Roy Johnson

Neither a port nor a major centre of heavy engineering, Nottingham was for the most part spared during Nazi Germany’s nine month blitz of London and other British cities which claimed 43,500 lives. Fifteen people were killed in the city during an isolated 15th January 1941 raid but Nottinghamians hearing aircraft between September 1940 and April 1941 would usually look upwards and conclude, like Ken Renshaw’s father, ‘that some other poor sod was going to get a pasting tonight.’[1] Then, as Lord Haw Haw had warned two weeks earlier, the Luftwaffe finally turned its attention to Nottingham. It was the early hours of Friday May 9th 1941, a clear night of full moonlight. Ostensibly the targets included Basford gas works, Mapperley Hospital, Boots, the National Ordnance Factory on Castle Meadow Road, Chilwell Ordnance Depot, Raleigh, Players, Wilford Power Station and the Lady Bay Bridge (since 1979 carrying road traffic but then an important rail link south of Nottingham). Hitler’s air force pounded Nottingham with 424 heavy explosives in addition to oil bombs and countless incendiaries during a four hour ordeal of terror from the skies which killed 200 (41 of them in West Bridgford) and wounded at least 274. 200 houses were destroyed and 4,500 damaged.[2] Complacency at the raid’s onset soon disintegrated in the ferocity of its progress. ‘When the sirens sounded,’ recalled Frank Sheridan, aged 12 at the time, ‘we all stopped in bed – that was about 11pm. Hardly anyone took to the shelters as the Jerry bombers generally passed over us… but tonight it was to be OUR turn.’ [3] ‘About 12.30am,’ remembered Tom Matthews, ‘we heard the drone of German planes. There was a big circle of vapour trails all around the town centre (target markers) and I thought “Well this is it.”’[4] Nottingham soon resembled a landscape from hell. ‘The sky was red – as though the world had come to an end’ recollected one survivor. ‘The dust was just like a sandstorm. Buildings were ablaze, water pipes were gushing and there were mounds of brick and rubble everywhere.’ [5] The Lace Market became an inferno. Boots factories in Poplar, Island and Station Streets were damaged. Trent Bridge Cricket Ground and both Forest and County football stadiums were hit. St John’s Church, Leenside was destroyed; the tower of St Mary’s Nottingham caught fire, nearby St Christopher’s was reduced to a blackened shell. The old Moot Hall on Friar Lane, the Masonic Hall on Goldsmith Street, sections of University College and Shakespeare Street’s Register Office were damaged. Homes, factories, churches, offices, pubs and air raid shelters were torn apart as the raid cut swathes through Stapleford, Beeston, Mapperley Park, Woodborough Road, St Ann’s and West Bridgford. However, it was Sneinton and the Meadows with high density housing and close to the River Trent which sustained the worst damage. Areas around London Road, Colwick Road and Carlton Road were obliterated. As day dawned, shocked onlookers gazed at the ruins of their communities. Emily Eaton remembered Nottingham being ‘most peculiar. It had a dead feeling about it and, although it wasn’t foggy, it was like a fog – all grey. And it had such a funny smell.’ [6] ‘The city must have looked like a badly maintained building site on Friday morning,’ wrote Caroline Stringer, ‘with piles of rubble, mangled steel, charred timbers, broken glass, eerily suspended bedroom fireplaces and flapping wallpaper testament to a long night.’ [7] Nottingham was well prepared and resolutely defended; a ‘starfish’ decoy system near Cropwell Butler confused some German crews into harmlessly bombing farm land. Nottingham was the first city in Britain to develop an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) network. Heroic efforts by fire and rescue teams undoubtedly saved many lives and much of the city’s infrastructure. People took refuge in the city’s sandstone cave network and over 100 public shelters had been established. Animals too received sanctuary; according to Caroline Stringer, ‘The PDSA tended to the dogs and cats which had been bombed, buried and blasted and saved them all - except one dog whose ribs were so badly crushed it had to be put down.’ [8] Property and buildings can be repaired or replaced but as Caroline Stringer observed, the May 9th raid on Nottingham left ‘thousands emotionally adrift.’ ‘My mother never slept through the night again after that,’ said Christina Lennox, ‘and her hair turned white.’ [9] ‘It’s the sound of breaking hearts which echo down the years,’ Stringer observed in 1986… ‘Some of those hearts still beat but they broke that night as the city thundered and the sky lit up and the bombs whispered and then screamed – and the breathless waiting for the sound of familiar footsteps returning to a familiar door became a life-long ache of loss.’[10] Nottingham survived to fight another day, its people badly shaken but their resolve unbroken. ‘The worse they got hit the more cheerful they were,’ according to Caroline Stringer, ‘a strange comment… but typical of a fighting spirit which couldn’t afford to die in the face of adversity.’[11] However, despite stoical popular defiance, Friday May 9th 1941 must surely be regarded as the most tragic day in the city’s long history. Christina Lennox recalled ‘a terrible night – a nightmare. It was a miracle we lived through it – and we shall never forget it.’[12] These memories of the Nottingham blitz were shared with Caroline Stringer and published in pieces she wrote for the Nottingham Evening Post Page 6 feature in 1986 and 1991. [1-6]: 20/2/86 [7]: 9/5/91 [8]: 9/5/91 [9]:19/2/86 [10-11]: 9/5/91 [12]: 19/2/86 For a full account of Nottingham’s World War Two air raids see David Needham’s excellent Battle of the Flames, Nottingham’s fight for survival in WWII (The Horizon Press: 2009). Chapters 9-16 cover 9/5/41 and its aftermath.

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