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WW2

On 3 September 1939, I was 10 years and 8 months old. My parents and I sat in the sitting room around the wireless (radio) listening to Neville Chamberlain telling us that the country was at war with Germany. Today’s young would not believe the radio set! A horn loudspeaker and an oak box containing the valves, powered by a 90-volt high tension battery and a 2 volt lead acid accumulator, taken for charging weekly). As soon as the Prime Minister’s announcement was finished, the first air raid siren of the war sounded, apparently all over the country, because a reconnaissance plane was spotted some where off northern Scotland! The dear old lady living next door was seen and heard running up and down their back garden path exclaiming, ‘They’ve come, they’ve come’.

Maidstone, in the middle of Kent where I lived throughout the war, had the doubtful distinction of having at least one of every kind of missile thrown at the country. As a boy I was old enough to know what was going on but young enough no to be frightened out of my wits! From the autumn of 1939 until the summer of 1940, nothing happened which affected us directly, but when the Battle of Britain began, we had a grandstand view. Living on the top of a hill overlooking the Medway valley, from my bedroom I could see about seven miles to the east and three or four to the west, as well as across the valley to the south. Dog fights between the RAF and the Luftwaffe became an almost daily event, the sound of machine guns, the sight of aircraft on fire of vapour trails and of parachutes of airmen who had baled out in the distance became familiar.

As the daylight Battle of Britain ended, 12 months after the war started, the night-time air raids on London started. We could hear the drone of squadrons of enemy aircraft in the distance and as often as not see the sky lit up by distant fires. (The fire at the margarine factory on the north bank of the Thames, at least 15 miles away, was particularly memorable) Incendiary bombs in the road outside the house, a parachute carrying a land mine left a very large hole in the corner of an orchard 400 yards down the road. A German aircraft, a Heinkel 111 if I remember correctly was shot down one night- probably in 1941, and the front half crashed onto a house about 200 yards away setting fire to the house of houses and killing the lady living there. The rest of the fuselage and tail plane crashed a hundred yards further on in the front garden of a friend’s house.

One day, I think in Autumn1942, I was on my way to school at 8.15, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a Dornier 115 in the low cloud. Just before I got onto the trolley bus I saw it and confirmed its identity through a gap in the clouds. There was no air raid warning in operation at the time. (They had become localised early on in the war, but did not signal every intruder!) The bus arrived in High Street at about 8.30 and was, mercifully stationary at a stop, when chunks of brick started to break the windows of the bus. We all ducked under the seats until that barrage stopped, at which point I decided that home was better place to be than school than day, so I ran the three or so miles home, during which journey, the air raid siren sounded! The Dornier 115 had dropped a stick of bombs, which landed on Mill Street, which joined the High Street some hundred or so yards beyond the bus stop; thus we were protected from the direct action of the blast. Incidentally, we did not hear the bombs coming nor the explosion of the bombs. Sadly, a girl, with whom I had been at primary school, was on foot in the direct line of the blast and was killed. I recall she was one of identical twins.

In1944, shortly after D-Day, my mother woke me at about 2 a.m. to ask my opinion of a strange aircraft noise. (I was the family expert on aircraft recognition- an essential skill in that part of the world at that period!) It sounds very rough, I said, but like an FW 190 (a single engined fighter) but looking out of the window under the blackout curtain, there were flames coming from it. ‘Good o’ I said, ‘it’s on fire’. Let’s go back to sleep!’ But it wasn’t an FW190, it was the first sight for us, of a ‘Buzz bomb’, ‘Doodlebug’ or V1. The first of hundreds. From my bedroom, I had sight of four or more VI routes. (They had no ability to steer, so followed the track on which they were launched, affected presumably by the wind) On of the routes was directly overhead of us, hence the first sighting. They signalled their arrival because the characteristic noise started quietly and became louder and then reduced as they went on their way to London. Sometimes near to us the noise suddenly stopped as the engine cut out- a frequent experience sadly in London. The bomb then crashed to the ground, quite unpredictably, because it was by then un-powered. I watched one such as the engine stopped a few hundred yards away, and shortly after instead of a northerly route it veered of to the west and exploded when it crashed into the house of the headmistress of the local school, killing her father. The picture of this event is fixed in my mind. More frightening than the sound of the V1’s, for us, however, was the noise of the rocket flares used to guide fighter aircraft to the route being used by a V1. The rocket flare was launched from a field about 300 yards away and went up with a sudden loud ‘whoosh’! The parachute flare came down swinging as it came, but the case came down independently, and how no one was killed by one of these, I do not know! Fighters did not shoot the V1’s down, at least not after initial attempts resulted in the explosion of the bomb killing the fighter pilot. Instead, they manoeuvred themselves to get one wing under the short wings of the V1 and then tipped it over, resulting in the bomb losing its giroscopic control and crashing. Very skilful flying. I still find it hard to believe but the Typhoons, the only planes which could catch the V1’s had to be cruising at high level and dive at the target. Imagine our surprise when a friend and I saw an unidentified plane flying straight and level catching up with a V1 almost over head and tip it over and roar off. It was some years before the Meteor was off the secret list, and able to be identified! I have never seen a reference to its ever having been in action.

Although unaware of it at the time, seven shells landed on Maidstone the same night as the V1’s started. It is probably not widely known that these seven travelled so far to land in the middle of Kent. Twenty miles across France from a rail mounted gun, twenty miles across the Channel and forty miles across Kent. Eighty miles in all. I believe these were the only shells this gun fired in anger. (Why were such weapons known as ‘Big Bertha’ I wonder?)

Maidstone also had one or more V2 rockets (aimed at London no doubt). Had the Germans started that campaign before 1944, the out come could not have been predicted. They certainly had a very serious effect on London’s morale. There was a permanent alert for them, and first one knew of their arrival was the sound of the explosion, followed by the shriek of the rocket falling to earth.

I sat my School Certificate exam in 1945, after the end of the war in Europe, but those taking the exam in 1944, had to scatter to sit on the floor next to the walls of the hall every time there was an alert for
V1’s. I am sure they were much too well behaved not to discuss the exam in progress when not being interrupted! (I have no evidence for or against this assertion!)

There is a lot more one could contribute, but this is probably more than you need!

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