Southport was victim of German bombing raids
DID you know that bombs fell on Southport during the Second World War?
As we head towards this year’s VE Day, it is astonishing to imagine that Nazi German bombers once flew over homes in our town, night after night, bringing indiscriminate death and destruction.
The devastation in Liverpool and Bootle were particularly severe as Hitler sought to destroy the region’s port and docks during the Blitz in the early months of the war.
Southport residents also lived in terror at the sound of Heinkels, Junkers and Dorniers flying overhead, not knowing where or when the bombs were going to drop. Seventeen people were killed in Southport and 76 others were injured during enemy raids between September 1940 and July 1941.
The Germans even bombed a home for blind babies in Birkdale. Hundreds of homes were flattened or damaged, while explosives were also dropped on the Brockhouses factory in Crossens.
Many families in Southport built air raid shelters outside their homes.
Businesses barricaded themselves with sandbags.
Local residents didn’t know whether the Nazis were going to deploy poison gas, as they had done during the First World War, so issued children with gas masks.
The bombing was so severe that a new fighter airfield was created on the edge of Southport in 1942 - RAF Woodvale.
It hosted several Spitfire Squadrons throughout the war, flown by Polish and Dutch pilots among them.
Six brave Polish airmen who lost their lives while based there are buried nearby.
Britain, along with Allies across the world, were at war with Hitler’s Germany for six brutal years from 1939 until Tuesday, May 8 1945, when VE Day - Victory in Europe Day was declared.
Tempering the jubilation somewhat, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Harry Truman pointed out that the war against Japan had not yet been won.
In his radio broadcast at 3pm on May 8, Churchill told the British people: “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing (as Japan) remains unsubdued.”
In the USA, Truman broadcast at 9am and said it was “a victory only half won”. VJ Day (Victory over Japan Day) would not be celebrated until August 15 1945.
With the anniversary of VE Day taking place on May 8, we are today looking back at those dark days when people built air raid shelters outside their homes, hundreds of refugees were evacuated to Southport from inner cities such as Liverpool and the sound of engines from bombers flying overhead brought terror to the local population.
Until 1944, reports of German bombing raids by the Southport Visiter and other newspapers had to be sketchy for security reasons.
Enemy missions were always reported as having taken place “somewhere in a North West town”.
But in October 1944 the Southport Visiter was able to report for the first time in detail the raids and casualties and their dates and locations.
One of the most terrifying incidents took place on the night of April 26, 1941 when German aircraft bombed the Sunshine Home for Blind Babies on Oxford Road in Birkdale.
It was on this night that Southport suffered its heaviest raid and Sunshine House suffered a direct hit.
Incendiary and high explosive bombs also fell at the junction of Waterloo Road and Sandon Road; the sandhills at Hillside ; in the grounds of Terra Nova School on Lancaster Road; Ryder Crescent;
Breeze Road; St Thomas More School on Liverpool Road in Ainsdale; Stourton Road; Oxford Road; Westbourne Road; Salford Road; Mossgiel Avenue; Pinfold Lane and Palace Road, near the Palace Hotel.
Parachute mines were responsible for the damage at Salford Road and Pinfold Lane.
Extensive damage was caused to residential property at Ainsdale and Birkdale. Parachute mines were also dropped on the foreshore.
That tragic night around 200 people were left homeless, and were housed in two emergency rest centres.
Official statistics tell us that in the nine raids on Southport 12 houses were totally destroyed, 35 had to be demolished owing to extensive damage, 131 were seriously damaged, 1,467 were slightly damaged and 651 had damage to windows. All told the town had 135 air raid alerts.
The first bombing raid of the Second World War on Southport took place on September 4, 1940, and caused the death of five people and left three others injured.
Bombs were dropped in a line stretching from Southport Town Hall, Lord Street, to Warren Road.
The most serious damage was caused in Hartwood Road where numbers 51 and 53 were completely demolished.
Because of a number of unexploded bombs, 1,100 people had to be evacuated from their homes.
During a raid the following night, fires were caused by incendiary bombs being dropped on Upper Aughton Road, Belmont Street, Kent Road and Grove Street.
Incendiaries were also found on Alma Road, but there were no fires.
An unexploded bomb was reported opposite the old Lifeboat House on Esplanade, which meant that trains had to be stopped from using the Cheshire Lines Railway.
Miraculously there were no reported casualties during this air raid.
Southport suffered its next bombing raid four days before Christmas 1940 when two parachute mines and one high explosive bomb were dropped on the town. One mine fell in the garden at the rear of 69 Alexandra Road.
The other fell in Stretton Drive and caused substantial damage, destroying two homes and damaging several more.
A large number of properties within a radius of a quarter of a mile suffered superficial damage with windows, doors etc being shattered by the blasts.
It must have been utterly ter