大象传媒

On Thursday 15th August 1940, I was living on the Waddon Estate on the eastern perimeter of Croydon Airport.

It was a normal school day as the summer holidays had been limited to just 2 weeks.

Although the Battle of Britain had officially begun a week earlier, the attacks so far had mainly been limited to the south coast. However on the 15th August, the Luftwaffe flew over 1700 sorties in widespread attacks afar afield as Tyneside in the NE to Portland in the south, culminating at 7pm in a raid by 14 Messerscmitt Me.110 fighter bombers on Croydon Airport.

Although I frequently visited the cinema in the school holidays or on a Saturday, my father had never previously taken me to a performance on a weekday evening. The film was Richard Tauber in 鈥淏lossom Time鈥� 鈥� not to my taste, but there was also a documentary about the scuttling of the German Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919, which my father particularly wanted to see as he was there. So after a hurried tea, my father and I walked the half mile to the Classic cinema in South Croydon in time for the start of the programme at 6.15pm.

We were about 15 minutes into 鈥淏lossom time鈥� when mysterious thuds began convulsing the building for about 3 minutes. Suddenly the screen went blank and the manager jumped onto the stage to say that Croydon Airport was being bombed and would everyone remain in their seats. However people gradually moved towards the foyer and my father and I were no exception. As we reached the street we could see black smoke from the fires at the airport billowing into the sky behind the Whitgift Public School.

As 55 Crowley Crescent came into view I excitedly remarked 鈥淐or, look what they鈥檝e done to our house, Dad鈥�. The roof was mainly devoid of tiles, which lay in broken heaps on the ground and all the windows were shattered. As we opened the gate, the air raid sirens wailed the alert, 15 minutes too late.

We were relieved to find my mother and sister crouching in the Anderson shelter, as they they too had been miraculously absent when the bombs fell. My mother had decided to take my sister to the Surrey St Market a day earlier than normal. Their mission completed, they had been walking back across Duppas Hill 鈥� a local park 鈥� when my sister pestered to be allowed to play on the swings and slides. She was thus engaged when the German planes appeared and my mother and she hid in the bushes to escape the machine gun fire, which was coming from the Messerscmits and their pursuing Hurricanes.

The house was too badly damaged to sleep in and we spent the night in the Anderson shelter. In fact we were never to return to 55 Crowley Crescent to live, staying temporarily with my mother鈥檚 brother and his wife in Purley, and then moving to Norbury 鈥� just as the Luftwaffe switched its attention to the London metropolis in an attempt to break the morale of the civilian population.

If it hadn鈥檛 been for the fact that my father took me to the cinema for the first time and my mother had not done her shopping on a Friday as normal, we would all been at home when the raiders struck without a public warning. A scandal which cost 62 civilian lives in factories adjoining the airport and on a nearby housing estate.

Because of their heavy losses totalling 75 aircraft on that day, 15th August 1940 became known as Black Thursday to the Luftwaffe crews and in view of the irrevocable effect it had on my life, both materially and emotionally, I would use the same epitaph to record my recollection of that fateful day.

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