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Bombing Brum

I know Judy Its my poor mum and her sisters I feel sorry for . Mum is 78 . It also makes me sit and think about those poor Palestinians who were bombed last month . Not the terrorrists but the ordinary people who are losing family :( Shame on people with bombs , Shame on them
Jean
 
I agree with the above comments - I thin k anyone who bomb other people should be ashamed of themselves.

Per haps someone can tell me - was there a bad bombing over towards Acocks Green - I have a vague memory of my mother taking me there because she was worried about her sister who lived there. I can remember walking down a street with a lot of water pipes running down it - I think it was New Street. Coming from Quinton (on the number 9 bus) I guess we would have had to change buses in the centre.
Thanks,
Sheri
 
An incredible story, Junie, and so well written. Everyone should read it. (Remembering Frank Hiley, survivor of the BSA bombing).

Thanks for posting it.

Chris
 
Enter the following dates on 'date of death' on the Swanshurst/barra website and try to imagine what it was like. Unless you were there at the time...it is impossible.

25/10/1940, 26/10/1940, 19/11/1940, 22/11/1940, 23/11/1940, 11/12/1940, 10/04/1941, 17/05/1941 and 30/07/1942. There are many more.

Junie.
 
Chris M

Thank you Chris. It is an amazing story of bravery, especially of the Rescuers. However, there is an error...it should read that 53 workers were killed at the BSA that night not 83.

Loved your story about New Street.

Junie
 
Junie said:
A map was compiled every day showing where bombs had fallen during the previous 24 hours. These maps are dated, numbered, show times of duration of raid, and are available in Local Studies Department on the 6th floor of Central Library. At the end of the war a compilation map was made of all the individual maps. This compilation map is now only available in sections, because I believe it was cut into sections to make copying easier.

Junie.
Click to expand...

Dear Junie, The map that recorded the bombing of Birmingham [that I saw], at the Central library showed as far as I can remember the center and inner suburbs of the city. I don't recall the outer suburbs.

ladywood
 
Judy,
Have only just spotted this,my mom told my wife that I had been out with her young brother, Phillip, he took me to have my hair cut,and we were machine gunned from the air.My wife was suprised that I had no recollection of this,but going out with Phillip there was always a trauma,I still have a piece of shrapnel collected when out with him,did think it may have been a piece of a gas cooker,but no,had it analysed and it was indeed Krupp's steel.
 
Yes Ray, I think this probably happened to lots of people - Day time raids when the German pilots deliberately flew low over busy city streets and
machine-gunned civilians - luckily we are both still here to tell the tale!
 
Man's inhumanity to man eh? Never could understand it and never will. I read recently that we had to pay the American's for their help in the war and that it was such a massive amount of money that we have only just finished paying. Does anyone know anything about this?

Maggs.
 
You got it right Maggs.About two years ago we made the final payment to the U.S.A.for lend lease,and with the exeption of Norway no europeans contributed a single penny to reimburse us.Also, on the very day the war ended The new president Mr.Truman,stopped all aid to Britain,and diverted the funds to Germany.
 
Ray, thank you for confirming what I thought. When I read about this payment, I couldn't see where the word ally came in. Brits were in dreadful poverty for so many years after the war weren't they? I can't help but wonder why they diverted funds to Germany. Perhaps I'm getting political, and I know that's not allowed on the forum, but I do feel strongly about it. America lived so well after the war, well of course still do.

Maggs.
 
Judy, what a lovely mum to protect you like that, after all she would have been a young woman herself. I envy you that sort of love.

Maggs.
 
You are not being political Maggs,you notice I said Mr.Truman and not the U.S.A.If Franklin D.Roosevelt (a great friend of Britain) had not died things would have been different.Without the America's great industrial power,we would probably still be fighting in the Welsh Mountains.
 
Hello,
Rather late in finding this thread but decided to try anyway.
I lived in Digby St. Gosta Green during the War and they Varmints dropped a bomb
next door to where we lived. I wonder if anyone can tell how to find out the date etc?
I think it was the same night as the Market Hall because when we got out of the cellar
the sky seemed to be on fire.
Betty.
 
Coming to this thread rather late but
would like to thank the contributors in posts #37, #60 for posted the link.
My Grandad had a big hole in his left arm and always told me it was when he was injured in the war. He fought in the first war and as a postman was excluded from serving in the second. He was seated in his chair in the back room when a bomb was dropped on Skelcher Road at the top of the hill and a piece of shrapnel from it came through the window and into his arm.
I could never understand how it could come all the way down the hill and into the house, he lived in Blythsford Road. He is listed among the injured in 1940.
Thank you again for the link, something else to show my children.
 
Riff Rose said:
They bombed the corner shop and the gas tank by us, my Par told me how he saw “a pencil of flame” going a hundred feet high from the gasometer in Rabone Lane, and seeing the bodies of horses from the good yard on the railtracks by Handsworth and Smethwich Station that bomb took out the back houses in Alfred St just of Wattville Rd killing 3 or 4. Our house in Cross St across the railway recived the blast from that one it knocked down the shop on the corner of Cross and George Sts and brought down our ceilings was thanks to that our old house got electricity apparently until then 1940 we were gas lite, although I remember the gasmantles in the bed rooms in the fifties and early sixtys.
Click to expand...

Hi,

I’ve only just discovered this site and read this post.
I’ve been doing some researching on behalf of my brother-in-law Geoffrey Hobin – now aged 83. As a boy he actually lived at the shop at the corner of Cross Street and George Street which his father, Edward, ran with his mom Ellen.

Geoff remembers that when the shop was bombed his father rescued him from his bed and then went back to rescue his mom who was still in bed with the bedroom door lying on top of her (they believed that had probably saved her life!).

Their home was completely destroyed and they had to live in the shelter for more than a week.
The family that lived in the house next door to the shop decided to up sticks and move away – don’t blame them - so Edward got permission to move into that house.
My brother-in-law said that he started off living in the end house and, even after they moved next door he still did!

He vividly remembers the cries of the injured and dying horses - he says it’s something that he will never forget, but a lot of his memories of those times are a much happier.
 
Welcome to the Forum, LooneyLin, and thanks for an interesting first contribution.

Chris
 
Hi Loonylin and welcome to the forum.
I bet your brother in law has some great stories to tell, you will find more like his all over the site, some under the headings like this one and some under street names.
Hope you enjoy the forum.
Sue
 
In discussion with my Dad yesterday he said he had a job as a kid as a messenger during the Blitz for a photographic company on New Street near the Corner of Corporation Street towards where the Brittania Hotel is now located. He lost his job when the place got bombed and i don't think they opened again, apparently they still owe him five Bob Wages which he never received:sorrow:.
Can anyone help him with the name of the photographers as it eludes him, they were some kind of Architectural concern and not portraits etc,
Thank's.
 
Lining up to Bomb Brum.
Which direction did the Bombers come from?
I have many times wondered about which direction(s) the German bombers took as they made their ' bombing runs ' to attack targets in Birmingham. I'm sure the raiders where ' briefed ' prior to the raids on the direction they should take in order to make their bombing runs.
Did they come in for their ' runs' over favoured outlying Birmingham district landmarks? In which case what landmarks might they have been?
What directions did they they come in from?
Anyone got any views or information on this?
 
Only just found this thread after all these years! And what a useful site is the swanshurst/Barra. In the early 1940s we moved from Aston to a bomb-damaged house in Knowle Road, Sparkhill. Five houses next to ours (number 215) had been demolished by a bomb, but we never knew the details. At some time in the 1960s, long after we'd left, the terraced houses were rebuilt. Here's the details from the Barra site:-

KnowleRoadCasualties.jpg

Maurice
 
Roy Blakey said:
Lining up to Bomb Brum. Which direction did the Bombers come from?
Click to expand...
In the 1940/1941 raids the Luftwaffe generally followed the Knickerbein and 'X' Gerate beams so they came from south-easterly / easterly directions
In a raid on Birmingham on 19th November 1940 (5 days after Coventry) the 'X' Gerate beam was again used but our 'boffins' managed to jam it and the German bombing accuracy was poor, probably why 'jerry' managed to drop one on our house in Great Barr - you remember things like that !

There is another thread The Blitz click/here where most of my 'wartime' memories are posted.
oldmohawk
 
A bit more searching, this time on the Acocks Green site, and I discovered that the sirens went at 8:00pm and the all-clear at 11:30pm, and in the same raid, 20 people lost their lives when a bomb went through the roof of the Carlton Cinema in Taunton Road, Sparkbrook and exploded in the stalls. Ironically they were watching the Dorothy Lamour film "Typhoon" at the time.

Maurice
 
Talking to an old chap in Bewdley museum, he said that Bewdley had air raid shelter because the Luftwaffe would follow the river Severn, counting the bridges to Bewdley. they would then turn right and head for the industrial areas of Birmingham.
 
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