Discovering Wartime Chelsea

Wartime memorabilia at the Royal Hospital (author's photo)

 

I was recently lucky enough to guide a small family group from New York for a whole day exploring various aspects of London's wartime past and for part of this day, we took a walk around Chelsea, an area that perhaps does not at first thought appear synonymous with this most violent part of our capital city's recent history but is nevertheless an area which suffered heavily not just during the Blitz of 1940-41 but also suffered it's fair share of the later V-1 and V-2 weapons of 1944-45. 

However, it was coincidental that we happened to take our walk on the 74th anniversary to the day of an air raid that became particularly engrained on the history of this historic borough - April 16th/17th 1941 - a raid so ferocious that it became known to Londoners of the time simply as 'The Wednesday' and one which recurs with a terrifying regularity in the history of wartime Chelsea.

We started our walk outside Sloane Square Underground Station. This station was originally opened to the public on 24th December 1868 by the Metropolitan District Railway as part of that company’s first section of line between South Kensington and Westminster. In 1872, the company connected with the erstwhile rival Metropolitan Railway’s tracks at South Kensington and the Inner Circle, predecessor of today’s Circle Line began to operate, although the full circuit was not completed until 1884. In 1939, the station began an extensive upgrade as part of London Transport’s ‘New Works Scheme’ which included the installation of escalators, the first of their kind on a sub-surface line. The works were completed on 27th March 1940 but to no avail, because on 12th November 1940, the station was struck by a HE Bomb causing the modernized station to be almost totally destroyed. 

Tragically, 36 people were killed and a further 79 seriously injured, mostly aboard a train which had been leaving the station when the bomb struck and which caused large pieces of rubble to fall onto the train carriages. The station was rebuilt again after the war and today the only clue to the damage can be seen from the platforms where the stubs of the original cast iron supports to the old glazed station roof are still visible protruding from the retaining walls above the platforms. 

From this location, we exited the station forecourt and proceeded across Sloane Square, turning into Lower Sloane Street, before taking the first turning on the right into Turks Row. 

Self-explanatory plaque at Turk's Row (author's photo)

 

During the Second World War, the large apartment blocks known as Sloane Court and Sloane Court East were in use as billets for American Army personnel stationed in London. At about 8 a.m. on Monday July 3rd 1944, a V-1 Flying Bomb fell in the street outside Sloane Court East which completely destroyed this building. The death toll was horrendous – 74 American service personnel – including several women were killed along with 3 British civilians and with many more injured. 

An eye-witness to the immediate aftermath of this incident was Bill Figg, a young RAF serviceman on leave in his home area of Chelsea. After the war, Figg recalled what he saw and heard:

"I heard the unmistakeable sound of a V1, like a motorcycle without a silencer."

The missile struck, blowing Figg off his feet. He picked himself up and rushed around the corner into Turk's Row and was greeted by a scene of immense horror.

"I saw this Army truck with four bodies slumped over the back. In the middle of the road, there was a head. All down Sloane Court East, there were more bodies than you could shake a stick at. You just rolled over the bodies and felt the pulse. I must have rolled over twenty or thirty bodies but they were all glassy-eyed."

Reputedly the exact spot where the V1 fell (author's photo)

The casualties incurred by the WACs, or Women’s Army Corps to give them their full title, were the first suffered by them whilst serving overseas. Today, a plaque on the wall of the replacement building commemorates those who died whilst on the opposite side of the road another small plaque set in the pavement reputedly marks the very spot where the missile fell. 

Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band had been billeted at Sloane Court but had moved to RAF Twinwood near Bedford, the day before the V-1 struck. Concerned for the safety of his band, Miller had insisted on the move due to the number of V-1s falling in the vicinity at this time and faced with a lack of US Army transport – the local Motor Pool refused to work on a Sunday – he made a deal with the RAF to transport him and his band in return for performing a concert for the RAF personnel at the band’s new base. Thanks to his intuition, Miller undoubtedly saved his band from death or serious injury on the following day. As it was, Major Glenn Miller took off in foul weather from RAF Twinwood on December 15th 1944 in a Norseman light aircraft to play a concert in Paris for Allied servicemen but disappeared en route, never to be seen again. 

We left this once melancholy scene which now echoes to the cheerful sound of children playing in the school which today partially occupies the site and continued along Turks Row, turning left at the junction with Franklin’s Row and then right at the junction with Royal Hospital Road. 

The Royal Hospital, Chelsea was founded in 1682 by King Charles II and was intended ‘for the succour and relief of veterans broken by age and war’ and has fulfilled that role ever since, although today’s veterans are anything but broken by age and war being usually very sprightly ambassadors for the British Army. 

Royal Hospital Roll of Honour (author's photo)

Today, female as well as male pensioners are allowed – the qualification being that ‘in-pensioners’ as they are called, must be former Non Commissioned Officers or Soldiers of the British Army in receipt of an Army or War Service Pension who are normally over 65 years of age and who have no obligation to support a partner or family. Prior to the opening of the hospital, no specific provision had ever been made for old and retired soldiers. 

Designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the buildings were completed in 1692 and the first pensioners were admitted in February of that year. Parts of the hospital were damaged by German bombs in 1918, rebuilt in 1923 and damaged again during the Second World War. The hospital and grounds suffered extensive damage during this conflict, being bombed over 20 times starting in the early days of the Blitz in September 1940, right through to almost the end when a V-2 rocket fell in the grounds on 3rd January 1945 with the loss of 4 lives and 28 injured. 

The worst incident was on the night of 16th/17th April 1941, when the Infirmary was destroyed by a Parachute Mine with the loss of 15 lives and a further 50 serious injuries; the oldest of those in-pensioners killed was Henry Rattray, who was 101 years of age and a veteran of the Zulu Wars.

The Infirmary designed by Sir John Soane had been added in 1809 and is now the site of the National Army Museum. The idea of this museum was first conceived in the late 1950s by Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templar and was originally located at Sandhurst, home of the Royal Military Academy. The present location was chosen as a more central venue for the Museum and construction of the building was commenced in 1961 but took ten years to complete, with the present Museum opening to the public on November 11th 1971. Most of the fundraising for the construction of this building was undertaken personally by Sir Gerald Templar. This Museum, which is currently closed for an extensive refurbishment, is scheduled to re-open in 2016 and if it lives up to it's former incarnation, will continue to be well worth a visit.

We continued along Royal Hospital Road, walking towards the Thames Embankment, until we reached Cheyne Place, a terrace of houses and apartment blocks on the right hand side of the road. On the night of 16th/17th April 1941, a Parachute Mine detonated in the street, destroying or severely damaging numbers 25-43 and causing many casualties, including 3 AFS Firemen who were killed at the scene and whose names are commemorated on a plaque at Kings Road Fire Station, which we passed later in the walk. Like all London Fire Brigade and AFS Stations, Cheyne Place was given it's own unique alpha-numeric code and perhaps one of the AFS firefighters of the time had been a stonemason or sculptor in his civilian life, because the code letters '6W', the designated code for the Fire Station remains visible to this day, carved neatly into the stonework of one of the buildings concerned.

Station 6W of the AFS at 19/21 Cheyne Place (author's photo)

We continued along Royal Hospital Road and turned right into Christchurch Street before embarking on a walk through some of the most peaceful side roads to be found in Central London, eventually finding ourselves at the junction with Cheyne Row, where we paused outside The Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, which was the scene of another serious wartime incident. 

In common with many other London churches during wartime, the crypt (the entrance to which was at 21 Upper Cheyne Row) was used as a Public Air Raid Shelter. On the night of  September 14th 1940, between 80 and 100 people were sheltering inside when a HE Bomb crashed through the West Window and the floor, exploding in the crypt. Sadly, 23 of those sheltering including the Shelter Warden, Bert Thorpe, were killed in the explosion and the ensuing fire which was one of the worst incidents in the borough of Chelsea. 

Josephine Oakman was a young Air Raid Warden who kept a diary, which is now in the possession of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea's Archives. Her entry for this date makes heart rending reading:

"18:27 - Bomb on Holy Redeemer. Got sent off by Bert Thorpe on bike patrol in Glebe Place and had hardly got away when HE sailed through church window, through crypt floor to cellar where it exploded against some strutting among 80 odd people. I got knocked off the bike. A second knocked me down again and a third sent a brick onto my tin hat. I went to Holy Redeemer and set to work on stirrup pumps. The cries and groans were awful. God help them all. We took 12 dead and put them in the garden by the church as it was getting dark. I think my heart broke this night over the sights I have seen today."

Despite this direct hit, the church which was consecrated in 1895, was not badly damaged and continued in use as a church and a shelter, with permanent repairs being completed by 1962. 

After some reflection, we left this now peaceful backwater and proceeded along Cheyne Row until we reached the junction with Cheyne Walk where we turned right, following the River Thames upstream. After turning right into Cheyne Walk, we reached Chelsea Old Church, located appropriately on the corner of Old Church Street and set in its own small garden. 

Memorial to Yvonne Green (author's photo)

 

Memorial at Roper's Garden (author's photo)

Today, the Church Garden with its statue of Thomas More and Roper’s Garden opposite the Church form a peaceful oasis away from the incessant flow of traffic along Chelsea Embankment but as can be seen from the two plaques on the walls of Roper’s Gardens, it becomes clear that on the night of  April 16th/17th 1941, this area was anything but an oasis of peace. The plaque located overlooking Chelsea Embankment tells us that Roper’s Garden is built on land formerly occupied by buildings destroyed during the raid on that night, whilst the plaque located in Old Church Street is erected by the charity ‘Firemen Remembered’ and commemorates the life of Yvonne Green, a 30 year old Canadian Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) Fire Watcher killed on the same night along with four of her colleagues. 

Memorial inside the rebuilt Chelsea Old Church (author's photo)

We covered Yvonne's story in the April 2011 edition of this blog but suffice to say that Yvonne Green and four of her five Fire Watching colleagues were killed and Chelsea Old Church almost completely destroyed, when two Parachute Mines detonated in close proximity on this terrible night. Yvonne was another prolific writer - this time in the form of letters to her Mother, safely back home in Canada and what proved to be her last letter home, dated just two days before her death, makes poignant reading:

"The Blitz hasn't affected London now for some days now or nights. I should say now but I think it's a fair assumption to say that it is purely temporary and we'll be getting it again soon - maybe."

From this now tranquil scene, we proceeded north along Lawrence Street and eventually turned right into Kings Road. Proceeding along this busy thoroughfare, we passed the recently closed Chelsea Fire Station at the junction with Dovehouse Street. Another of the commemorative plaques erected by ‘Firemen Remembered’ adorns this building and we paused here to remember the sacrifices made by these men over the years, not only in wartime but also as recently as 1968. We had already passed the site of those killed at Cheyne Place, whilst the location of those killed at Chelsea Square is somewhat to the rear of the Fire Station we were standing by, with Brompton Road and St Stephens Hospital to the north of our position. The present day Chelsea & Westminster Hospital is on the site of the old St Stephens Hospital which was seriously damaged in December 1944 by a V-2 rocket. 

Chelsea Fire Station plaque (author's photo)

 

From the Fire Station, we continued a short distance along Kings Road until we reached the pleasant open space known as Dovehouse Green. On the wall of the old Town Hall building, we saw two memorials, one to the Civilian War Dead of the people of Chelsea and the other, a small brass plaque that commemorates two members of the Heavy Rescue Service, Anthony Smith GC and Albert Littlejohn BEM. 

The George Cross is the highest civilian award for bravery and therefore not given lightly, so the story of these two men is worth recounting. Anthony Smith was a chimney sweep by trade who had fought in the Royal Marines during The Great War and had lost three fingers of one hand on The Somme in 1917. He had tried to re-enlist on the outbreak of war in 1939 but his injury precluded this and so instead had joined the Heavy Rescue Service based at Chatham, Kent. On the night of 23rd February 1944, during the so-called 'Little Blitz', a lone raider dropped two bombs which were possibly aimed at Lots Road Power Station but which missed and instead fell on The Guinness Trust buildings on the corner of Edith Grove and Kings Road. Both blocks collapsed and Anthony Smith soon arrived with the Heavy Rescue Squad. Many people were trapped in the rubble and Smith heard the cries of one of them, a baker called Sam Mitchell who was trapped in the basement. Smith entered the basement through a gap in the rubble, which soon after he entered collapsed, trapping him also. 

Tony Smith persevered and soon found Mitchell in the rubble, freed him and dragged him to the rear of the building where he broke through a wall to safety. Without thinking of his own safety, Smith then joined his colleague Albert Littlejohn and re-entered the basement, which by this time was flooding with water from a broken main and rescued a woman who they helped to safety. 

Smith and his colleagues worked all night freeing victims and recovering bodies. In all, 76 people died that night but many others were rescued thanks to Anthony Smith and his colleagues from the Heavy Rescue Squad. He was awarded the George Cross in May 1944 and made a Freeman of the Borough of Chelsea in June of the same year. A fuller account of Tony Smith's story appeared in the February 2012 edition of this blog.

Dovehouse Green memorials (author's photo)

From this modest but inspiring memorial, we returned to Kings Road and turned left at the traffic lights into Sydney Street and entered the delightful gardens adjoining Parish Church of St Luke’s. This church was damaged on 16th October 1940 by an incendiary bomb in the belfry which was brought under control before too much damage was caused and also by a HE Bomb on St Luke’s School (now the Church Hall) which severely damaged the eastern end of the church buildings generally. This end of the church still shows considerable signs of shrapnel damage and also some repaired areas of masonry. The churchyard had also been the scene of an unexploded bomb on 15th October 1940 which was rendered safe by the Bomb Disposal Squad. The church, which was designed by James Savage and consecrated on 18th October 1824, is the largest and tallest parish church in London. It is also the home to several interesting war memorials from both World Wars including the 3rd Gurkha Rifles, 140th Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps, various units of The Royal Engineers and the 51st London Heavy A.A. Regiment. In more recent times, the church has been a frequent location for film makers and was perhaps most notably a location for ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral.’

Coming towards the end of our walk, we headed towards Draycott Avenue, at which point we continued ahead for a few metres, entering Cadogan Street with the Guinness Trust Buildings to our right hand side. We took the time to peer into the pedestrian entrance into this estate. Underneath the covered walkway entrance, just off Cadogan Street, it was possible to see a delightful memorial to the men of Draycott Avenue who died during an earlier conflict, The Great War of 1914-18. It was hand written and simply titled ‘Our Roll of Honour’ and even after almost 100 years, our group still found it intensely moving to see this simple memorial to the men of an ordinary street in west London. 

"Our Roll of Honour" - Draycott Avenue (author's photo)

As always, there is much more to see on one of our walks and even a description of walk such as this, does not compare with actually "walking the ground", so come along one of these days - you will be surprised as to what can still be seen of our wartime history.

Published Sources: 

London Transport at War – Charles Graves, LPTB 1947 

The Story of London’s Underground – John R Day & John Reed, Capital Transport 2001 

Blitz – MJ Gaskin, Faber & Faber 2005 

Ordinary Heroes – David Walker & Roger Morgan, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea 2005 

A Guide to St Luke’s Church Chelsea – Clare Johnston, privately published 1999 

Unpublished Sources: 

Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea ARP Incident Log 1940-45 

Extracts from Josephine Oakman's Diary

 

Danger UXB!

The Evening Standard's take on last week's unexploded bomb

The recent discovery of an unexploded Luftwaffe 250 kg bomb in Bermondsey suddenly brought the Blitz back to the forefront of the news, with headlines such as the one above in the London Evening Standard being fairly typical, as were the inaccuracies in the reporting, which saw the bomb varying in size from 1000 lbs, to 1000 kgs, with just about every size in between coming into the equation. Both Neil and I were surprised to receive late night phone calls from a reporter at the Standard and whilst we couldn't provide details of the actual bomb type, Neil was able to offer his opinions on when the bomb was likely to have been dropped and to give the newspaper a little insight into the background of the raid in question, which in his informed view, was probably on the night of 10th/11th May 1941 - the last raid of the Night Blitz on London and also the heaviest and one in which Bermondsey in particular suffered.

Whilst the press rightly focused on the disturbance and potential dangers caused by the discovery of this weapon, they also correctly paid attention to the work of the Army's Bomb Disposal Service, part of the Royal Engineers, who are the descendents of the Bomb Disposal Squads established during the Second World War to cope with the ever increasing amounts of unexploded German ordnance. This varied from the small 'Butterfly', anti-personnel bombs and 1 kg incendiaries, right up to the largest 1,000 kgs bombs, nicknamed the 'Hermann' because of it's rotund appearance similar to that of Hermann Goring, head of the Luftwaffe during the War. The only bombs not handled by the Army squads were the Parachute Mines, which being adapted naval mines, were dealt with by the Royal Navy's specialist teams.

Blitzwalkers' opinion is...

The work of the Bomb Disposal teams didn't end with the coming of peace in 1945; unexploded German ordnance is still unearthed with alarming regularity. A 'Hermann' was dredged from the River Lea in London's East End in 2008 and after the fuze was removed and much of the explosive steamed out, the remains of the bomb were detonated in situ. The Bermondsey bomb is just the most recent example of unexploded ordnance to be found in London and the truth is that nobody really knows exactly how many bombs are still waiting to be discovered. 

It isn't just in London that these bombs are unearthed - in 2009 a smaller but still potentially lethal bomb, was discovered during building work in Plymouth and eventually made safe. Other bombs have been found in Liverpool in 2006, in Portsmouth in 2013 and in Bristol in 2012, all cities that were bombed heavily during the Blitz of 1940-41. Add to this, the occasional naval mine which has to be dealt with by the Royal Navy's clearance divers, it is clear that the problem of unexploded Second World War German ordnance is not something that will go away any time soon.

This is not just a peculiarly British problem either; in Germany unexploded bombs dropped by the RAF and the USAAF are still regularly being discovered in German cities and other locations across the country, testament to the enormous punishment meted out to German cities, mainly as part of the RAF's night area bombing campaign.

Unexploded RAF bomb, now safely on display in Hamburg (Author's photo)

In September 2014, a 4,000 lb British 'Cookie' blast bomb was discovered in the town of Seeize, close to Hannover and although the bomb was safely defused, major disruption was caused and in December 2011, another 'Cookie' was discovered in the River Rhine at Koblenz alongside an unexploded American 250 lb bomb that had fallen in a separate raid. The bombs were only discovered due to unusually low river levels caused by lack of rainfall and could easily have lain there undisturbed for another seventy years. 

Unexploded Bomb Warning - 1940 style (author's collection)

All of the bombs mentioned thus far were safely disposed of but these stories do not always have such a happy ending. In January 2014, a construction worker in Euskirchen accidentally disturbed an unexploded 'Cookie' with his mechanical digger and was killed in the resulting explosion and in 2010 in Goettingen, three men were killed and another seriously injured when they attempted to move an unexploded bomb. A further incident in 2006 saw another construction worker engaged on Autobahn repairs killed when he inadvertently drove his digger over an RAF bomb which exploded, throwing the digger some sixty feet into the air.

Given that the Allies dropped some 2.7 million tonnes of high explosive plus in the region of 8 million incendiaries on Germany, and that by the law of averages, there will have been many 'duds' amongst these, it is clear that there will be a major problem in Germany dealing with these unexploded devices for many years to come. As the years pass, these bombs will continue to present a threat and will probably become ever more dangerous to the unsuspecting person that stumbles across them.

Printed Sources:

London Evening Standard (cuttings shown)

Parallel Cities: The Second Great Fire of London, Bomber Harris and Operation Gomorrah

Hafenbunker at Hamburg (author's photo)

Following another of my regular visits to Hamburg, it seems a good time to repeat below a post first written in 2011 about the connections in war and peace between London and the great port city on the River Elbe.

This writer was lucky enough recently to pay a visit to Hamburg, the great Hanseatic port located on the River Elbe, the second largest city in Germany and the second largest port in Europe after Rotterdam. I’ve visited this city many times over the past twenty years or so and have often been struck by the many similarities between Hamburg and London. Some are perhaps not so evident these days now that many aspects of working London have been reduced to museum status but both cities have a thriving port, even though the main Port of London is located downriver at Tilbury and both cities are centres of transport, media, culture and sport

At the outbreak of the Second World War, the similarities were much more noticeable. Hamburg was known as ‘The English City’ due to the Hanseatic League’s trading connections with London going back to the Thirteenth Century. Both cities had been ravaged by fire in the past – London in 1666 and Hamburg no fewer than four times, in 1284, 1684, 1711 and 1713. Both cities rebuilt after these fires and seemed to grow stronger as a result consequently becoming amongst the wealthiest in Europe. Sadly, during the Second World War both cities were to suffer from further fires and especially in the case of Hamburg, would suffer catastrophic loss of life as a result. The picture above shows the Hafenbunker, one of Hamburg's surviving air raid shelters.

In 1940, London and many other towns and cities in the United Kingdom began to suffer from the onslaught of the Luftwaffe in what was quickly christened The Blitz. One of the heaviest raids on London was on Sunday 29th December 1940, when large parts of the City of London were destroyed in what was to become known as ‘The Second Great Fire of London’. Caused by a combination of a lack of Firewatchers due to the Christmas holiday period, the narrow streets and alleys of The Square Mile and an exceptionally low tide in the River Thames, this raid caused the huge fires started in Gresham Street, Moorgate, Queen Victoria Street and around St Paul’s Cathedral to join up and devastate vest swathes of the City, some areas of which were not fully rebuilt until the 1980s. Over three hundred incendiary bombs a minute were falling at times and the area around the Cathedral became the scene of the heaviest of the fires, causing Winston Churchill to instruct that Wren’s masterpiece was to be saved at all costs. This was achieved, somewhat against the odds in a story that we shall tell in a future article. Suffice to say, the survival of St Paul’s, with the help of Herbert Mason’s iconic photograph flashed around the World, seemed to personify British defiance against Nazi aggression.

One of Hamburg's two Flak Towers - this one at Heiligengeistfeld (author's photo)

It was also on this night when a senior RAF officer, who was as yet little known outside his own service, called Arthur Travers Harris stood on the roof of the Air Ministry in Holborn watching the fires raging with his service chief, Air Chief Marshall Charles Portal. As the two men silently gazed at the huge fires burning the heart out of the City of London, Harris suddenly felt vengeful and remarked quietly to Portal “They have sown the wind, now they shall reap the whirlwind.” Harris was a career airman and had made the study and practice of bombing his life’s work. He was one of those airmen who felt that future wars would be fought and won solely through the use of air power and that armies and navies would be rendered redundant through the use of air forces.

In February 1942, Harris was to get his chance of vengeance when he was appointed as Air Officer Commanding RAF Bomber Command. When he took over, the bomber arm of the RAF was at low ebb in its fortunes. Apart from some heroic attempts at raiding Wilhelmshaven, targets in the Ruhr and strikes against the gathering fleet of German invasion barges, all of which were achieved at high cost in casualties and with questionable accuracy, much of Bomber Command’s efforts had been spent in dropping leaflets on German cities, all of which left the personnel of Harris’s new command somewhat demoralized. Shortly before Harris’s appointment, the Air Ministry issued the Area Bombing Directive, which decreed that the focus of Bomber Command’s attention should be switched to undermining the morale of the German civil population, especially the industrial workers. As such, the cities of Cologne, Duisburg, Dusseldorf and Essen were allocated as priority targets with other cities such as Hamburg and Bremen being designated as secondary targets.

Harris built up his forces, replacing the obsolete Whitley and Hampden bombers with the new four engine Halifax and Lancaster aircraft, the latter of which was to become the mainstay of the RAF’s bomber force. On the night of 30th/31st May 1942, Harris took a major gamble when he committed the entire force of his command into the first ever thousand bomber raid, codenamed Operation Millennium, in which the city of Cologne was devastated. The huge numbers of aircraft attacking the city overwhelmed the defences and coupled with the element of surprise achieved, ensured that from a British viewpoint at least, the raid was an overwhelming success. Although the death toll was mercifully light – some 486 people were killed – the effect on the population gave the Nazi authorities food for thought. Out of a population of some 700,000 approximately 135,000 fled the city and some 45,000 were ‘bombed out’ of their houses. This was all achieved for the loss of 43 RAF bombers, some 3 percent of the bomber force. Ironically, Hamburg had had a close escape from destruction that night; it was the primary target for Operation Millennium and had only avoided the fate eventually meted out to Cologne by having the good fortune to be shrouded from the bombers by bad weather.

However, Hamburg’s good luck was not to continue as in 1943 Harris selected it for a series of raids prophetically called Operation Gomorrah. The object was to attack the city during the summer months, when the city would be tinder dry with the objective of starting uncontrollable fires with incendiary bombs whilst keeping the fire fighters at bay by dropping high explosive bombs simultaneously.

Inmates from Neuengamme Concentration Camp removing a victim of the raid (author's collection)

The first raid took place on the night of 24th July 1943 when 792 heavy bombers of RAF Bomber Command attacked the city. Some of the RAF bombers dropped propaganda leaflets on other German towns and cities along the way. These leaflets mocked Hitler’s own bombast by stating ‘Die Festung Europa hat kein Dach’ which translated means ‘Fortress Europe has no roof’. This raid marked the first use of another of the RAF’s secret weapons; thin strips of aluminium foil, known as ‘Window’ were dropped from the bombers. Cut to the same length as the German radar wavelength, these strips caused the radar picture to be jammed with hundreds of false reflections, effectively blinding the defenders. Once the pathfinders dropped their Target Indicator (TI) flares over the western part of the city, there was an element of 'creepback' from the following waves and the bombs seemed to fall in four main areas of the city; near Grasbrook, in Wandsbeker Chausee, Hasselbrook and in the Altona area. The destruction was bad enough but although the city centre had been spared, worse, much worse was to come.

On the 25th July, the Americans joined the party with the USAAF taking part in a daylight raid, which fell mainly on the Neuhof area around the power station, the MAN engine works and the Blohm & Voss and Howaldswerfte shipyards. On the 26^th July the Americans again bombed in daylight and to ensure that the populace stayed in a constant state of tension, the RAF staged 'nuisance' raids on both of these nights with small numbers of Mosquito aircraft which kept the citizens of Hamburg awake even though the number of bombs dropped in these raids was miniscule.

Hamburg was by now a city in a state of shock; the daylight raids especially had shaken the populace and the first night raid had seemed to be bigger than anything they had ever thought possible. They had never seen an enemy air raid in daylight since the war began and some began to think privately that perhaps their enemies were stronger than Dr Goebbel's propaganda had led them to believe. By the 27th July 1943, some of the fires started by the earlier raids were still burning but concern for Hamburg’s fire fighters was not on Harris's agenda and at 2340, the sirens sounded again.

During this raid some 787 RAF bombers attacked the city and this time, the weather and visibility was perfect for the attackers. The first Pathfinders dropped their TI flares over the eastern suburb of Hammerbrook and unlike the first raid, when the second wave of Pathfinders arrived they dropped their flares over the same location. This meant that the raid would be unusually concentrated and when the main force arrived, they dropped their bombs - some 2,300 tons of them – inside just fifty minutes. On the ground, the devastation and death was appalling; the fires were spreading out of control into the district of Hamm and the masses of individual fires were joining up into one huge conflagration. It was London all over again but on a much larger and altogether more terrifying scale. The firestorm had begun.

A firestorm occurs when a fire becomes so large that it sucks in air from all around and generates its own winds and energy. It becomes almost a living thing and when unchecked, can move at a frighteningly fast pace and can reach temperatures of as much as 800 degrees Celsius. In Hamburg on the night of 27th/28th July 1943, the fires were reaching staggering proportions, so much so that even the crews of the attacking bombers could smell the smoke and stench of burning flesh at 17,000 feet. On the ground, asphalt roads spontaneously combusted, fuel from ruptured oil tanks and from damaged ships spilled onto the surface of the River Elbe and the many waterways and also caught fire; people were suffocated inside seemingly safe air raid shelters and perhaps most horrifically of all, people who remained on the streets were swept off their feet by the huge winds generated by the firestorm and sucked into the flames. Operation Gomorrah had been named a little too accurately.

Following this appalling loss of life, the authorities ordered an evacuation of the city and some one million people tried to leave the city, although with the rail network shattered and many of the roads reduced to ruins, this was easier said than done. Coupled to this, the bombing still wasn’t over – another nuisance raid on the night of the 28th July kept people in a state of panic and the following night, 777 bombers of the RAF started a second firestorm in the suburb of Barmbek and wreaked further damage over the already shattered city. A final raid on the night of 2nd/3rd August was disrupted by a mixture of high winds over the North Sea and a huge thunderstorm raging over Hamburg itself. Mercifully for those remaining in the city, few bombs fell and when the battered RAF force returned to their bases, the operation was at last brought to an end.

Operation Gomorrah had caused the deaths of some 45,000 Germans, mainly civilians and left some 37,500 wounded. Somewhere in the region of a million people had fled the city. The RAF and USAAF had deployed in the region of 3,000 aircraft with a loss of some 118 with their crews killed or captured for the most part.

Perhaps it should also be mentioned that the Neuengamme Concentration Camp was located in the Bergedorf district of the City of Hamburg and was responsible for the deaths of something in the region of 55,000 of its inmates during the war. Ironically, although the camp was spared any bombing, many of the inmates were used by the authorities for the recovery of victims of the bombing from fire ravaged buildings as well as for 'bomb disposal' duties.

Neuengamme inmates on Bomb Disposal duties (author's collection)

To put matters further into perspective, we should remember a visit to London in late 1945 by a senior officer of the Hamburg Fire Brigade. He was shown around the bombed out areas of the City of London by Cyril Demarne, a senior London Fire Brigade officer. As he was being shown the pulverised areas beyond Aldersgate Street (the site of today’s Barbican Estate) to the wastes of Paternoster Row, the German fireman showed no signs of emotion. When finally they arrived at St Paul’s at the end of their tour, he asked Demarne: “Is this the worst?” When Demarne replied that the area he had shown him was as bad as anything in London, the German official simply replied “But it is nothing.” At first, Demarne had some reservations about that comment but a subsequent return visit to Hamburg revealed that the German fire chief had not been exaggerating.

It is a sobering thought indeed to reflect that during the entire six years of the war, London lost 30,000 civilians due to enemy air attacks. Hamburg lost half as many again in eight days, most of them during the firestorm night of 27th/28th July 1943. The Germans had indeed reaped the whirlwind on the most horrendous possible scale and as always in modern warfare, it was the civilians who had suffered the most.

In the next post, we shall take another look at the Hamburg raids and what evidence can still be found in the City today.

Published Sources:

Bomber Boys - Patrick Bishop, Harper Press 2007
Bomber Harris, His Life & Times - Henry Probert, Greenhill Press 2001
Inferno, The Devastation of Hamburg 1943 - Keith Lowe, Viking 2007
The London Blitz: A Fireman's Tale - Cyril Demarne OBE - After The Battle 1991

Ghosts of Wartime London

Shrapnel damage in London Street, Paddington

From time to time in the past, I have published various photographs showing some of what clues remain to be seen in London of it's wartime past; the last of these collections appeared in August 2013 so with the start of our regular scheduled walking season just around the corner, it is probably time for some more. Unless stated otherwise, all of the photos shown in the article were taken by the author and may not be reproduced without my express written permission.

Honourable Scars in London Street

Shrapnel scars can be seen all over London, sometimes in some unlikely and out of the way places and an instance of this can be found in London Street, Paddington, alongside the railway station. I haven't had the chance to examine the incident log for the locality as yet but the area was heavily bombed during the First Blitz of 1940/41, so these pockmarks almost certainly date from this period. 

In nearby Sussex Gardens, we can see another reminder of the London Blitz, this time at the Parish Church of St James's, the crypt of which, in common with many churches in the capital, was used as an air raid shelter, in this case one capable of accommodating some two hundred people. The church also housed an Air Raid Wardens' Post and in October 1940, was severely damaged by a Parachute Mine which fell in nearby Barrie Street. The top sixty feet of the spire was destroyed and many of the stained glass windows were damaged or destroyed. Notwithstanding all of this damage, the church never closed, either as a place of worship or as a shelter from Hitler's bombs.

The replacement Baptistry Window includes a panel that features ARP Wardens and searchlights panning the London sky in recognition of the church's role during the Blitz.

Detail from the Baptistry Window at St James's Sussex Gardens

Another reminder of the Blitz located at a church is located at Christ Church in Blackfriars Road and takes the form of a cross inset into the lawn at the rear of the church. The helpful explanatory plaque tells us that on the night of 16th/17th April 1941, the church was struck by incendiary bombs and in the ensuing fires, the blazing cross atop the spire fell onto the grass and reputedly etched the shape of the crucifix into the lawn, where it is now marked by white paving slabs; a simple but effective memorial to the second heaviest raid of the Blitz, which became known to Londoners simply as "The Wednesday."

The mark made by the burning cross at Christ Church, Blackfriars Road

During the Blackout, all manner of street furniture including kerb stones, lamp standards, bollards and even trees were painted with black and white stripes so as to provide a measure of a visual aid during the blackout. Surviving examples of these are now extremely rare but some can still be seen at the old Woolwich Arsenal site in southeast London on the steps of one of the surviving buildings.

White painted "Blackout" steps at Woolwich Arsenal

In my previous articles on surviving relics of wartime London, quite a few shelters have been mentioned but one that didn't get published last time around is this shelter, located at West Kensington Underground Station. This station is located on the District Line and as many Londoners will know, this is one of the earlier parts of the system, constructed using the 'Cut and Cover' system of tunnelling, which leaves the lines relatively close to the surface and therefore not suitable like the deep level 'tubes' for use as Air Raid Shelters. Indeed, West Kensington Station is actually on the surface, so the shelter at this station had to be purpose built. This shelter is not visible to the public and can only be viewed by appointment, so I was extremely lucky to take this shot a number of years ago. 

Entrance to the shelter at West Kensington Station

A more unusual reminder of wartime London can be found at the erstwhile Blewcoat School in Caxton Street, Westminster. Opened as a school in 1709, the building remained in this use until 1920, when it was taken over by the National Trust and used by them until quite recently as a gift shop. Now in use as a wedding shop, during the wartime years, the building saw somewhat more mundane use as a warehouse and was latterly used by the US Army for storing field equipment. Like all military establishment, however lowly, sentries were posted and an indication of the levels of boredom encountered whilst guarding a warehouse can be seen today in the shape of bayonet marks made by the sentries in the brickwork beneath the window frames. There is also other graffiti of the period that survives but you will have to come along on my Westminster at War walk in order to view this!

Bayonet marks left by bored US Army sentries

We close this brief look at wartime remnants by taking a look at the Greenwich Foot Tunnel which was constructed between 1899 and 1902, opening to the public in August of that year to provide a free and reliable method of commuting from south of the Thames to the then busy docks and wharves on the Isle of Dogs. Whilst the main part of the tunnel is obviously quite deep beneath the Thames, either end runs at a more shallow depth beneath the foreshore and in 1940, during a low tide period, the northern end of the tunnel was pierced by a bomb. The hurried repairs were formed from a thick steel and concrete inner lining to the existing tunnel which substantially reduces the diameter for a reasonably short distance and this repair can still be seen to this day.

Bomb damage repairs to Greenwich Foot Tunnel

There are many more reminders to be seen of our Wartime past and next time we shall take a look at some of the memorials and monuments to this period in our history.

A to Z of The Blitz (F)

The men of Gordonbrock Rd School, Brockley AFS Station pose with their taxi (Author's collection)

After a short break, we resume our occasional series with a look at some Blitz related facts beginning with the letter 'F'.

F stands for Firefighters and whilst we have covered the subject in more detail in our December 2010 edition of this blog, it would be churlish to ignore the contribution made by the Fire Services during the Blitz and indeed, the whole Second World War.

As a belated recognition of Hitler's aggressive intentions, the United Kingdom began reluctantly re-arming in 1937 and one of the by-products of this policy, was the establishment of a Civil Defence structure, one of which was the Air Raids Precautions Act of 1937, under which legislation local authorities were required to draw up emergency fire schemes for their respective areas. These plans were to be put forward to the Secretary of State for approval and included within these plans was a requirement for the formation and recruitment of an Auxiliary Fire Service, or AFS. These plans were followed with varying degrees of enthusiasm depending on the local authorities concerned; some diligently proceeded with the plans and built an efficient organization from the outset, whilst others that were frankly pacifist in their outlook, adopted a "head in the sand" attitude and either totally refused to comply with the plans, or were less than helpful in their preparations, thus totally betraying the local people that had elected them in the first place, for by 1938, most people were of the opinion, that sooner or later, war with Germany was inevitable.

Auxiliary Fire Stations were established, often in schools whose pupils were to be evacuated and the early Auxiliary Fire Engines, such as they were consisted of requisitioned taxi cabs, towing a trailer pump and with a ladder on the roof rack. Uniforms were eventually issued and the Auxiliary Firefighters were rigorously trained by teams of 'Regular' Firemen. Each Auxiliary Fire Station had a nucleus of experienced regular firefighters attached to them, the object being to get the AFS men working to a routine and to mould them into efficient fire crews, but despite their excellent training, the truth of the matter was that when the Blitz proper started in September 1940, most of the Auxiliary crews had never tackled a 'normal' fire, let alone those which would be unleashed by the Luftwaffe. Never has the phrase "Baptism of Fire" had a more accurate meaning.

Greenwich AFS training in 1939 (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

Recruits to the AFS were paid the sum of £3.00 per week and became automatically exempt from call-up to the Armed Forces and because of this latter exemption, the AFS attracted many Conscientious Objectors and people generally who preferred to save lives rather than possibly be a part of taking them, no matter how noble the cause against Nazism. This exemption was also the cause of some hostility whipped up in some quarters of the media during the so-called 'Phoney War' period when there was little or no enemy activity in the skies over Britain - "£3 a week Army Dodgers" and "£3 a week to play darts" (a favourite off duty pastime) were just two of the accusatory headlines spotted in the press. Apart from the men on the 'front line' fighting fires, there were many female recruits to the AFS employed on telephone and messenger duties as well as an ever changing band of teenage cyclist messenger boys, too young for military service but eager to get their first experience of wartime service.

This sort of carping was to end suddenly on September 7th 1940 when the Blitz on London started in earnest following Hitler's decision to order the Luftwaffe to switch their attacks from the RAF's airfields and so-called industrial targets such as the Thames-side oil refineries and Channel Convoys to London itself. Vast fires burned in London's East End and Docklands, as well as south of the Thames at the Woolwich Arsenal and the Surrey Commercial Docks, where huge stacks of timber burned out of control for a while. It was hardly surprising when the Fire Officer in charge at this latter location, Station Officer HW 'Gerry' Knight, when seemingly surrounded by fires from the blazing timber, asked for reinforcements by phoning through the message "Send all the bloody pumps you've got, the whole bloody world is on fire!"

Plaque commemorating the Surrey Docks fire (Author's photo)

The fires were eventually brought under control but not until vast areas of the Surrey Docks had been destroyed; indeed, some parts of this dock system were never to function normally again until after the war. 

However, the events of September 7th highlighted some serious defects in the structure of the AFS that needed to be urgently addressed. It had always been intended that as well as operating in their own localities, each local AFS was to act as a sort of mobile reserve, able to move from one part of the country to another in order to reinforce those areas which needed it the most at any given time. However, with over 1,400 separate fire brigades in the UK, all under municipal control, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be major differences in procedures and equipment. This was graphically illustrated on September 7th, when provincial AFS crews brought in from outside London to help at the Surrey Docks fires found that there equipment and hose connections were not compatible with the London Brigades' fittings. Something clearly needed to be done as a matter of some urgency and on May 13th 1941. just two days after what proved to be the final raid of the 'First Blitz', the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison announced the nationalization of the UK's fire services. This came to pass on August 18th, 1941 when the National Fire Service came into being with standard equipment, standard uniform and drill procedure and a unified command structure, under the former head of the London Fire Brigade, Sir Aylmer Firebrace.

This new force saw the country through the Baedecker Raids of 1942, the Little Blitz of 1943-44 and the Vengeance Weapons of 1944-45 and although the UK's fire services were returned to municipal control after the war, the National Fire Service provided the template for today's modern fire services across the country which continue to use standardized equipment and procedures.

The events at Surrey Docks created a phenomenon that was to become better known in cities such as Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo - the firestorm, which is the next 'F' covered by this article.

Part of the aftermath of the Hamburg firestorm - August 1943 (Author's collection)

A firestorm only occurs when a fire attains such an intensity that it creates and then sustains it's own wind system, with the fires sucking in oxygen from all around in an effort to keep the fires burning. This is what happened at the Surrey Docks on September 7th - the vast stockpiles of timber and other combustible materials, such as the dock roadways themselves made from timber blocks covered in asphalt were ignited by the German incendiary bombs which were thermite powered and exacerbated by the use of oil bombs which seeped the fires into corners filled with wood chips and sawdust. The winds built up which fed these fires with oxygen raged at gale force speeds and pulled loose planks and baulks of timber into the fire and even threatened to pull people into it's grasp. As it was, the firefighters tackling this conflagration found themselves in danger of being surrounded by fires and had to rapidly pull back to safer areas, often abandoning equipment as they ran for their lives. These men often found their sodden uniforms beginning to steam and smoulder and witnessed bizarre sights such as telegraph poles spontaneously bursting into flames for no obvious reason.

The fires were brought under control as the fires were gradually surrounded by over a thousand pumps but it took several days before all the fires in the Surrey Docks were extinguished.

The firestorm phenomenon was again to rear it's head in Hamburg during the Operation Gomorrah raids of July and August 1943 and which were covered in the February and March 2013 editions of this blog, as well as in the Dresden raids of February 1945. These raids were on a much bigger scale than the Luftwaffe's efforts of September 1940, with more aircraft bombing the targets, with a larger bomb load and with a much greater proportion of incendiaries amongst their bomb loads. The death toll for the Hamburg raids alone make sobering reading. It is thought that some 42-45,000 people perished in this series of four RAF raids plus two USAAF daylight raids spread over the period from 24/25th July to the night of 2nd/3rd August 1943. When one compares this to the 30,000 or so deaths caused in London during the entire war, one can clearly see how the Germans truly "reaped the whirlwind" as promised by Sir Arthur Harris, AOC in C of RAF Bomber Command.

Next time we shall take a look at the letter 'G' with such connections as Goering, Gas Masks and George Crosses.

Published Sources:

Gomorrah 1943: Hamburg's Destruction Through Aerial Warfare - Ed. Dorte Huss, Forderkreis Mahnmal St Nikolai, 2013

Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943 - Keith Lowe, Penguin Viking 2007

The London Blitz: A Fireman's Tale - Cyril Demarne OBE, After The Battle 1991

The Thames on Fire - LM Bates, Terence Dalton Ltd, 1985

Remembering the Civilians

Memorial to the Civilian War Dead of St Marylebone (author's photo)

2015 sees the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and the commencement of the Blitz, initially on London but which ultimately affected most cities and towns within the United Kingdom. The New Year of 1941 saw Britain in the midst of the Luftwaffe's bombing campaign against British cities, with seemingly no end in sight. Indeed, London was still licking it's wounds from the great fire raid of 29th/30th December 1940, when much of the City of London, the historic 'Square Mile' had been torched and which had seen St Paul's Cathedral defiantly rising above the smoke and flames.

A simpler memorial for the Chelsea War Dead (author's photo)

Memorial to five Fire Watchers at Chelsea Old Church (author's photo)

Although the casualty figures were never to reach the doom-laden figures predicted in some quarters before the war, some 60,000 British civilians were ultimately to lose their lives during the Second World War as a result of enemy action, including the Blitz, the so-called "Baedecker" Raids and Little Blitz, along with the 'Vengeance' Weapons - the V-1 and V-2 missiles.

One of the questions often asked is how are the Civilian war dead remembered and commemorated, outside of their own families?

The excellent Commonwealth War Graves Commission keep meticulous records, not only of military war dead from the Great War onwards, but also of the civilians of the Commonwealth who lost their lives during the Second World War. There is also a Roll of Honour kept at St George's Chapel, Westminster Abbey which is on permanent display.

Civilian casualty records, like the Civil Defence system of this country, was organized on a municipal basis, which can sometimes lead to confusion when attempting to trace a casualty of the Blitz. The criteria used for recording a casualty is not where he or she lived but rather where the person died, so for example, if an individual lived in Greenwich, Southeast London but worked in Westminster and died at his or her place of work, then the individual is recorded as a Westminster rather than a Greenwich casualty - their place of residence was irrelevant, unless of course they died at home or within their 'home' borough. Any method of recording casualty figures can seem heartless at times, but the system that was used was probably the most sensible that could have been devised.

As to physical reminders, these take many forms. Obviously many casualties are commemorated in the conventional manner by a grave marker but with many of the larger incidents, individual grave stones or markers were not possible, as the victims were buried in mass graves. This was the case for example, at Coventry, where 808 victims of the 14th November 1940 were interred at the London Road Cemetery and commemorated accordingly.

At the site of other major incidents, such as Britain's worst V-2 at Woolworth's, New Cross branch, a commemorative plaque has been erected by the local authority. Other local authorities, apart from having their own books of remembrance, usually on display at the relevant Town Hall or borough archives, ensured that a physical memorial was erected within the borough, which often listed the names involved.

The plaque at the site of Woolworth's, New Cross (author's photo)

 

The organized civilian services such as the Police Services and Fire Brigades are remembered too - the charity Firemen Remembered has an ongoing project to commemorate the fallen London firefighters of the London Fire Brigade, Auxiliary Fire Service and National Fire Service. This writer has been fortunate enough to attend several of the unveilings of their distinctive plaques and it is to be hoped that many more of these will follow in the coming years.

The plaque to Auxiliary Fireman Sidney Alfred Holder (author's photo)

The other memorial that one stumbles across from time to time, are the most moving of them all; these are the private commemorations, of work colleagues, loved ones, friends, neighbours, of people who simply deserved to be remembered. This writer came across one such memorial recently when attending a birthday party at a Girl Guides Hall in Ruislip, Middlesex and is a moving tribute to Capt. Constance Castle and Ranger Mary Groves, the latter aged only 16, who "together were called to Higher Service due to enemy action - February 28th 1941." 

Ruislip Guides' Hall (author's photo)

A local tribute placed there by the victims' Guiding colleagues and friends and which, quite rightly is still on display almost 75 years later.

Sometimes the memorial commemorates civilians caught in a much larger tragedy, such as the plaque at Turks Row, Chelsea which although rightly giving prominence to the 74 American service men and women killed by the V-1 which fell there on 3rd July 1944, also mentions the 3 civilians killed in the same incident.

Turks Row plaque (author's photo)

Another 'private' memorial can be found in The Cut, near Waterloo Station and commemorates, in a very low-key manner, those sheltering in the cellar of the erstwhile Walklings Bakery on the night of 16th/17th April 1941. The building suffered a direct hit and all 54 people sheltering below were killed. This plaque is so small that it can easily be missed but to those 'in the know' it can still be found as a moving tribute to those who lost their lives.

The discovery of these private memorials is a source of constant fascination and if any readers of this blog are aware of any, then please feel free to leave a comment or email me with the details.

Next time, we shall take a look at some of the plaques commemorating some of 'the Lost Treasures of London' - those historic buildings lost forever during the War.

Walker and The Gallant Starling

Capt. F J Walker CB DSO*** (IWM collection)

One battle of the Second World War that lasted from the first day of hostilities on September 3rd 1930, when the Donaldson liner s.s. Athenia was torpedoed and sunk by U-30, commanded by Fritz Julius Lemp, to almost the last day when U-881 and U-683 were sunk in American waters, was the Battle of The Atlantic.

Churchill described it as the only thing during the entire war that ever truly frightened him and whilst there may be an element of exaggeration in that statement, the prospect of Britain's supply lifeline being cut was a truly appalling one. Whilst the British public suffered the hardships brought about by the Blitz and rationing, the men of the Merchant Navy and their escorts of the Royal Navy along with their Canadian and American allies suffered hardships as well as the prospect of a lonely and freezing death in hostile waters.

At the beginning of the war, the Royal Navy, despite it's pre-eminent position as the World's largest and most powerful navy, suffered from a great shortage of vessels suitable for convoy escort work and the men who had chosen to specialize in anti-submarine warfare, as opposed to what was seen as the more glamorous and important gunnery branch, were derisively known as 'Pingers' from the sound made by the then top secret British invention of ASDIC, what we now know as Sonar but then acronymically named after the Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee.

The shortage of both ships and men took time to rectify; apart from the existing hard-pressed destroyers and escort sloops, the first escorts to appear were the Flower Class corvettes. Adapted from a commercial design of whale catcher, these little ships were not really suited to the rough waters of the North Atlantic but armed with a four inch gun and heavy depth-charge armament, these vessels formed the backbone of the escort force during the first half of the war and indeed many of them served throughout the conflict. Nicholas Monserrat, the author of 'The Cruel Sea', the classic novel of the Battle of The Atlantic, served in one of these ships and wrote that 'a corvette could roll on wet grass' such was their lack of sea-keeping qualities.

A more thoroughbred design of escort was the Black Swan class sloop, of which HMS Starling was a member. Turbine powered, with a heavy gun and depth charge armament, because of their more sophisticated layout, these ships took longer to construct. Some of these vessels had appeared just before the outbreak of war but being an evolving design, the majority of them did not begin to appear until 1943 when the Battle of the Atlantic was approaching it's height.

HMS Starling (IWM Collection)

HMS Starling was built at Fairfield's Shipyard on the Clyde and took about 18 months to build, being completed on April 1st 1943. Her first commanding office was to be the Royal Navy's leading U-Boat killer, Captain Frederic John Walker CB DSO***, who was already becoming a legendary figure at the time of his appointment. 

Walker had been one of the Navy's 'Pingers' and was in peacetime parlance, a 'passed over' Commander, meaning that he had not been selected for promotion to Captain and in normal circumstances, could have expected his naval career to end in a relatively dead end position and never achieving promotion beyond his present rank. Pre-war, he had been Second in Command on the battleship HMS Valiant, but had frequently clashed with her captain, who sent damning reports on Walker to the Admiralty. Walker loathed being on big ships but it looked as if he would never get the chance to prove himself as a leader of men on smaller vessels.

The War changed all of this and Walker was given another chance. He had already made his name commanding another sloop, the peacetime built HMS Stork and had won a notable victory escorting convoy HG76 in which two U-Boats had been sunk. Now after a rest from sea-going duties, Walker was back and in command of the Starling.

Walker's appointment ensure that Starling would be at the very centre of all the action involving the Second Support Group, of whom Walker was Senior Officer, for he was one of those officers who led from the front at all time. Indeed, it was this quality that would lead to Walker's premature death, from overwork, some fifteen months later. Due to Walker's insistence on being involved at all times, as well as the undoubtedly high level of training of her officers and crew, HMS Starling was to become the most successful anti-submarine vessel of any navy, with a staggering fifteen 'kills' to her credit, as well as the involvement of her group in a good many more.

There is not really the space in a blog of this nature to fully describe every action that resulted in the sinking of a U-Boat by HMS Starling but the following brief summary will give readers a good idea of what was involved.

Her first kill came on June 1st 1943 when U-202 was the victim; there were 30 survivors from her 48 man crew. Next to go was U-119 on June 24th, caught on the surface and sunk with a combination of gunfire, ramming and depth-charges at shallow settings. There were no survivors. Starling herself had been damaged in ramming the U-Boat; it was a practice soon to be discouraged by the Admiralty, because sinking submarines in this manner also usually put the escort out of action at a time when the Navy was still desperately short of ships. Ever keen to continue the fight, Walker transferred to HMS Wild Goose, signalling to Starling from his new, temporary command "GOODBYE MY GALLANT STARLING. GOD BE WITH YOU." Walker then promptly sank another U-Boat, this time U-449 being the victim, in an attack in which Walker described the submarine as "not knowing what had hit her." Again, there were no survivors.

Back aboard Starling following repairs, November 6th 1943, saw two more victims fall to the gallant sloop; U226 was detected and sunk on passage from Brest. This time, there were 51 men aboard the U-Boat and once again, there were no survivors. Later the same day, U-842 was sunk after a concerted, hour long, depth charge attack Starling and Wild Goose and yet again, as was often the case in these sinkings, the submarine was destroyed with all hands.

After a short lull in sinkings, Starling and the Second Support Group sailed from Liverpool at the end of January 1944 and were to sink an incredible six U-Boats in one trip.The first victim on this trip was U-592, another victim of a group attack with Magpie and Wild Goose in company. Conditions aboard the submarine, under perpetual depth charge attack do not bear thinking about and once again, the entire ship's company of the U-Boat was to meet an horrific death. Starling was not directly involved in the demise of the next victim, U-762, which was despatched by sister vessel HMS Woodpecker on February 8th but returned to form the following day, when U-734 met her end, sunk by the old team of Starling and Wild Goose, followed by U-238, sunk in conjunction with Kite and Magpie. The fact that nobody escaped the imploding submarines, sunk by depth charges at a depth of 300 plus feet, is a given. The next of the six-in-one-trip was U-424 sunk on February 11th by Woodpecker and Wild Goose, with no involvement this time from Starling. The final sinking of this extraordinary sequence came on February 19th, when U-264 was caught by Woodpecker and Starling. After a lengthy series of attacks, the submarine commander, Oberleutnant Hartwig Looks, could no longer stop the water pouring into his boat and managed to bring his crippled vessel to the surface, where he and his entire crew were able to abandon ship and be picked up by the victorious British. 

The party was somewhat dampened by the loss of HMS Woodpecker to torpedo attack the following day, although all of her crew were rescued. Despite this loss, the Second Support Group returned to a rapturous welcome at Liverpool and Walker's reputation as the Allies' leading U-Boat killer was secure. 

Back at sea, on March 15th, U-653 was sunk by the old team of Starling and Wild Goose, whilst on the 29th of the same month, U-961 was destroyed by Walker's ship alone. This U-Boat was described by Walker as 'a genuine mug' as she took no avoiding action and probably never knew what had hit her. With both of these sinkings, there were no survivors from the two submarines. The final sinking by Starling under Walker's command came on May 5th 1944 when U-473 was sunk by Starling, Wild Goose and Wren after a depth charge attack and a rare gun battle on the surface. Thirty of the U-Boat's crew survived to be picked up and taken prisoner.

Capt Walker's memorial at Liverpool Pier Head (Rept0n1x)

After a short period on patrol guarding the D-Day invasion fleet from submarine attack, Walker and the rest of the Second Support Group were in Liverpool. On July 7th 1944, after watching a film with his wife, Walker complained of giddiness and a violent headache. Walker hardly ever complained of any sort of illness, so to see him admitted to hospital was a shock. Two days later, on Sunday July 9th 1944, 'Johnnie' Walker had died, throwing his own ship and the entire group into a state of shock. They had come to see Walker as simply indestructible and now he was gone.

Walker's second in command, Commander Wemyss from the Wild Goose, whose own ship was in refit, took over the Starling on a temporary basis and in partnership with HMS Loch Killin, sank two more U-Boats on this patrol, U-333 on July 31st and U-736 on August 6th; the spirit of Captain Walker was still very much alive. A further victim followed on August 11th when U-385 was sunk by Starling in conjunction with a Sunderland flying boat of RAF Coastal Command.

HMS Starling remained in commission until the end of the war, when she was converted into a training ship and "Gallant Starling" finally paid off. She was scrapped in 1965.

re-commissioned into the peacetime navy, engaged in the navigational training of young officers, an activity that Walker would have thoroughly approved. On her final voyage in 1959, her very last courtesy visit was, most appropriately made to Liverpool, where she embarked Captain Walker's widow who took passage in her husband's old ship back to Portsmouth, where the

Today, Captain 'Johnnie' Walker is commemorated by a statue on the Liverpool Pier Head. Of the sloops, there are vague 'on and off' hopes that the former HMS Whimbrel, another member of the Second Support Group, sold post-war to the Egyptian Navy may be brought home and preserved in Liverpool but these plans have been continually dashed by political changes in Egypt and continued haggling over the price. It is to be hoped that something can be worked out with the Egyptians as Whimbrel preserved in the former home of the Second Support Group, would make a fitting memorial to all those who perished in the greatest and longest sea battle of them all.

Published Sources:

Sloops 1926-1946 - Arnold Hague, World Ship Society - 1993

Walker RN - Terence Robertson, Evans Brothers - 1956

The War at Sea - ed. John Winton, Hutchinson 1974