TERROR FROM 80 years since Nazis began their Blitz of Birmingham
HITLER’S bombs began to rain on Birmingham this month 80 years ago – the start of three years of death, carnage and destruction – yet the citizens of Brum refused to bow to the
Blitz.
August 9 marked the anniversary of the start of terror from the skies for the Second
City.
The days of darkness were heralded by a single Luftwaffe bomber that dropped its payload on Erdington. One person was killed, six injured.
Worse was to follow.
Four days later the Castle Bromwich aircraft factory, which produced Spitfires, was targeted. Eleven bombs hit their target, causing severe damage to the plant, killing seven people and injuring 41. By August 25, the Nazi war machine was preying on the civilian population, with shocked city centre residents looking up at a night sky dotted with the silhouettes of Heinkels.
Twenty-five people lost their lives in that raid and the roof of the Bull Ring’s Market Hall was blasted clean off.
From there the grim statistics mounted up until the skies fell silent on April 23, 1943.
1,852 tonnes of bombs were dropped. Only London and Liverpool were hit harder;
There were 365 air raid alerts, and 77 actual raids;
A total of 5,129 high explosive bombs fell on the city and 48 parachute mines;
The Blitz killed 2,241 people and seriously wounded 3,010. A further 3,682 sustained lesser wounds;
The city lost 12,391 houses, 302 factories and 239 other buildings. Many more were badly damaged.
Such was the carnage and suffering, that our government, fearful of flagging morale, banned references to Birmingham’s skyborne siege.
It became “a Midlands city” in newspaper reports of the bombings. Those immersed in Birmingham’s darkest days endured the highs and lows of hope and despair.
By the end of 1940, they believed the worst was over. The storm of shells had dried to a mere drizzle.
Yet Hitler was merely keeping his powder dry for the unrelenting attacks of April 1941.
By the second week of that month, the city and its suburbs were pockmarked by the Blitz, with more than 60 raids taking place. The Luftwaffe’s full fury was vented on April 9 and 10 – among Birmingham’s worst hours of the war.
On the 9th, 235 bombers dropped 280 tonnes of explosives and 40,000 incendiaries – and most fell on the city centre. The Bull Ring, New Street High Street, and Dale End all suffered heavy damage.
St Martin in the Bull Ring was hit and the Prince of Wales Theatre and Midland Arcade were destroyed.
The following night, 245 bombers dropped 245 tonnes of explosives and 43,000 incendiaries, causing major damage to Solihull, Hall Green and Erdington. Combined there were 1,121 casualties.
In 2014, Barbara Johnson, founder of the Birmingham’s Air Raids Remembrance Association, spoke to the the Post of those years spent in the grip of the Nazi storm. Barbara died in 2018 aged 83.
The Nazi planes that hunted by day, flew low and strafed with machine gun fire those who braved the streets, she recalled.
“I hated the sound of the sirens. Mum would get our coats, shoes and gas masks and take us to the shelter,” Barbara said.
“Our neighbours always had a flask of something hot. The longest raid was 13 hours, I never thought it was going to end. I was terrified. You’d try to sleep, but you couldn’t.
“Some shelters flooded. Dad said they hadn’t dug down deep enough. “The worst time was when I came out and the neighbours took me to their house, not my own. I didn’t like that, I was always clingy.
“When I went back home, mum was in a chair and a neighbour was mopping her face, like she’d fainted. That night she told me grandma and grandad had gone to heaven. I always remember going to Burbury Street School and the headmaster said the service that day would be very sad because the Edwards family had been killed – the mom, the gran and four children. One of them was in my class.
“July 27 to July 28, 1942 – that was the worst time. That was horrendous. From one end of Birmingham to another, it just went on and on.”
But Barbara stressed: “Mum and dad told us to never blame the Germans because what they were doing to us, we were doing to them.
“What was happening in Birmingham was happening in a German city.
“The people in Germany didn’t want the war, just like we didn’t want the war. It was the politicians.”
It still is the politicians.