Sheffield Blitz and the aftermath

[John Turner]

The 355 tons of high explosive and 16,000 incendiary bombs unleashed from 330 aircraft during the two devastating nights of the Sheffield Blitz of December 1940, killed around 600 people and damaged 82,000 houses, 3,000 so severely they were demolished.

One of the incendiaries penetrated the roof of our house in Sky Edge Road, lodging in the loft. Acrid smoke on the landing alerted my mother who summoned my father Wilfred, that night on duty at West Bar with the Sheffield Police. Hurrying through streets lit by flames from hundreds of fires from blazing buildings and ruptured gas mains, he arrived in a Wolseley squad car. Entering the loft space by ladder to emerge with a white-hot, smouldering incendiary gripped in a pair of fire tongs and extinguished it in a sand bucket, while my mother successfully put out the fire with bathwater using our ARP (Air Raid Precautions) stirrup pump. 

Auntie Margaret’s house in City Road (opposite Granville Road) had its roof blown off by a parachute mine – fused to detonate at roof top level and damage buildings over a wide area. Along with her father and mother they were uninjured, sheltering in the cellar of their solid Victorian terraced house. Husband Clifford – funeral director and cabinet maker with C & A Reed, Duke Street – was in an RAF Salvage / Repair Unit urgently getting damaged Spitfires and Hurricanes airborne again. These units were a key contribution to the RAF success over the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.

A shortage of ‘tin hats’ for the enormous rescue effort led to improvisation. Nurses from the Royal Hospital extricated the injured from hazardous  smouldering buildings, wearing stainless steel bowls tied on with bandages. Sixteen year old scout John Flynn, placed a saucepan on his head and transported to hospital an injured man in a barrow, to be rewarded with the Scouting Gilt Cross.

i Paul License, Sheffield Blitz (2000)

ii Neil Anderson, Sheffield’s date with Hitler (2010)

iii Alistair Lofthouse, The Sheffield Blitz: Operation Crucible (2001)

iv How to Deal with Incendiary Bombs. WW2 Poster, courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

[Lysanderix]

I noted that our Anglican Cathedral held a service dedicated to the events of 08/12/40 on the anniversary…as they have done in previous years.

[Heartshome]

It was a terrible time for everyone then, we really have no idea what they were going through.

The warning siren went. My Gran, my Mum & her 2 sisters went down in the cellar, and got under the

thick heavy old wooden table in there. They heard planes and bomb blasts in the distance, then suddenly

there was the most tremendous deafening blast. Very frightening! Gran thought the house had been hit.

When they heard the all clear sound, they came up from the cellar, to find the front door and windows

had been blasted in to the room. The house opposite had taken a direct hit, and was destroyed! Most

sadly, the family of 3 had been killed. The girl being my Mum's friend. 

                                           ANYONE who got through those war years, appreciated LIFE.