Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s

by Norman Longmate

  The worst incident in the area, already mentioned as having caused alarm across the river in Chelsea, occurred on 4 January, when a block of flats, the Surrey Lodge dwellings in the Westminster Bridge Road, was destroyed, with the loss of 41 lives; 26 other occupants ended up in hospital. The public baths near Surrey Lodge which Lambeth provided for its bathless citizens had been put out of action by an earlier V-2, but it proved ‘possible to utilize the superintendent’s office and the committee room for use as the incident officer’s post and incident inquiry point respectively’, and ‘tea for casualties and CD personnel was brewed in the ticket office’.

  Camberwell’s worst incidents were at Friern Road, on 1 November, with 24 deaths; Varcoe Road, on 6 December, with 20 more dead; and Trafalgar Avenue, on 14 February, with 18 lives lost. In Southwark, 14 people were killed in Great Dover Street at teatime on 14 December and another 30 at around the same time in the Borough High Street, on 22 January. The effects of Battersea’s most troublesome rocket, which landed in Usk Road at 4 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, 27 January 1945, are described later. 22 Wandsworth’s sharpest ordeal occurred at 8.31 on a Sunday morning, 19 November, in Hazelhurst Road, Tooting, where the ruins of the eighteen two-storey houses demolished outright were hurled into the exceptionally large crater, 20 feet deep, and searching this, with Heavy Rescue Parties brought in from Southwark and Battersea, went on all night, the final casualty roll being 33 killed. According to local legend, among those presumed dead was a milkman who vanished, along with his horse and van.

  Another major, though not officially ‘outstanding’, incident, occurred at Poynders Road, Clapham, at 10.45 a.m. on Friday, 26 January. No one was killed, though there were 67 casualties, 25 of them serious, largely handled by the South London Hospital, and the sister in charge, when the chief casualty officer visited her later, was ‘very appreciative of the expedition with which the casualties arrived and with the first-aid treatment administered’. The rescue men had also rapidly retrieved four trapped casualties:

  Two of the women were extricated fairly quickly. . . . The third woman . . . was pinned down by collapsed woodwork across the lower part of one leg. She was in no pain and was concerned more by the fate of her little dog than by her own condition. She was freed by about 1300 hours. The man . . . though not so deep down, was worse off, for he was lying on his face partly covered with live debris and pinned by the legs. However, he was able to breathe without much difficulty and was quite talkative. . . . He was in some pain and Dr L. administered a small dose of morphia which worked wonders. He was finally freed at about 13.45 hours.

  Wandsworth’s next bad incident, in Nutwell Street, a small road off Tooting High Street, not far from Tooting Broadway and the site of the earlier incident at Hazelhurst Road, was officially described as ‘a most distressing one both from the point of view of casualties and damage to property’. There were in fact 8 dead, 41 cases of serious injury and 138 minor casualties, with about 60 hourses wrecked beyond repair, including – the first time, it is believed, this had happened – four of the prefab ‘Portal’ houses recently put up to cope with the anticipated housing shortage. The rocket scored a direct hit on these houses and ‘blew them to fragments’; the Germans clearly agreed with Churchill that post-war reconstruction, which to the public mind the Portal plans typified, was premature. A feature of the incident was the flood of VIPs, not merely the regional ‘outdoor’ commissioner, Admiral Evans, but his bureaucratic colleague, Sir Ernest Gowers, famous as the author of Plain Words, and the Soviet Ambassador, who was perhaps surprised at the casual and goodnatured British way of doing things. With ambulances scarce at first, the injured were ferried to hospital on fire brigade appliances, while when ‘a large number of civilians and members of the armed forces “invaded” the scene of the incident . . . the rescue leader . . . successfully persuaded these would-be helpers to leave the job of rescue work to the CD and the NFS’.

  South of Lambeth and its equally working-class neighbours were the leafy, middle-class suburbs of Group 9, which covered a far larger area but escaped with only 12 V-2s. Nine of its 16 boroughs – Wimbledon, Sutton and Cheam, Surbiton, Mitcham, Merton and Morden, Malden and Coombe, Epsom and Ewell, Carshalton, Beddington – had no incidents at all. Barnes had one, which caused no casualties, Esher one, producing 3 serious injuries, Coulsdon one, causing 1 death and 4 serious injuries, Kingston one, with 4 deaths and 39 other casualties. Richmond, scene of the Chrysler factory incident in September, did distinctly worse, with 2 V-2s, causing 10 deaths and 7 cases of major injury; Banstead’s 2 incidents, by contrast, caused 3 deaths and 24 patients hospitalized. Croydon, the worst-hit place in the country during the flying-bomb attack, was struck by 4 V-2s, causing 9 deaths, and, like Hampstead, its geographical location made other people’s rockets particularly audible there, the high ground behind seeming to act as a reflector. The borough librarian, who later wrote its wartime history, was well aware of what he called its ‘disconcerting’ situation:

  The sound of bombs which fell on adjoining districts could be heard up to a distance of twenty miles. Some passed right over the town: the effect being an instantaneous lightning-like flash of white light. . . . Its explosion on contact was tremendous in open spaces and in enclosed ones was an immense whip-like crash and after this there followed a sound like the rumbling of a heavy train. The sound of the explosion thrown from hill to hill had an enveloping and stunning effect.

  Croydon’s first, and worst, rocket, descended on a night of rain and darkness – Friday, 20 October 1944 – into a most inappropriately named road, Sunnybank. It proved hard to find the crater, from which rescue work normally proceeded outwards, and, with the telephone wires cut, it was some time before it was fully under way, while the weather made matters worse so that ‘Dr S. and his [mobile casualty] unit . . . attended the injured under a ground sheet held over him and his patients to keep out the rain’.

  When the whole search was completed it was learned that six people had been killed. . . . 14 seriously injured were taken to hospital and the First Aid Posts gave treatment to 31 with minor hurts. . . . 59 people had to go to the Rest Centre in Suffolk Road. The WVS had immediately set up an enquiry point and a mobile canteen arrived to serve food and drinks. Mobile baths had also done good service.

  To those involved matters appeared rather different from what this tidy narrative suggested. Among them was a man living at 70 Sunnybank, who had just got home from the joinery works in West Norwood where he helped to build pontoon bridges, and was sitting quietly with his older daughters, Freda, aged nineteen, and Daphne, fifteen, while upstairs his wife bathed four-year-old Edna:

  The wife placed a rice pudding on the table for ‘afters’. I sat back in my armchair waiting for the pudding to cool down, listening to the radio and talking to my children and a young friend of Freda’s, a lad of about eighteen known as Fred, a neighbour of ours. . . . Without any warning or sound I blacked out. When I partly gathered myself up I found the coal fire was spread all over the floor. . . . I was down on my knees picking up live coal and throwing it back in the fireplace. I felt no pain and still heard nothing. My eldest girl Freda and her friend had gone. It seemed a long time, then I heard the young man next door put his head in the opening where the window was and ask if we were all right. I remember scrambling through brick rubble and woodwork in the dark and finding my other girl, Daphne, who was also dazed and cut about the head. . . . After looking at the damage across the road, still not knowing what had happened, I began to realize this was serious. At this point I came across a Mr S. wandering about. He lived close by and had just said goodnight to a young woman who was at the front door of one of the Victorian houses, which had completely gone.

  Then I began to hear. The first thing I heard was Mr S. saying ‘Where’s my bloody hat?’ I had never heard him swear before. . . . Then we heard screaming. In the confusion I managed to hear my wife who was upstairs in the bathroom with the baby, Edna. Everything was
thrown up the stairs, banisters, smashed front door and brick rubble. I scrambled up to the wife who was now in a pretty bad state. . . . Her nerves were completely shattered. . . . To get my wife downstairs was like mountain climbing. There was nothing to hold on to, the stairs were covered in bricks and rubbish. We made our way, climbing over heaps of debris, to Mr W.’s house, that was about 200 yards past the damage

  At such a moment it was hard to take in what had happened, but, as soon as one had done so, there always seemed urgent tasks to be done:

  After getting my wife and baby and Daphne settled with a ‘cuppa’ I had to go back to find her false teeth. On the way back I met a young lad, Brian, who worked with me. . . . We went through my house and started to look for a needle in a haystack – that was Brian’s description. But, going outside of the back door, which was now missing [we found] the teeth had fallen straight down by the side of the wall, as if they had been put there. I went up and down the road several times, to get insurance papers, ration books and the wife’s handbag.

  By now the place was lit up with floodlights and swarmed with police and other helpers. I discovered what we thought was some old bedding was a young lady and Ken’s sister had been standing by, until someone came to the rescue. I was still unable to think clearly but managed to keep on my feet. Then a warden told me to get going and get cleaned up. . . . We were taken from Mr W.’s home to Portland Road School. By the time we got to the school everybody that was mobile was nicely cleaned up. This was about 10.30. . . . The glass was taken out of my head and my hand bandaged. We were taken to South Norwood Church at South Norwood Hill for the night.

  Meanwhile this informant’s eldest daughter, Freda, had become separated from her father, in the confusing way that often happened when a rocket had fallen:

  There was suddenly without warning a tremendous thud, when we were plunged into darkness and things began flying through the air and vibrating. . . . When we came to our senses I remember getting through the door of the sitting room, out into the hall, where we were stepping over pieces of wood from the stair rails and doors and bits of window frame. I can recall putting my head on the stair banister that remained and having a good howl; and an air-raid warden who appeared on the scene and comforted me. Fred and I then picked our way through the rubble in the street, which was quite deep, and made our way round to his home. . . . His folk were OK but someone spotted that our hands were bleeding and we were advised to go to the first-aid post at Portland Road School. . . . We were seen by doctors and nurses, who cut away our hair and picked out pieces of glass from our wounds, treated them and then bandaged us, Fred having, I believe, five stitches in his head. . . . I then rejoined [the rest of the family] and we spent the night at the rest centre off Norwood High Street, which wasn’t very comfortable, owing to shock, and clothes being full of grit, plus [my] head, which had just been washed at the time of the rocket and was now full of plaster. I remember leaving the rest centre at first light and making our way back to the shattered home, which was minus tiles, windows and doors. We arrived back at Sunnybank about 5 a.m. to find faithful old Fred, bandaged head and all, standing guard outside what remained of our home.

  Much was made in all the official reports of how efficiently the post-raid services operated. Whether they always functioned so smoothly may be doubted, if the experience of one woman’s husband, summoned back, as mentioned earlier23, from his army unit, are any guide:

  I arrived at South Norwood about 11 a.m. . . . The road was blocked and guarded by police and troops and at first they barred my way but I soon explained that I lived there. . . . My house was totally demolished. I was dazed and saw no one I knew to find out anything as to what had happened. There was . . . a senior ‘brass hat’ with a red band standing in the road near my place, and there was I saluting him, with all this on my mind. Shortly afterwards I espied a little girl, about five years old, who had lived next door and she informed me that my wife and child had survived and had been taken to a place of shelter at a local church, although she did not know which one. I later found this was a church in Suffolk Road, South Norwood, and so I hurried there . . . but I could not see my family.A steward told me they had been taken to Croydon Hospital, probably the Mayday Hospital, so I hurried there, but they had no knowledge of my wife or child. They suggested I try the Croydon General, so I went there and, to my relief, found my wife and son . . . bandaged round his head. My wife had a bad cut down her leg and a cut on the head. We were brought out by ambulance and proceeded to my wife’s parents at Penge, pending making arrangements where to go.

  By Croydon’s next V-2, on 29 December, the public were at least allowed to know how their homes were being devastated. This, in the words of the local historian quoted earlier, ‘demolished a ‘pretty, small house . . . in an enclave in the chalk cliffs on the north side of Croham Valley Road’, a ‘secluded and apparently protected spot’, but all the occupants were killed. Croydon’s third V-2, on the night of 5 January 1945, infuriated local golfers, introducing a new and unwelcome hazard to Addington Golf Course, as a Civil Defence worker on duty that night remembers:

  The secretary of the golf club rang to say that some sheep were running loose across some of his grass and added, almost as an afterthought, that his windows were broken too. There had been some people out on the course and we went looking for them. . . . The shepherd was lost and so far we hadn’t found the crater. When we did, it was forty feet across and very deep. Happily no one was seriously hurst, although the shepherd had been taken to hospital with a suspected broken arm.

  Croydon’s last rocket, on 26 January 1945, fell harmlessly on open ground in a park. It was only its fourth but they had seemed far, far more numerous; indeed, a then seventeen-year-old schoolboy, who kept a detailed diary of all the explosions he heard, recorded 204 between 12 September 1944 and 27 March 1945.

  East during the V-2 period meant increased danger, and the south-eastern suburbs of Group 8, which lay between Croydon and the Thames, had to endure 76 rockets, more than six times as many as the neighbouring group, as were the total of dead, 152, and seriously injured, 558. Worst hit in terms of incidents, though not of deaths, were Erith and the borough of Chislehurst and Sidcup, with 17 V-2s each, which left 36 dead and 137 other serious casualties in Erith, 30 dead and 103 others in Chislehurst. Orpington, with 14 incidents, escaped with 9 dead but had 116 injured, Bexley, with 12 rockets, had the worst death toll, 39, with 78 injured, not, however, so different from that of Bromley (6 V-2s, 31 dead and 109 injured), though in Beckenham 5 rockets killed only 6 people and injured only 11, and in Crayford another 5 claimed only 1 fatal casualty and 4 others. Penge, hard-hit by the flying-bombs, this time escaped altogether.

  In spite of the more or less continuous bombardment, the area reported only one ‘outstanding’ incident, in Southborough Lane, Bromley at 9.15 on a Sunday evening when the Crooked Billet public house (later rebuilt as The Beckets) was destroyed as already described. 24 It was not the only ‘pub’ to suffer: the George, Hayes, in the same borough, and the White Horse Inn at Chislehurst were both damaged within four hours on 9 February 1945, and the Bickley Arms, Chislehurst, joined the melancholy list on 26 March, the last pub in England to receive the Germans’ attentions. Churchgoers suffered with drinkers. Kammler’s men also struck the Baptist Chapel in Chislehurst; Christ Church, Chislehurst; and St John’s, Eden Park, Beckenham, the vicar of which was injured for the second time, though his daughter, asleep in a pram by the badly cracked kitchen wall, never even woke up.

  Many other public buildings were also affected. Besides thousands of houses and shops of every kind, a fire station (in Orpington) also suffered, as did railways stations (at St Mary Cray, near Orpington, and Chislehurst), a cinema (the Commodore, Orpington), a hospital (Queen Mary, Sidcup), a working-men’s club (Chislehurst), a golf club house (Sundridge Park, Bromley), and several schools, most notably Bickley Hall, Chislehurst, damaged by the penultimate rocket in the area, at 3.20 p.m. on
Monday 26 March. Here a major disaster was narrowly avoided, for the boys were ‘lining up . . . before proceeding to the gymnasium to watch a boxing match’, and one was ‘carried away to be given treatment for a gash in the head. . . . The boxing match was cancelled’, but the boys instead hurried on to the playing field to hunt for rocket fragments.

  Like much of outer London, ‘metropolitan’ Kent contained a great deal of open space. In January, for example, the Midland Bank sportsground in Beckenham harmlessly absorbed one rocket, while a week later another, on a nearby cricket field, killed no one. But any explosion could have tragic consequences, and the owner of a horticultural nursery which bore the brunt of one V-2’s impact, and his son, were both . . . . killed.

  Here, too, as in comparable areas to the north of London, there were a surprising number of small factories and other ‘military objectives’. One of the last V-2s to land caused what could fairly be called an ‘industrial incident’, as this account by the area’s wartime historian makes clear:

  On 20 March, at breakfast time, the junction of Rectory Lane, Sidcup Hill and Craybrooke Road was busy with workers arriving at local factories. Like a thunderbolt hurled by an angry god a rocket landed at this moment outside a printing works, killing seven people at the intersection and two others in Sidcup High Street. 80 others were reported injured. A dozen fires broke out in the ruins of houses, a dairy and T. Knight’s builders’ yard, while blast damage spread to printing works, municipal offices and shop and houses in the High Street, Old Forge Way, Sidcup Hill, etc.