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The most fateful night of the war for Londonderry was 15 April 1941.A single Luftwaffe bomber dropped two parachute mines one of which landed harmlessly in a sandpit beside a house in Collon Terrace.Sadly the other mine landed on Messines Park,a development for EX-servicemen.Four semi-deached houses were destroyed and fifteen people were killed.The german plan was to drop magnetic bomb/mines in the River Foyle,causing havoc to this busy allied shipping lane.The mines would lie dormant on the seabed until a metal hulled ship passed overhead.The bomb would attach itself to the ship and explode with devestating results.Unfortunately for residents of Messines Park one of the bombs,for whatever reason,was released at the wrong moment and the result was the worst incident in Londonderry's wartime history. NEWS PAPER REPORT ON MESSINES PARK
Yesterday morning,after a raid on a Northern Ireland town the previous night,when a number of people were killed and injured and some damage was done to residential property,a Union Jack floated bravely over the pile of debris,which is practicly all that remains of four houses,two semi-detached dwellings,in an ex-Servicemen's colony on the outskirts of the town.Here a bomb dropped in the garden and three houses were completely flattend,while only the ruined gable ends of the fourth still stands.At the bottom of the crater ,lying on the heap of rubble, was the couch of the suite. Embedded in the side of the crater beneath was the wreckage of a piano. Mixed up in the midst of the pile were all kinds of furniture, some of which escaped damage.
Out of this mass of debris several bodies, some dead and others fatally injured were dug out. Not far away another bomb dropped in open country... The Roman Catholic Church and Parochial House, which is just opposite where it fell, had many windows broken.
Mr. William J. Brown said his wife was out visiting a neighbour relative at the time. He put his six children altogether in one large bed and told them to pull the clothes over their head. This bed was between the windows,and they all escaped injury. He himself was in a back-room and also had escaped .
Mr. Brown said he ran out to see if he could assist the rescue operation at the demolished houses. He was first on the scene, and afterwards came a man called McCartney, his son-in-law, a navyman, and later on a rescue squad. Soldiers were also on the scene.
Mr. Brown said he dug out two children. Then he heard a baby crying, and after digging for sometime discovered it to be alive between it's dead parents.
The heroine of this minor blitz was Mrs. Gilfillan, aged 80. She calmly refused to leave her bed, even after the explosion,which blew in the windows and tore off the hall door. She was also showered with plaster from the falling ceiling .
Because of the war censorship, The Londonderry Sentinel could not give the name of the city when it was bombed by a single German aircraft in April 1941.

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