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Message 1 - Block Mills Disaster

Posted on: 18 April 2004 by Peter - WW2 Site Helper

Dear AlfredT

I was very much interested to read of your impression of this large raid and the details you were able to give. I was also sad to hear of the untimely death of your father.

This was indeed a terrible raid but it did not involve 500 bombers. This was at the height of the Battle of Britain, in fact 24 August is regarded as the start of the third phase when the Luftwaffe switched tactics to large formation bombing.

The raid on Portsmouth was the third heavy attack on England that day. It consisted of about fifty Junkers Ju88s of Lehrgeschwader 1 (LG 1) escorted by a similar number of Bf110s. LG 1 managed to slip through whilst Spitfires of 609 Squadron were over Ryde in the Isle of White, LG 1 having turned up earlier than radar had predicted. LG 1 therefore continued untroubled to Portsmouth, where it dropped more than two-hundred 250-kilo bombs in four minutes. Considerable damage was caused to the city and to HMS Acheron, a destroyer in port (later sunk by a mine in December). The death toll at Portsmouth was the highest in the war, to that date, in a single raid: 104 killed and 237 injured civilians and upward of 50 naval personnel. A fuel oil store was also hit and burned for over 36 hours before it could be put out.

Full details of the raid are in "Battle Over Britain" by Francis K. Mason (Aston Publications Ltd, 1990)

Reference to HMS Acheron here ^{About links}

Kind regards,

Peter