Bethnal Green bomb discovered
The discovery of a World War II bomb in Bethnal Green last week brought just a small taste of the chaos that descended on the East End during the dark days of the Blitz. Builders were working near Suttons Wharf, on the canal at the southern tip of Victoria Park last Monday (16 May) when they got a nasty shock. Their mechanical digger uncovered a 500lb unexploded bomb. Police threw a 200-yard exclusion zone round the bomb as the bomb disposal experts moved in.
It seems remarkable that such a monster could have fallen and remained unnoticed in such a populated spot. But when you look back at the chaos that engulfed the East End during 1940 and 1941 it is less of a surprise. For while 21st century East Enders may have had to endure evacauation, discomfort and traffic chaos, as the police threw a 200-yard exclusion zone round the bomb, it was nothing compared to the misery that tore whole families apart back in the early 1940s.
One such was Ellen Ackred, now 84 and living in Patriot Square, who lost four siblings to German bombing. On 7 September 1940 she was the 17-year-old Ellen Neport, living in Baroness Road, just off Columbia Road. Britain was a year into World War II but to date hadn’t suffered the devastating bombardment gloomily predicted by the Ministry of Health. In spring 1939, that department had prepared for war by calculating 600,000 dead and twice that number injured during the first six months of war. It didn’t happen, but in anticipation around 650,000 children had been evacuated from city to countryside.
That first year was the so-called
‘phoney war’ in Europe. The Great Powers were in conflict but there had been limited fighting or bombardment. From July 1940, the Luftwaffe had been carrying out daylight air raids on Britain. Germany’s plan was that having won this ‘Battle of Britain’, they would then invade. The galliant efforts of ‘The Few’ halted that plan. (The RAF crews gained that tag from Winston Churchill’s quote that “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”) And while the Hurricanes and Spitfires of Fighter Command were fighting a desperate battle in the skies over southern England, Bomber Command was hitting the towns and industrial base of Germany’s Ruhr. These were frightening days for the Allies. The Luftwaffe were numerically superior and were scoring major successes on British airfields; some estimate that had Germany persisted for another couple of weeks then Britain would have been defeated. But a bloodied Luftwaffe drew back, and the Germans launched Plan B.
To now, attacks on civilian targets had been limited, though the Luftwaffe had hit industrial targets in Birmingham and Liverpool. On 24 August 1940, after a raid on Thames Haven, the Germans had dropped bombs on Bethnal Green, Islington, Hackney, Finchley and Tottenham, though that was accident rather than design. The British retaliated by bombing Berln and, in a strategy of tit-for-tat, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to target British civilians - hoping to flatten morale at home while most of the male population was away fighting. The Fuehrer demanded ‘disruptive attacks on the population and air defences of major British cities, including London, by day and night’. Air Reichsmarschall Goering decided to switch to night flights, as German bombers had suffered heavily during daylight raids.
The Blitz began on 7 September, with planes hitting the Port of London. 300 bombers protected by 600 fighters dropped tons of high explosive on the docks and, of course, on the homes around. Some 436 people were killed in that first bombing with 1600 injured. It was the start of a bombardment that would continue every night (bar one) for two months.
London, meanwhile, was woefully unprepared. The RAF was stretched almost to breaking (and the nippy Spitfires and Hurricanes were ineffective at night). The anti-aircraft guns were limited in number and were a terribly inexact weapon against German bombers flying thousands of feet above London. The ground-based searchlights didn’t penetrate high enough into the sky to pick out the bandits. And when bombs reached the ground the fire crews were stretched beyond coping as the streets and buildings blazed.
On the evening of 9 September, the Neport family were prepared for the bombs, and the children were hurried off to the air raid shelter. Many families in Baroness Road had long gardens with Anderson Shelters, but not the Neports - their backyard was eaten into by neighbouring industrial units, so the only option was the communal shelters - but the night was to end in tragedy.