Bath Blitz The surprise attacks that left historic city reeling
WHETHER from conviction or ambition, journalist Günther Hoenicke had signed up for the Nazi party, and in 1942 was a young Kriegsberichter,a “war reporter” working for the German propaganda machine.
When told he would be going on a bomber flight to England with the Luftwaffe, he was understandably nervous, but the pilot assured him, rightly as it turned out, that he had no cause to worry.
Their designated target, he said, was of no military importance and it would be either be lightly defended, or not at all.
Hoenicke was not to be disappointed. His account of the mission was not only broadcast on German radio, but was syndicated to newspapers all over German-occupied Europe under the headline: BATH – FIRE OF ANNIHILATION.
We swoop down from a high altitude and the first flares light the area. Below, the River Avon threads its way. The first small fires are already flaring. Suddenly there is a huge darting flame – a gasometer has blown up. We descend further and see glowing houses beneath us.
A black cloud of smoke hangs over the city: there is almost no wind. We can distinctly recognise the streets, the fires and destruction rage.
Our observer calmly seeks a new target, dropping heavy bombs. More bombers approach and again and again there are explosions as one wave after another passes over the town bringing death and destruction.
So it was that this Nazi hack left us one of the most vivid cockpit views of the German bombing of Britain in WWII.
Eighty years ago, over the weekend of April 25-27, 1942, Bath suf
Eugene Byrne
fered three air raids in which 417 people lost their lives and over a thousand were injured.
Though Britain was two and a half years into the war, the raids were a huge shock to Bathonians. Most of the German air raids on Britain, a period known as the “Blitz”, had been over the winter of 1940-41.
London had sustained the greatest damage and the largest number of casualties, but other industrial centres had been targeted, too. Bristol suffered six major raids and several smaller ones, which by 1942 had claimed over 1,000 lives. Fire crews from Bath had regularly been despatched to Bristol during these raids to help out.
Thus far, Bath had got off lightly. There were a number of isolated incidents in which high explosive and incendiary bombs fell on, or near, the city, causing some deaths, but most, if not all, of these had probably been dropped through navigation errors by aircraft heading for Bristol or other targets.
Bath residents generally felt safe, complacent even. In 1940, one bomb which had fallen on the city but failed to explode was defused and displayed in Parade Gardens as a reminder to locals that it was vital that they observe the blackout regulations and did not show any light from their homes at night.
Bath had a number of war industries; the engineering works of Stothert
& Pitt and the Horstmann Gear Company were now producing weapons. Between these and smaller enterprises as well as the Admiralty buildings at Fox Hill, Bath could be said to have been a military target, but in no way a significant one.
By April 1942 not a single bomb had fallen on the city for a year, while the rest of the country was now seeing a lot less of Hitler’s air force, which was now engaged in a life-and-death struggle on the Russian Front.
So when the air raid sirens sounded just before 11pm on Saturday, April 25, most Bath residents assumed that it was just a precaution, and any raiders were heading for Bristol. Indeed, one fire crew was immediately sent to Bristol on the assumption that that was where it would be needed.
It was a clear night with a bright moon – a “bombers’ moon”, as it was called. At around 11.15pm parachute flares were being dropped by the raiders to illuminate their target even further, but many on the ground found it hard to believe that Bath was being attacked.
After all, why Bath, and why now?
It was because the previous month the RAF had bombed Lübeck, a medieval city on the Baltic coast of north Germany, home to a historic cathedral and many old buildings of heritage value.
Arthur Harris, in charge of RAF Bomber Command, had selected it for an attack which was to be an experiment in a new area-bombing technique aimed at undermining enemy morale.
The idea was to cause as much devastation as possible over a wide area, using high explosive bombs at first to open up roofs and disrupt
Eighty years ago this week, Bath suffered three major air raids in the course of a single weekend, shocking citizens who had no reason to think the Georgian city was of any military importance. tells the story.
emergency services, and to follow these with firebombs.
The result was a firestorm in which thousands of buildings were destroyed and an unknown number of people – thought to be between 300 and 250 – killed.
The Germans retaliated by targeting similarly lightly defended British towns and cities, starting with Exeter on April 23-24 and later taking in Norwich, Canterbury and York as well as Bath.
These attacks, known as the “Baedeker raids” from the name of the popular German tourist guidebook, targeted places of historic importance, although 1942 would see German raids on other towns and cities, too, including Westonsuper-Mare, an important site of aircraft manufacture, which was attacked in June 1942.
Some 80 German bombers were tasked with the first two Bath raids, most of them having bombed Exeter the night before. Based in northern France they were less than two hours’ flying time from their target, though they varied their routes in an attempt to confuse Britain’s air defences and the RAF’s increasingly effective night-fighters.
One was shot down by a twinengined Bristol Beaufighter, equipped with radar in order to find the enemy in the dark, over the Devon Coast. Another, hopelessly lost, would later be shot down by a Beaufighter in mid-Wales.
The first bombs fell just after 11pm. On Bristol.
Again, due to navigational error, some of the raiders were in the
wrong place. Bristol’s anti-aircraft guns responded with what was probably the biggest barrage the city saw during the entire war, but none of the raiders was hit.
The rest made it to Bath and started their bombing runs at around 11.20pm. Thanks to the moonlight and the parachute flares, they could easily see their target. The first fell on Crescent Gardens and then in a line to the Gasworks, hitting two gasometers. This, presumably, was the explosion that Günther Hoenicke witnessed. After the aircraft had dropped their bombs, some came down lower to machine-gun the streets to hamper the efforts of firefighters and rescuers.
By just after midnight, the sirens sounded the “all clear”. On the way home, another plane was attacked by a Beaufighter and crashed into the sea before reaching home.
The raiders returned to base and immediately were refuelled and bombed up and were back over Bath at around 4.30am. The first raid had started a number of fires, which made accurate bombing even easier.
No German aircraft were shot down this time, but their losses thus far illustrated how much more efficient Britain’s air defences had become since 1940-41. One plane crashed in Dorset, apparently because its pilot was dazzled by a searchlight.
The following morning, Bath was in shock. Few people had slept, and daylight revealed burning and smouldering buildings and homes, many wrecked beyond repair.
Fire crews were still tackling blazes, while rescue squads – groups specially trained to find survivors trapped under collapsed buildings – worked to seek out and save people. By now, many fire crews had arrived from Bristol and other towns around the region.
Hundreds had been made homeless and were now being looked after in rest centres. The hospitals had been overwhelmed, and soon, those who could be moved were being sent to other hospitals around the region to free up beds.
Contrary to the popular myth of the Blitz, not everyone behaved well. The Home Guard was called on to provide guards for banks and
– because this was Bath – shops selling high-value goods, to prevent looting.
According to several contemporary accounts, hardly anyone believed that Bath had seen the last of the Germans and many residents, probably thousands, decided to leave the city.
Known as “trekkers”, they left to stay with friends or relatives in nearby towns and villages, but most left on foot to sleep out in barns and farm outbuildings or just in the open countryside. It was a phenomenon that Bristol had seen the previous winter, where trekkers were derisively referred to as the “yellow convoy”.
While it was understandable that mothers would want to take their children somewhere safer, the morality of the time looked on men who fled with contempt.
Able-bodied males were supposed to be in the ARP or the Home Guard, and those who were not could at least take part in firewatching duties, putting out the small firebombs which in the long run did much more damage than high explosive bombs. Every man was supposed to do his bit.
It was not simply a matter of looking on men who left as cowards; those who stayed at their posts were angry at the idea of having to risk their lives putting out a fire in a trekker’s house if he wasn’t going to be around to return the favour.
While none of this should deny for a moment the fact that the majority of people did their duty
and displayed great courage, a significant number simply fled, and this was one reason why the third attack, which did indeed come the following night, was the most damaging.
Radar operators plotted more than 80 German aircraft assembling over northern France just after midnight, and while the RAF’s night fighters managed to damage a couple of the raiders over the south coast, the rest of the bombers reached Bath on another clear, moonlit night.
This time, the sirens, sounding about 10 minutes before the first raiders’ arrival at around 1.30am on Monday, April 27, were heeded by the locals. Though many had decided to sleep in their air raid shelters anyway.
The Germans dropped around 100 tons of high explosive bombs and several thousand firebombs. There were many more incendiaries than the previous night and the damage and casualties were high.
Fire crews from Bristol and other surrounding towns were soon on the scene, but it would take several days to damp down all the fires and rescue those who were trapped.
As always, there were strange and poignant stories. A house was hit by a high explosive bomb and collapsed to rubble, killing all but one of the 15 occupants. The sole survivor was a schoolgirl who had been taking shelter in a kitchen cupboard. For three days and nights she tapped on the inside of the cupboard with a spoon until, at last, she was heard and a rescue squad arrived and finally got her out. She was the only survivor in her family.
A man in a rescue squad noticed a black cat going into a gap in a heap of rubble and reached in to get it out in case it got itself trapped. As his hand groped around in the hole it was grasped by the hand of a small child, who was recovered unhurt.
After that last night, the bombers never returned to Bath in force.
In all, 417 people were killed with many more injured. Over half the dead – 247 bodies – were buried at Haycombe Cemetery at a mass funeral on May 1 1942.
Over 1,000 buildings were seriously damaged or destroyed, including many of architectural or historic interest, including houses in the Circus, Royal Crescent as well as the Assembly Rooms. The east window of Bath Abbey was shattered.
Some buildings were restored or rebuilt, but others were not, leading to later controversies about inappropriate and ugly modern buildings being erected in their place.
In May 2008, one of the German pilots who had taken part in the raids visited Bath for a memorial service, and to apologise
Through an interpreter, Willi Schludecker said: “There is no other way for me than to ask you all for forgiveness for any pain that I might have caused or any damage that I might have inflicted when I came to your city in 1942.
“For our common future, we have to do everything possible to ensure that such a horrible war never happens again between our countries and in Europe. War is madness.”
A black cloud of smoke hangs over the city: there is almost no wind. We can distinctly recognise the streets, the fires and destruction rage
Günther Hoenicke