German aircraft strafing civilians

Machine gunning civilians certainly did happen and by both sides i might add. But to put Scotland on the topic the train station at East Linton on the old A1 was riddled with bullets and the holes are still there as are the holes on an old rail bridge near Dunbar on the A1. Also a street in Portobello I think Brunstane 1 house has bullet holes in it which i have seen.

Straffing?

Without digging through all my files I’m afraid this post is going to be rather short and to the point.

Re the German raider shot down over the Ribble estuary – it was a Ju88 of II/KG54 on April 7/8th 1941, shot down by a Defiant of 256 Squadron from Squires Gate and two of the four crew survived – the local police, ARP wardens and homeguard went to considerable lengths to rescue the airmen from the remote and treacherous Banks marshes. Although I have heard that one was apparently struck later, after perhaps being misunderstood, I have interviewed many witnesses to this incident and it aftermath and have never heard of anyone trying to force them back into the river to drown them – quite the opposite in fact.

As for straffing I also recall that there was a pretty well documented account of a lone German raider machine-gunning a bus travelling up Bull Hill towards the cemetery at Darwen in Lancashire – I seem to recall that no one was injured, but the driver was badly shaken – I will have to find my notes!

The wife of an expatriate Singapore Airlines pilot told me in Singapore how she dived into a ditch when a Messerschmitt strafed her when she was a little girl in the UK during the war. She was looking at one of my aviation art prints depicting a Bf109 and she said: “Yes, that was the kind of aircraft that shot at me!”.

Interesting thread, all nations in WW2 did their bit in straffing civilians, sometimes accidently and sometimes deliberate. Aweful business either way.
The Luftwaffe we know did it, and the Allied airforces did it especially in the last months of the war. My mother as a child saw the Russians doing it from a distance thank god in Pommern in 1945.
There’s a doco on the P47 thunderbolt with loads of great colour footage that shows an instance or 2 of straffings like that (civilian horse drawn carts etc) and the vets openly talk of it, of course they stuck to the BS line of “Hitler Youth bringing forward truckloads of Panzerfausts”. All justifiable I’m sure :sarc)
I’m surprised more guncam footage of this hasn’t surfaced by now either.

Makes me think of the gun camera footage of some German farmer on his horse and cart being shot up

There are quite a few fanciful tales also, I remember when I lived at Kinloss various “true life” accounts of Stukas attacking Aberdeen and strafing, plausible to 6 year olds but when a little older is seen as ridiculous. Everyones grandparents had also captured German airmen in the fields!

In the real life accounts, I always doubted the wisdom of wasting defensive ammo in hostile airspace against inconsequential ground targets.

A straffing story involving P-51’s in Germany!

While this is a very senstive subject and any death involving civilians in wartime is a horrible event this story was related to me by some pilot’s of the 339th Fighter Group who flew P-51’s in the Eighth Air Force and were based at Fowlmere near Duxford during the war. After escorting Eighth bombers on a deep raid into Germany the 339th P-51’s went looking for ground targets of opportunity as they returned from the raid. One of its Mustangs had been hit by flak and the pilot had to bail out over a small village in Germany. As he hit the ground in his parachute he was meet by the accounts of some 339th pilots as they flew low over him to see where he landed, attacked by men in the field who had seen him landing in his chute. The Mustang pilots saw this and called out what was going on over the radio and soon the area around this field and village were filled with P-51’s. Hoping their fellow pilot would be captured and made a POW, being young men in war with emotions running high and seeing their fellow pilot killed by those in the field the Mustangs came back and just chewed up the area with their 50’s and made continual straffing runs over this field destroying
German military trucks and anyone who was in the field at the time. The pilots noticed many running out of the field towards this small town located right next to where this action was taking place and made numerous staffing runs their as well. One man expressed his hope that there were no civilians or locals from the village who were involved in this terrible situation but at the time what they observed going on in this field inraged them at the time and they just took on this course of action. From what I have read in the above post it shows that many of you in the UK have had some family members who have experienced being straffed and bomb by the Luftwaffe during WWII. If you look at any gun camera footage shot by allied fighters during the war you have to wonder how many locals and not German troops were killed by this straffing ? A very sad event that happens in any war.

BlueNoser352!

I would be interested to know your source for the “deliberate” attack, as all the indications point to a nav error. Which weren’t uncommon.

The Air Corps investigated this incident as well as the Army and Air Defence Command and reported to G2. In the Air Corps report it stated that the Two Heinkels crossed the Wexford coast at about 9,000 ft. between Carnsore and Greenore and were identified by the Coastwatchers. They flew in close formation, the weather was fine with light cloud. The aircraft which attacked the viaduct used impact bombs while the Heinkel involved in the factory attack used delayed action (one of the bombs failed to explode). An Air Corps Gladiator scrambled from Baldonnel arrived overhead the Wexford Coast about 45 mins after the attack reported visibility excellent and at 4,000ft the Welsh Coast was clearly in sight. The conclusion of the G2 report was that it was deliberate with, the Saltee island, Coningsbeg Light ship, Tuskar Rock all clearly visible and all used as navigation point by the Luftwaffe

PaulR
The German aircraft which bombed the Co op at Campile on August 26 1940 was not lost, it was a quite deliberate attack. It was one of two which crossed the Wexford coast, one broke away and dropped bombs (which missed) at a Viaduct carrying the rail line to Rosslare. The Heinkel which bombed Campile circled the factory at “a leisurely pace” and then joined up with the other Heinkel and set course for France. The reference to stafing in the village is news to me. I am still trying to identify the unit involved.
Tony K

I would be interested to know your source for the “deliberate” attack, as all the indications point to a nav error. Which weren’t uncommon.

It’s amazing how many hedges have apparently saved people from strafing. Most of the time we take them for granted.

with my usual leap off topic…

I think it’s usually the ditch and small bank around the roots of a hedge that did the saving, rather than the twigs and leaves. While a mature hedge may be several hundred years old (a rough way of dating a hedge in Britain is to calculate 100 years per variety of tree in it) each plant’s bole will only be a few inches thick at most, never more than a foot.

Don’t take them for granted now. Hedges are still being ripped out at a ferocious rate after a slow down in the 80s, after massacres in the 60s and 70s and there are some frightening statistics about hedge losses. While this might seem trivial, it’s not impossible to have mini-dustbowl to add to Britain’s own Americanisms (Slow fast-food being the pre-eminent adoption to date.)

On topic, I like Ozplane’s account the best. Why am I reminded of the farmer in the Battle of Britain film?

It’s amazing how many hedges have apparently saved people from strafing. Most of the time we take them for granted.

Ian, for more on Arnold Ridley’s wartime exploits may I recommend my own article here
http://forum.planetalk.net/viewtopic.php?t=755&highlight=ridley

During the war, while my father was away in the army, my mother lived with her parents in a bungalow on Trowell Road, Wollaton, Nottingham, about 200 yards west of the railway bridge. One day, she was out on the front lawn with my brother in his pram, when a German bomber flew very low along Trowell Road heading west and straffing anything that moved as he went. She grabbed my brother out of his pram and dived under the front hedge, fortunately avoiding any injury.
About half a mile up the road at Balloon Crossroads was the testing plant for Rolls Royce aircraft engines, still there, but now an industrial unit and heavily defended during the war, in fact there is still a concrete pillbox in the field across Trowell Road from the site. Obviously the raider was after this site and mother claims that the AA batteries opened up and brought him down, however, I can’t confirm this, does anyone know?
As my brother was born in September 1943, this would put the date of the raid just after then, was there much activity around this time?
Over to the experts.

That’s correct about The Ghost Train, one of many plays he wrote, many of which went on to be filmed. However I have never heard anything about him winning the Military Medal. He did get awarded the OBE for services to the theatre. Are you maybe thinking of his character of Godfrey, who held the MM? If you mean Arnold himself, I’m keen to hear details.

Dave you are quite right, a quick Google confirms that it was his character and not Arnold himself who received the MM. Arnold himself was seriously injured during the Battle of the Some and also re-enlisted in the army during WW2 and held the rank of Major.

A further piece of trivia, Arnold Ridley was/is also famous for writing the West End production “The Ghost Train” and I believe he won the MM for his actions during the Great War.

That’s correct about The Ghost Train, one of many plays he wrote, many of which went on to be filmed. However I have never heard anything about him winning the Military Medal. He did get awarded the OBE for services to the theatre. Are you maybe thinking of his character of Godfrey, who held the MM? If you mean Arnold himself, I’m keen to hear details.

A further piece of trivia, Arnold Ridley was/is also famous for writing the West End production “The Ghost Train” and I believe he won the MM for his actions during the Great War.

Dad’s Army actor Arnold Ridley was strafed in 1940 or early 1941 when he was walking along the road in his village of Caterham, on the way to the Savage Club. He had to throw himself into a ditch full of mud to avoid being hit. He later remarked that as it was a rare thing to be strafed at that time, when he arrived at the club no-one believed his story of how he got muddy.

In 1944 he was again a victim, this time of one of the first V1 flying bombs that exploded near him while he was in his garden, severely injuring him. After multiple wounds in WWI and WWII, plus these events it’s amazing he made it to 88 years old.

Mention of Lytham St Annes in an earlier post reminds me of my father’s story of being singled out for some Luftwaffe attention. He was in the Home Guard patrolling the Lytham seafront when a German aircraft, which he mistook for a Blenheim, approached at low level, possibly returning from a raid on Liverpool. My father waved at the pilot and was rewarded by a stick of incendiaries being dropped round his post. Somewhere in the loft is the burnt out case of one of the bombs. This annoyed him so much he joined up full time and he had chance to get his own back in the Ardennes later in the war.
A Heinkel 111 crashed in roughly the same area of the Ribble estuary and members of my father’s Home Guard unit were “assisting” the crew members, who survived the crash, back in to the water with their allotted pitchforks. The crew were saved by my maiden aunt, who was matron at the nearby hospital, pointing out it was not really playing the game. The navigator was so grateful that he sent my aunt his stamp collection after the war was over and it sits on my shelf as I write.

I belive Brandon high street (just down the road from Lakenheath) was straffed by a German attacker as well. Apparently there are still witness marks on teh town hall.

Many years ago I read an account of an allied pilot (RAF I think ) chasing a German fighter across France at low level. At one point he spoke of his horror as his cannon shells missed the opposing aircraft and impacted along the main street of a French town they were overhead. So it isn’t always clear cut what happened.
Both my parents grew up in Crayford, Kent during WWII and the biggest threat there, after the BofB/Blitz, seems to have been V1s falling short.

I have read a few accounts of strafing by German bombers plus there were the “tip and run” raids in the South-East that the Typhoons were used to combat. Regarding Dresden, I am sure the account of Mustangs strafing the ruins is in “Slaughterhouse 5” by Kurt Vonnegut. He is American and he was there so I would accept that as an accurate account unless someone has evidence to contradict him.

Ireland suffered a number of incidents of bombs being dropped by German aircraft who were lost, including the bombing of a plant in a village called Campile here in County Wexford on the South East coast in which two women were killed. Eyewitnesses reported that the plane strafed the village’s one and only street on its way to drop its ordnance.

Another time a Luftwaffe bomber strafed another village as it flew over although no bombs were dropped on that occasion.

PaulR
The German aircraft which bombed the Co op at Campile on August 26 1940 was not lost, it was a quite deliberate attack. It was one of two which crossed the Wexford coast, one broke away and dropped bombs (which missed) at a Viaduct carrying the rail line to Rosslare. The Heinkel which bombed Campile circled the factory at “a leisurely pace” and then joined up with the other Heinkel and set course for France. The reference to stafing in the village is news to me. I am still trying to identify the unit involved.
Tony K