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This book focuses on one aspect of the Second World War in Hull, the prolonged series of air raids that made it the second most bombed city in Britain after London. Hull was heavily bombed for two reasons – first, it was a major industrial city and one of the biggest ports on the East Coast, and second it was a very easily located city, on the banks of the mile wide Humber Estuary. On any moonlit night the the gleam off the river and the many docks would have made it very hard to miss the city! Its location also meant it was a convenient place for German bombers that had failed to reach their main target to drop their bombs.
We start with a look at the systems put in place to cope with air raids. This work started before the outbreak of war, with Hull’s gas and electricity companies both stockpiling spare parts in the expectation there would be both air raids and shortages. Efforts were also made to split the systems into small sub-units, so that damage in one area wouldn’t impact on the rest of the city. As a result neither the gas nor electric were knocked out for very long, or across much of the city.
We then move onto the raids themselves. They began in June 1940, and didn’t finish until March 1945, when the city suffered the last fatalities from a piloted Luftwaffe raid. As with the rest of the country the peak came in the second half of 1940 and first months of 1941. Indeed 1941 was the worst year for Hull, and takes up sixty pages here, five times more than any other year. The worst raids came in May 1941, close to the end of the Blitz and the diversion of most Luftwaffe aircraft to the Eastern Front.
As one would expect the accounts of the raids are generally rather harrowing, with a constant string of death and destruction, including some terrible disasters, with families wiped out or shelters hit with large loss of life. However we also get the stories of the rescuers and the emergency services who managed to keep the city working, and kept working despite the horrors around them. Perhaps unsurprisingly the one time this system was less effective was during the raids of 1945, after a year with no bombs hitting the city.
This is a sobering look at the impact of bombing on the city of Hull, where some 90% of houses were damaged, and many streets still show the signs, with one or two modern buildings filling gaps amongst rows of terraced houses, filling gaps left by the worst of the damage.
Chapters
Air Raid Precautions and Civil Defence
The Raids
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Victory in Europe Day
Those Known to Have Died During the 7-9 May Air Raids
Casualties in Hull due to Enemy Bombing to 30 April 1945
Author: David Bilton & Malcolm K. Mann
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 160
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Year: 2019