Air raids

Advances in aviation ensured that one of the key horrors on the home front was to come from the skies, in the form of enemy air raid bombings.

On this page and in  Scavenging and looting , Excerpts from the minutes from the log book of the Intermediate Girls School, York Place, Brighton, school year 1939/40 , 'Diary of a teenager in 1943', and the darker 'Account of an Air Raid on Brighton, Sunday afternoon, 14 September, 1940 [at] 3pm', local memories of bombing raids and the impact on daily life are explored.

For a version of events during the bombing of the Preston Street viaduct read the story of Molly Mitchell and the Canadian soldier.

You can download Air raids and its accompanying pages by clicking here (PDF format).

Brighton was not bombed as badly as London, Portsmouth, Coventry and many other towns; but throughout the war it suffered from 'tip and run' raids. The town was very close to German air bases in northern France, so very vulnerable to surprise attack from the air. Small groups of German fighter-bombers would come in from the sea, with little warning, bomb and machine gun the town for a few minutes and then disappear out to sea again. Some of the worst casualties occurred in these attacks, when people were caught unprepared and outside their shelters.

The heaviest death toll in an air raid was on Saturday 14 September 1940, when a bomb from a single German raider landed on the Odeon Cinema, Kemptown. Fifty five people were killed in the cinema and surrounding houses. In the heaviest raid on Brighton, at midday on 25 May 1943, twenty five German fighter-bombers 'swept in at wave top level and made a circuit of the town, dropping bombs over a wide area and gunning people in the street, including children coming home from school. Twenty four people were killed, two young boys and two policemen among them.'

There were fifty six air raids on Brighton although the sirens sounded 'the alert' 1,058 times. One hundred and ninety eight Brightonians lost their lives in air raids. The last raid was on 22 March 1944.

Much disruption of ordinary life took place in civilian Brighton, even more in London, so constantly raided from the air with incendiaries and high explosives by day and night. But Brighton had many unpleasant 'incidents' as they were called in ARP (Air Raid Precaution) language.
Michael Comm - Brighton behind the Front

The war was really affecting us. Most nights we were woken up by the Air Raid Sirens and as we lived on the fourth floor flat of a large house, I used to go down to the lower floor and sleep on a blanket. My mother would not go down; being deaf she said, "I can't hear what is going on, so it don't worry me". Sometimes she did feel the house shudder when a bomb landed nearby.

I used to be very frightened and was always glad when the All Clear sounded. One day when the Air Raid Siren had sounded, I was walking down a side road by Carlton Hill, a short cut to our house in Grand Parade, when I heard a plane diving down. I heard a whistling noise and thought it was a bomb, so ran into the middle of the road, only to realise it was machine gun bullets coming down. I screamed and stood still until an arm pulled me into a doorway. The arm belonged to an A.R.P. Warden. He took me home and I was glad he did because later I had a bad attack of nerves.
Barbara Chapman - Boxing Day Baby