Grimsby During the Blitz

An old mate sent me this link the other day. Have only dipped into it so far but it looks fascinating. Lots of familiar surnames in there too.

https://fliphtml5.com/rqkqb/shxw/basic

Where I grew up (Beacon Hill) wasn't built then so no record of bombs there, but there are other familiar places.

Quoted from KingstonMariner

An old mate sent me this link the other day. Have only dipped into it so far but it looks fascinating. Lots of familiar surnames in there too.

https://fliphtml5.com/rqkqb/shxw/basic

Where I grew up (Beacon Hill) wasn't built then so no record of bombs there, but there are other familiar places.

Thanks for the link. Interesting story one of my relations told me .When a child she was walking near the Tollbar high school in Grimsby  with her mum .She saw a German plane swoop low and machine gun a double decker bus. I think all escaped unharmed. Likewise I heard other stories from other relations. A child playing after the war was over in Grimsby picked up a German explosive. Think it may of been a butterfly bomb. Killed him. So sad.

Quoted from Rick12

Thanks for the link. Interesting story one of my relations told me .When a child she was walking near the Tollbar high school in Grimsby  with her mum .She saw a German plane swoop low and machine gun a double decker bus. I think all escaped unharmed. Likewise I heard other stories from other relations. A child playing after the war was over in Grimsby picked up a German explosive. Think it may of been a butterfly bomb. Killed him. So sad.

I was brought up on stories like that. We were always being reminded not to pick up any cans (the wings from butterfly bombs look a bit like tin cans split down the middle).

A couple of less grim stories I was told:

My mum’s parents were upstairs at home in Clee Road when my grandad was home from sea (trawlerman serving on converted trawlers minesweeping and convoy escort). There must have been a dogfight or something or maybe the Gerry was just checking his cannon, when a 20mm cannon round came through the front window, through the internal wall, narrowly missing my grandparents (who were ‘bending down’ for some reason?!) then through the outer wall and buried itself in the back garden.

My dad told me there was a cinema (Cleethorpe Rd?) which showed Charlie Chaplin’s the Great Dictator (a písstake of Hitler, or ‘Adenoid Hinckel’). The following week it got hit by a bomb.

Brilliant that.

Thanks for posting.

I think the cinema was the Plaza, it got mentioned in that book as being hit in 1941.

Got a copy of that very interesting not only reading but listening to the wife who was born during the war.

She remembered walking down Cleethorpes road with her nan when a German plane swooped low and started firing.

Her nan pushed her into a shop muttering ' flipping Germans '

Funny what you remember when you are a kid.

Quoted from grimsby pete

Got a copy of that very interesting not only reading but listening to the wife who was born during the war.

She remembered walking down Cleethorpes road with her nan when a German plane swooped low and started firing.

Her nan pushed her into a shop muttering ' flipping Germans '

Funny what you remember when you are a kid.

That episode is in the book. Shocking incident.

Quoted from KingstonMariner

I was brought up on stories like that. We were always being reminded not to pick up any cans (the wings from butterfly bombs look a bit like tin cans split down the middle).

A couple of less grim stories I was told:

My mum’s parents were upstairs at home in Clee Road when my grandad was home from sea (trawlerman serving on converted trawlers minesweeping and convoy escort). There must have been a dogfight or something or maybe the Gerry was just checking his cannon, when a 20mm cannon round came through the front window, through the internal wall, narrowly missing my grandparents (who were ‘bending down’ for some reason?!) then through the outer wall and buried itself in the back garden.

My dad told me there was a cinema (Cleethorpe Rd?) which showed Charlie Chaplin’s the Great Dictator (a písstake of Hitler, or ‘Adenoid Hinckel’). The following week it got hit by a bomb.

Thanks for posting Kingston. The cinema at the Cleethorpe Road end of Daubney Street is probably the one you mean though it’s name escapes me. The Tivoli in Duncombe Street was destroyed and the land derelict for some years until the 60s. It was always the best Bonfire Night in town.

The damage in East Marsh was very bad. The house of my grandmother in Duncombe Terrace where I lived for a while had an anti-personnel bomb explode in the tiny back yard. The shrapnel wrecked the toilet, went through the wooden door and several pieces were still lodged in the kitchen when I was there with holes including one in the door of the gas cooker!

My mother was a teenager in the war and for about a year in 1943/4 was an usherette at the Palace with her mate who was a year older. There was a rota for fire watching and you had two 17 year olds in there with an old chap who was the caretaker and the cinema cat. Fortunately it was her night off when the bomb came through the roof. She used to say that the rats were more frightening than the Germans! The place was overrun with them. They had to give up the job when they were 18 and do “war work”, either join up or Land Army or munitions. My mother and her mate spent the rest of the war and a bit longer at Service Engineering.

Think it was the Plaza, Ron. That was the one on Cleethorpe Rd mentioned in the book as getting damaged.

Wonder if there’s a way of f verifying the Great Dictator angle. Not that they would have targeted it specifically.

All the streets surrounding the one I grew up in mentioned and some pictured but none of mine. Lucky escape I suppose! My family didn’t arrive here until the late 50s. My Nana was raised in Birkenhead which took some of the flak for the Blitz on Liverpool. She told me that there was an air raid one night and while they were sat in their shelter when a house within a couple of doors of theirs was flattened by a bomb. It had also hit a gas line which sent a huge flame into the sky which lit up the surrounding area and became a target for the rest of the raid.

I find this period of history particularly interesting but that might be because there are still people alive to tell their personal stories. I wish I’d learned more from my grandparents.

I can not remember if this is in the book of not.

All the kids were marched off to Waltham when bombing was going on and matched back again next morning.

Some days they had a train ride to  New Barton for a change and returned the following morning.

Source . Wife.

A couple of stories that my Dad told me:

My grandad had a furniture moving business - when families left the area during the blitz, he stored their furniture in a warehouse (and vacant houses) - he would draw a chalk lines around the furniture from different families.

My Dad was 13 in 1943 when someone came to the school and said they wanted help to pump petrol into US army vehicles in the Market Place so he left to do that and never went back to school.

My childhood home had cracks in most of the ceilings from the aftershocks of bombing raids on the docks and nearby railway lines. My brother still lives in the house and the cracks are still there.

Quoted from Connecticut Mariner

A couple of stories that my Dad told me:

My grandad had a furniture moving business - when families left the area during the blitz, he stored their furniture in a warehouse (and vacant houses) - he would draw a chalk lines around the furniture from different families.

My Dad was 13 in 1943 when someone came to the school and said they wanted help to pump petrol into US army vehicles in the Market Place so he left to do that and never went back to school.

Common factor here is that kids had to grow up fast in those days, take responsibility for themselves and others. The lads overseas were still teenagers or not much older, the girls at home were working from 14 onwards and expected to look after themselves. Not uncommon to see a young twenty something with a couple of young kids, or granny with them while the mother did war work.

My grandad took to poaching! in the war.  Fishing rod with a baccy tin fixed on the end, sulphur in the tin and when he found a Pidgeon roosting lit the sulphur and wafted the tin under the birds nose. Down it came.

He made his own poachers walking stick gun for small bore cartridges. I think he use to refill the shells aswell. This was a metal tube (barrel) attached to a chrome handle bent 180 degrees like a shepherds crook shape. Part of the handle was attached to the barrel and partly cut out so a cartridge could be inserted and located with a twist. The firing mechanism was a small pin under the bend in the handle which some way hit the cartridge.

The barrel was fixed inside a large cane with a rubber feral on the bottom. A walking stick to the gamekeeper.

I have a hard copy of a national newspaper article about the butterfly bombs that fell on Grimsby. They caused a lot of injuries and deaths as they were small and innocuous.  A woman was killed touching no one on her washing line.  This went on for weeks after the first initial bomb drop.  They were so many of them and they were small.

They also had a psychological impact on people. It was vital that the Germans could not know how effective and destructive the new butterfly bombs were.

There was a news blackout at the time.  Everything was Top Secret.  It worked. The Germans never knew.


My Dad lived at 1 Ellison Street, opposite the old Loftis’s toy shop and near to the Ground.  A butterfly bomb landed in front of their house and damaged the ba6 window.

I can send anyone a copy of the Grimsby butterfly bomb article.  Just need a PM and a library  open to get more copies printed.  (I only became aware of all this in the last 3 years).

Quoted from TownSNAFU5

I have a hard copy of a national newspaper article about the butterfly bombs that fell on Grimsby. They caused a lot of injuries and deaths as they were small and innocuous.  A woman was killed touching no one on her washing line.  This went on for weeks after the first initial bomb drop.  They were so many of them and they were small.

They also had a psychological impact on people. It was vital that the Germans could not know how effective and destructive the new butterfly bombs were.

There was a news blackout at the time.  Everything was Top Secret.  It worked. The Germans never knew.


My Dad lived at 1 Ellison Street, opposite the old Loftis’s toy shop and near to the Ground.  A butterfly bomb landed in front of their house and damaged the ba6 window.

I can send anyone a copy of the Grimsby butterfly bomb article.  Just need a PM and a library  open to get more copies printed.  (I only became aware of all this in the last 3 years).

I'm pretty sure my dad told me he'd lost an aunt to a butterfly bomb locally....

Something I learned the other day ( a post on Grimsby Memories on FB ) was that a bomb had been dropped on Springbank near the corner with Lombard Street

I lived there when I was younger yet had no idea that it had been hit.... you live and learn

It’s a shame there isn’t something for Grimsby like this site, which is an excellent resource.

http://bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900