Thread: The War Years
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Old 9th February 2019, 15:09
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transmitter at Weston-super-mare giving out false signals. The pilot was told he was not in France but in England, at that point they tried to take off but the workers placed the mechanical digger in front of the aircraft and it was stopped from taking off. Military attached to the field arrived with Tommy guns and took the crew prisoners. The aircraft was a prized capture, a new Junkers 88 with all the advanced equipment installed.

17 April 1941
German raiders dropped four bombs on Avonmouth docks, two fell in the mud at the entrance of the dock, and the third demolished a building near the old Passenger station. The fourth fell on the new oil-jetty under construction. There were two slight casualties.

28 August 1942.
On a sunny morning, flying at 20,000 feet above unsuspecting Bristol, a single German fighter-bomber armed with a 500-pound bomb aimed at the heart of the city. It dropped in Broad Weir; near the junction of Philadelphia Street, the time was 9:20 am at the rush hour.
At such height the plane was thought to be a reconnaissance aircraft and no alert was given until the bomb had struck. Three double-decker busses full of passengers were waiting at the bus stops, with men, women, and children going to work or school. The busses were all destroyed, and the casualties totaled 45 killed and 56 injured. It was the last bomb to fall on Bristol in 1942. .

There were no raids recorded for 1943. Although the German High Command reported that they were again bombing Bristol.

15 May 1944.
This is the last entry in the Official Record of the Battle of Bristol
German aircraft approached Avonmouth at 2: am, thanks to the heavy barrage of A.A fire the planes were driven off target and some dropped their bombs at random to gain altitude. Ten bombs were dropped in Bedminster, five in Abbots Leigh, and two in Kings Weston Lane where a soldier was killed at a searchlight site, the only casualty .The Germans planes turned, altered course for home, and they never came back. Bristol and Avonmouths ordeal was over.

The official details of Bristol air raids were published for the first time in November 1944, when it was disclosed that the total number of warnings had been 548, and bombs had been dropped 76 times. Altogether 1,299 people were killed in the city and 3,305 were injured.
Over 3,000 homes were totally destroyed, and 90,000 properties were damaged. Apart for London, only Liverpool published higher figures.
Most of the rubble was taken aboard ship as ballast and moved to New York City and became the foundation of the East River Drive.
It’s amazing that after all these years unexploded bombs are still being found in and around Bristol, as in the case of one in the playground of the Shirehampton infants school In October 1966,and another a mile from the Severn Bridge in 1988.

The information for this article' The Bristol Blitz: was researched from various sources. The Bristol Website, Official documents, and Books on the Bombing of Bristol. While searching for this data the memories kept going back to when I was a young lad living in Shirehampton and experiencing the bombings first hand. I was 10 years old when the first air raid warnings sounded and the bombs began to fall on Avonmouth. I cannot remember the details of every raid due to my aging memory, but some nights I can remember as it was yesterday. I was playing in the street as most of the kids my age did at that time, we heard the roar of aircraft and looked up to see the sky
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