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.