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On the twelfth of February 1942, (my 20th birthday), as an RAF aircrew trainee cadet, my companions and I were on a training course in Torquay, awaiting posting to a Flying Training School (EFTS). We were billeted in two small hotels in the highest point of the town. As we awaited the bell for parole after breakfast (I shared a room with two other cadets) we heard the sound of an approaching aircraft, the noise increasing to a deafening roar. We remarked ‘he seems to be coming in too low’, then the hotel shuddered as if hit by a rocket ! Then- silence — a whistle sounded and we stumbled down the stairs, and assembled outside.
Two bombs had hit the two hotels and did not explode, thankfully. Had they done so, several dozen potential pilots and navigators would have been lost to the war effort. The hotel next door was more severely damaged than ours, in fact it was practically demolished. Fortunately the cadets in that billet had gone on leave the day before. The bomb that hit our hotel passed through the roof on each of the three floors and buried itself in the garden. We could look up through the resulting hole and see the sky through all three floors. Sadly one cadet whose name was Otter was killed by the bomb as it passed through his room.

[This story was submitted to the People's War site by Wolverhampton Libraries on behalf of Peter Skinner and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions]

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