Homes hit as factory was a target in war
THIS week in 1942 the Gloster Aircraft factory (GAC) straddling the Hucclecote/brockworth parish boundary was the target of a raid by Nazi war planes.
During the Second World War all newspaper stories and photos concerning the conflict had to be approved by the Ministry of Information. They were vetted to ensure details that could be of use to the enemy did not appear in print.
Consequently the report of the event that appeared in the Citizen was purposely vague. It read “German raiders in the west. A German raider dropped several bombs over the outskirts of a town in the West of England on Saturday. These pictures show the results of one bomb that obliterated two houses killing six civilians.”
The Saturday in question was April 4, 1942. Easter Saturday. GAC day shift workers were leaving the factory at about 4.30pm when two Luftwaffe planes appeared, low in the sky.
Six bombs fell. One landed on a bus waiting to take workers home from GAC’S crowded car park. The works’ number one canteen and number eight workshop were destroyed and there was a further blast in the machine shop. A block house was wrecked and it took four hours to bring under control the fires that raged around the devastated area.
At 5.25 on the same day a second raid took place, followed by a third at 6.10pm. A house opposite the factory took a direct hit and all five occupants were killed, including an eleven months old baby. Two more houses to the east of the airfield were also damaged. Official figures tell us that ten men, five women and three children died in these Easter raids, with some 200 people injured.
Mercifully my Mum and Dad were not among them. Both worked at GAC at the time, Dad making components for Hurricane fighters and Mum called up to work in the dope department, as it was called. But on Easter Saturday 1942 they had permission take the day off as they were walking up the aisle of St Oswald’s church, Coney Hill to be married.
Within days of the Easter raid, an anonymous poem entitled “Someone has blundered” circulated firstly among the work force, then around the city.
“On the edge of the Cotswolds a factory stands
Where beauty and colour abound. With Autumn tints of the trees so grand,
Brown leaves bespatter the ground.
In these peaceful surroundings a raider appeared
To deal his deadly blow, Dropping his bombs on the workmen, Toiling in shops down below.
Where were the sirens, where were the guns,
Where were the planes? We all wondered.
Where was the barrage to keep him at bay?
Surely someone has blundered.
Let this sad affair be a lesson, That those lives were not given in vain,
But to see that those who have blundered,
Never shall blunder again.
Our thoughts go out to the bereaved ones,
Those sweethearts, those mothers, those wives,
Of the men who once were our workmates,
But now they have given their lives.
We are working and fighting for freedom,
For liberty and all that is right, For God’s sake think first of our safety, So as we can continue the fight.”
The heaviest night of bombing Cheltenham suffered during the Second World War was recalled by the Echo in a resume of attacks by the Luftwaffe published in May 1945. “The raid lasted from 7.40pm until after midnight” read the report.
“On this occasion 101 HE (high explosive) bombs and many incendiaries were dropped on the town and district, 97 HE falling in the town itself, killing 23 people and injuring 120. Over 60 houses were completely destroyed and 1,000 damaged.”
The report went on to explain that this was the night when the German planes launched a major blitz on Birmingham. Cheltenham was on the route taken by Goering’s bombers from France, across the Channel and up the Severn Valley to the midlands. One theory suggested that unscreened lights in Cheltenham attracted the attention of the bomb aimers
The drama began when siting flares were dropped over the town. In the first wave of bombs H H Martyn’s Sunningend Works (now Lansdown Industrial Estate) was hit and set ablaze, which served to direct other Luftwaffe raiders to the scene.
Half of Stoneville Street was demolished when a large bomb landed on the railway embankment nearby. Ten were killed, some of them children. On the other side of Gloucester Road a gas holder was hit. Further bomb damage was suffered in nearby Brunswick Street where, among the rubble, over £1,000 was discovered in a small brown suitcase and handed over to the police.