80 Years Since Rockets Rained Down on Ealing
Anniversary of deadly attack that killed 23 approaching
The aftermath of the V1 attack in West Ealing in which miraculously nobody was killed
July 18, 2024
This week will see the 80th anniversary of the most deadly attack by V1 rockets on Ealing in which 23 people died on 21 July 1944 on Uxbridge Road.
With the Blitz on London over and the Allies successfully landed on Europe after D-Day, the people of Ealing would have been hoping for some respite.
These ‘doodlebugs’ were launched from sites in France, Holland and Belgium and could be fired at any time of the day or night and were not aimed at a particular target.
Local historian, Dr Jonathan Oates has done the first ever detailed study of these attacks. The following is taken from his research which he will be presenting in a talk at Ealing Library next month. He says that it was fortunate for areas such as Ealing, Southall and Acton that they weren’t in the regular path of these missiles but some did soon start to land in this part of London as the Germans tried to undermine the country’s morale and prove to its own people it was capable of developing ‘wonder weapons’.
On Tuesday 13 June 1944, Roy Bartlett, a 14-year-old from south Ealing, was with a friend after school when the air raid siren sounded. They thought it must be a mistake because they could see no aircraft or ack ack fire and surely the Germans were too busy to bomb Britain. Rumours circulated that German long-range guns were being fired from the continent, but the boys had enough knowledge of artillery to know that it would have been impossible to sound the sirens in this case.
The first time one of these new weapons fell in the area was on 16 June in North Acton close to the Wesley playing fields leaving a crater 8 feet in diameter and eight feet deep. Nobody was killed but eighteen people were seriously injured and another 68 received lesser wounds. Little Ealing School was forced to cancel lessons because of the air sirens, a sound that people had hoped they would no longer be hearing, a hope which had encouraged evacuees to return to London.
On the next night there was a bomb on Whitton Avenue West, near Malden Avenue in Greenford which injured 13 people.
On 18 June three V1s hit Southall, the first falling close to Norwood Rectory on Tentelow Lane, seriously damaging the property to the extent that it had to be demolished. The Rector’s daughter, Miss Gladys Saunders, was there and she was taken to St. Bernard’s Emergency Hospital. She died of her injuries on the following day. Two hours later a bomb fell close to the boiler house at St. Bernard’s Hospital. No one was hurt and, though the emergency services went to the scene, there was nothing for them to do. Finally on this day a rocket fell onto the garden of 183 Tentelow Lane killing Mrs Nellie Young and injuring 18 others.
The following day there were reports of flying bombs landing in Park Royal and Hanger Hill but there were no casualties.
Then on 22 June a V1 hit the cricket pitch near East Acton Lane, badly damaging East Acton Baptist church and some industrial premises nearby, resulting in slight injuries to four.
On the next day, a bomb hit Fletcher Road on the border of Chiswick and Acton, killing five and destroying 19 houses and damaging another 23 in Fletcher Road, 9 in Beaumont Road, 24 in Ramsay Road, 10 in Church Road and 1 in Palmerston Road.
That same day Hanwell saw its worst hit with twelve killed as a bomb hit Deans Road, and at number 39 five members of the Woodhouse family died; husband and wife in their 50s and three children in teens.
On lunchtime on 25 June, five people were killed when a rocket hit three properties on Southfield Road, destroying 26 houses there and rendering another 43 in that road uninhabitable. Property in Saltcoats Road, Rugby Road, Hamilton Road, Shirley Road, Green End Road and Brookfield Road were also damaged.
A journalist who witnessed events wrote in a local newspaper, “‘People heard the roar of the bomb beginning to dive. They jumped up, there was a second’s pause, a flash and a crash.
“I joined a stream of people running towards the rising cloud of dust a quarter of a mile away… You could tell the direction by the dust blowing into your eyes.
“I ran past the women standing at their front gates along pavements scattered with glass and over the railway footbridge. Some houses were wrecked.
“It looked like the site of an old bomb. Everything seemed utterly dead and covered with dust. Then I saw a fire engine had arrived. Ambulances and rescue men were just driving up. There was a jeep which took away sitting casualties as the pavement around a tree stripped bare by the blast was covered with green leaves.
“Wardens were calling for stretchers and one by one I saw six elderly people brought out unconscious, black with dust and one old man as he sat in the ambulance looking down at the back of his hand covered with blood.
“A woman with her white hair down put up her arm in a torn sleeve to tidy it as she told a warden, I’ll wait just a little to make sure he’s not here.
“Two clergymen, one the vicar of the parish, were already on the scene and I went with two more church ministers who had hurried there on their bicycles’.
On the next day there were seven fatalities as a bomb fell on 22 East Acton Lane and Glendun Road, destroying another seven houses and damaging another 16 in both streets and Orchard Place and Louisa Cottages. Another person was killed at that street the day after.
3 July saw extensive damage in central Ealing but only to property as a bomb landed in the early hours on the Sanders store and Evans drapers next door. Christchurch was badly damaged and windows were blown out while length of Broadway. The Railway Hotel, at the corner of the High Street and the Broadway was destroyed. Sanders and is now a branch of Marks and Spencer is now there, but the Victorian pub was never rebuilt and some of the ornamentation on the church’s spire remains missing to this day.
On 20 July, the Cuckoo estate was hit with one boy killed at 29 Cuckoo Avenue. In Acton on this day three people were killed in a radiator factory in Park Royal Road, with another dozen seriously injured and 42 slightly so.
Ealing’s worst day of the period was the next one, Friday 21 July, when a bomb fell on the Uxbridge Road, in West Ealing, killing 23 people and injuring 154 more in 142-148 and 191 Uxbridge Road. Erica Ford wrote in her diary ‘there was a terrific crash & place shook & dust got in our eyes. We went outside to see great column of smoke just over houses in west Ealing Broadway, about 150 yards away. Mrs Quine fainted dead away & had hysteria when she came to. She also disappeared to women’s quarters & wasn’t seen til lunchtime.
‘I tried to phone home across road, but it was out of order – so went on cycle to The Avenue & phoned from there. M terribly worried as it looked alright in our direction. Felt rather shaky. Main doors were blown open, & screws drawn out of brass plates. Windows broken, & ceilings down in flats. Men doing rescue work – some dribbled back towards 3.0. Joe very near bomb when it fell on Abernethie & Boots. Although on leave he spent the morning doing very good rescue work & and came in covered with dust. Fire & gas stared there. Awful business. Men saw beastly sights. Leathers couldn’t eat any dinner’.
On 23 July bombs on the West Middlesex Golf Course and on the Brent Valley Golf Course resulted in zero casualties but led local golfers to believe the Germans had a vendetta against their pastime.
After this there was a period of relative calm although bombs continue to overfly the area and explosions could still be heard in the distance.
This respite was only temporary with attacks resuming on 20 August when 3 V1s hit the Ealing area although there was no loss of life due to it being a Sunday.
In Acton, on the early afternoon of 21 August, five people were killed in Churchfield Road East and four houses were destroyed and 18 were damaged. This was the last reported attack on Acton. Three days later a rocket hit Rowdell Road in Northolt injuring 41.
For Southall, in the attack on 29 August, Regina Road was worst affected, with one death, Mrs Ellen Millard, of number 158, 34 seriously injured, 22 slightly hurt and over a thousand houses damaged to some degree.
From this point the number of attacks diminished as the Allied war effort reduced the German’s capacity to launch them. However flying bombs continued to be a feature of life through to October.
It was fortunate that not all of the V1s were managing to get through as substantial aerial defences were in place along the south coast. Flying Office Robert Barcklay of 151 Studland Road, Hanwell, was awarded a DSO for having destroyed a dozen V1 rockets, or robots as the local press referred to them.
By September, German had started to use the V2 rockets with the first ever falling on Staveley Road in Chiswick on the eighth. Unlike its predecessor, it gave no warning of the pending explosion and could not be intercepted by aerial defences because of its great speed. However, there is only one recorded instance of a V2 landing in Ealing, exploding in the air near Ealing Common in the early hours of 31 October spreading fragments across the area which were eagerly collected by paperboys.
The last ever V1 to hit the area was launched from Holland on 14 March 1945 and hit the RAOC depot, Northolt killing 14, the first and only time during the campaign the enemy struck a military target. By the end of the month the German’s had fired their last rocket at England.
Because of the threat from V1s, evacuation of children from London, last seen in 1939 and 1940, resumed. In July in Southall at least 1600 children were taken by train to Burton on Trent and elsewhere. They assembled at the County School, Featherstone Road School and Lady Margaret School. Another 500 were brought away privately.
In total 25 V1 rockets fell on Acton, Ealing and Southall between June and September 1944 and one in March 1945 killing 89 people, three in Southall, 28 in Acton and 58 in Ealing with hundreds injured. Dr Oates says that the damage was far less than during the Blitz in terms of deaths and property damage and the time span was shorter but the mental stress on residents may have been greater as the Blitz at least gave some respite during the day.
Dr Oates has used a number of sources for his research including the diary of Erica Ford, a young woman employed at the Fire station kitchens and who lived with her parents in a house on Mount Park Road, Ealing. A number of school log books, civil defence records, local newspapers and reminiscences are also used as key sources, but the talk does not pretend to be exhaustive as more research could certainly be carried out into the civil defence minute books and incident files.
He will give more detail of what people living in the area thought about the flying bombs and how they responded to them in his talk at Ealing Library.
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