house was bombed in I think, Slade Road. My Dad lived with my aunt and uncle at the time and the night it was bombed they were all staying at my Mom's parents house in West Brom........how's that for fate!
 
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I too remember the bombing of Birmingham although I was only 8 at the time. The factory at the bottom of the garden [ Comore depot, I think] at Bordesley Green, built a shelter under all the gardens so the factory people and the people in the houses could use them. I definately saw a lone German plane [saw pilot and swastika on side of plane] fly over the gardens in the morning. I remember being told that he was down at Castle Bromwich.

The Church {the Rosary] has a freeze around the walls of the Church mentioning this night. Miriam [Al's better Half].
 
Big Gee

It was not uncommon in the daylight raids for a German fighter plane to dive down and machine gun civilians. I can clearly remember being in Garrison Lane Park with other children when a German plane did this and we ran down the air raid shelter steps to take cover. A lot of people do not realise we had daylights raids.

If ever you are in a meeting (such as Carl's) with a group of elderly people who lived through the war, ask them to raise their hands if any of them recall such an incident. You will be surprised how many put up their hands.

Junie.
 
I saw a German ME110 plane swastika markings etc very low over Perry Beeches school as we were being rushed into the school shelters.
Also, a block of houses on the north side of Bradfield Rd on the Beeches Estate were wrecked one night, I wonder if the people now living in them know that. I still feel a slight shiver when I hear the air raid sirens in films etc. I think we were all in a fairly 'blood-thirsty' mood by the end of 1941. Most of my uncles were called up, and two of them were POW's for most of the war.
Funny thing is, my most visited country is Germany, and the only foreign language I've learnt is German !
 
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They got it back in spades from the pictures around of German cities just after the war. 1000 bomber raids on single cities night after night and American strategic bombing during the day time.
The amazing thing is the speed of the German recovery after the war and all of this.
 
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