大象传媒

A Daylight Raid

This story was submitted to the Peoples鈥� War site by a volunteer on behalf of
Mr John Hilton and is added to the site with his permission.
Mr John Hilton fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

This was one of the biggest daylight raids of the war. It must have been about September or so in 1940. It started off about 5am in the afternoon, when it was still daylight.

The Battersea Power Station had two flags flying to alert London citizens of bomb danger. The Germans used the Power Station as a navigation point and at that point planes turned 鈥� which is why it was never bombed and is today still standing. I remember that when the bomber planes were distant, there would be a green flag. When a German plane had got nearer, a red flag would fly to warn people.

All of a sudden I saw hundreds of planes coming over. It was like a big black cloud of planes. The first bomb was a real screamer that would frighten the life out of you. These were the Doodlebugs. So we all dashed into the Anderson Shelter.

Before this we had spent many, many nights in the air raid shelter just waiting. Until then, there had not been any bombs and the planes had flown silently above, without bombing. We called the German bombers 鈥淕erman Sausages鈥�.

We lived near Clapham Junction, one of the biggest junctions and the Germans tried to bomb all the stations.

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