AIR RAIDS AND V1 FLYING BOMBS
German HE-111 Heinkel - the main bomber used
during the air raids on Manchester. Later used to air
launch the V1 Flying Bombs (doodlebugs) against
Manchester on Christmas Eve, 1944.
In the early summer of 1940 the German Luftwaffe commenced an air campaign designed to destroy the RAF airfields and airplane building facilities as a prelude to invasion (Operation Sea Lion) -- the Battle of Britain had begun! In the late summer and early autumn of 1940 the Nazi government revised its tactics -- it announced that the bomber attacks were now to be directed at civilian population centers (London to be the prime target) and strategic cities -- the air raid Blitz had started! The first major air raids were directed at London and other cities in the south and southwest -- Portsmouth, Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, et al. However, it didn't take long for the Luftwaffe to start bombing other major industrial cities -- Coventry, Birmingham, Newcastle, Hull, Sheffield, Liverpool, etc. -- and Manchester (and its environs) -- the industrial heart of East Lancashire.
The initial Manchester air raids were relatively light (one was actually a propaganda leaflet drop) but gained in intensity in October and November. Then during Christmas 1940 -- 22 to 24 December -- the city was hit with a monumental air raid and one of the most intense incendiary bomb attacks of the war -- a fire storm ensued in the center of the city. The spectacular fires that lit up the night skies over Manchester could be seen from the top of the moors on the outskirts of Burnley (Crown Point) near our house some twenty miles away. We worried about the safety of our relatives who lived there -- an aunt of mine (one of my mother's sisters), who lived in Salford and a cousin of hers who lived in Stretford near Trafford Park -- and were greatly relieved to learn that they had survived unscathed.
Fire
fighting during an air raid on Manchester
Manchester experienced an intense air raid during Whitsuntide, a three day holiday that encompassed Sunday 1 June through Tuesday 3 June in 1941. I went with my mother to visit our relatives in Salford and Stretford who had endured the horrendous Christmas 1940 Blitz and a series of air raids in the spring. We took them some extra food rations and clothing. There hadn't been an air raid in the Manchester region for almost a month, but the sirens sounded late on Whit Sunday night and the Manchester region underwent its second heaviest air raid of the war. Salford and Stretford suffered heavy destruction -- fourteen nurses were killed when the Salford Royal Hospital sustained a direct hit. My home town of Burnley only sustained hits from a few bombs during the war. One night in early May of 1941 bombs impacted several hundred yards from my house. They landed in a field just off Manchester Road damaging houses that fronted on Rossendale Road. The next morning I went to the bomb drop location to see what had happened. One crater was concealed from view by a hedge row and the gate to the path across the field was being guarded by Police and Wardens who barred access to all except residents of the houses. One of the guards was my uncle Jim Howarth - he let me pass with a wink and I was able to gather some shrapnel for souvenirs. We had some air raid warnings (mostly at night) in Burnley during the early years of the war whereupon my mother and I would go to the Anderson shelter.
Just about a week after D-Day everything changed! The news media announced that a new kind of pilotless flying bomb was being used to attack London (the first actually fell on London 13 June 1944). It didn't take long before they were given an unofficial name: "Doodlebugs". Initial reports were that they were very fast, carried a huge explosive charge, sounded like a small motorcycle driven at a steady speed and that the engine cut out before it dived to the ground ("you can count to ten before the bang").
The sounds of an actual V1 Doodlebug flying, engine cutting out and impacting can be experienced by visiting: Stories from the 1940s -- Bernard's story - click on the V1 sound file link at the bottom of the page. Bernard was the same age as me -- fifteen -- at the time of his experience in 1944.
Official Diagram picture - V1 Fieseler Fi 103
Flying Bomb
On Christmas Eve 1944, a formation of specially configured HE-111 Heinkel bombers (I/KG53 squadron) flying over the North Sea launched 45 V1 Flying Bombs (Doodlebugs) aimed at Manchester 31 of which reached the target area. Fifteen fell on Manchester, the remainder impacting in surrounding towns and sparsely populated outlying areas. BBC Report -- Doodlebug attack on Manchester One hit a row of terrace houses in nearby Oldham killing 37 people, including some evacuees from London, and seriously wounding many others. The blast damaged hundreds of nearby homes. Six people died when one landed on Chapel Street, Tottington, near Bury. One V1 that impacted near Oswaldtwistle carried a load of propaganda leaflets. Leaflets from these V1s were also found at Brindle, near Manchester and Huddersfield, Yorkshire. An errant V1 impacted in a farmer's field at Gregson Lane near Bamber Bridge just outside Preston. This crash site has recently been examined and recorded by the Lancashire Aircraft Investigation Team (V1 Gregson Lane 24.12.1944). This V1 raid was a rude Christmas Eve shock for people in the Manchester area, for local officials had been hinting that the danger from air raids was was pretty much over for us in the North. D-Day had heightened the expectation that the war was winding down, besides, the unexpected V1 raids had been directed against London. Certainly no one expected an air raid siren alert followed by the sound of Doodlebugs chugging across Lancashire skies during that Christmas of 1944! This V1 raid on Manchester occurred exactly four years after the first major Air Raid on the city -- the horrendous firestorm Blitz of Christmas 1940.
Evidently a large number of V1s were loaded with propaganda leaflets. This subject is covered in meticulous detail by Herbert A. Friedman in his Web page article The German V1 Rocket Leaflet Campaign. This fascinating article explains how the leaflets were stored and dispersed and includes an impressive number of V1 related photographic images and numerous actual propaganda leaflet reproductions. It is also a treasure trove of V1 Flying Bomb information. The British government was pretty secretive about V1 impact sites for they did not want the Germans to know the number of those that reached the target area and exactly where they had fallen.
An aircaft crash occured in the Burnley area in mid-war. In the late morning of 1 September 1942, an American P38 (Lockheed Lightning) fighter, which was was part of a flight of several on a training exercise, crashed in the woods near Cliviger. My best friend and I got to the crash location in time to retrieve a few souvenirs before the police arrived to cordon it off. This crash is chronicled at:
Crash of P-38 41-7669 - Cliviger, near Burnley - 1st September 1942
Another crash occurred in the Burnley area toward the end of the war. In the late afternoon of Monday, 19 February, 1945 an American B24 Liberator bomber crashed on the moors just outside Burnley (Black Hameldon). This crash is chronicled at:
Crash of B-24 Liberator A/C No. 42-50668 - Black Hameldon, near Burnley - 19th February 1945
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works
3.0 United States License. Include my name as
original author.
![[RSS icon]](rss.gif)