At which point there was a massive explosion. We did not think too much about it until later when we heard on.
We had been out of the store only about Five minutes when it was hit. It was by good fortune and the Grace of God our tram being outside we survived. It was something my Mum considered a miracle and never forgot.
We were just one of very many thousands of families who survived the war by a massive element of luck. My mother often told us the story of this disaster. She and her mother were due to go shopping in the store, however my mother wanted something to eat first and made such a fuss that her mother agreed.
Had they not delayed their shopping trip they would have been in the store when the V2 hit. My father, Reginald Richardson, was in the first fire-engine to arrive at the site on the day. He was from Fire Station 40 — later became B Left him with nightmares for years. So many horror stories of floors collapsing during rescues. Doris Nichols, my mother was in woolworths and was buried in the debris.
My fathers sister saw her being brought out and ran back to railway grove to tell my father. Mum survived but with terrible damage to her leg. They wanted to amputate but dad fought hard for her and they managed to save it although she suffered for the rest of her life. I moved to New Cross In but the effects of this bomb and others were still plain to see. I heard some of the horror stories. That was 30 years after the event but looking back now I realise it was only a fleeting time after.
Lewisham has changed beyond recognition but if you look hard you can still see the echoes of the bombing. We lived at 84, Cranbrook Road, on the corner of Clandon Street. If you know the area you will realise that this is quite a way from New Cross. I was sitting on top of a cabinet next to the cooker when we heard the back gate rattle and we knew Dad had arrived.
As he opened the back door there was huge thump and everything shook and rattled. Dad seemed to duck and half turn in the doorway. I could see over the gardens of Cranbrook Road, and over the roofs of Strickland Street, a column of smoke rising vertically in what in later years would be called a mushroom cloud.
I did not see him till the following day. He never ever spoke of what he had done or seen until talking to a teen aged grandson who was doing a WW2 project for school. He had been working with emergency crews, mainly the fire brigade at first, but the thing that affected him most was seeing people unmarked other than being covered in dust and fine debris but dead and still sitting in a cafe and on a bus. The aftermath resembled battlefield carnage. It was one of the worst losses of civilian life on British soil during the Second World War.
Such images provided the Allies with the first hard evidence of the existence of German rocket technology. An elderly man sits with his dog on a pile of rubble that was once his home following a devastating V1 attack on Upper Norwood. He had been out for a walk while his wife prepared Sunday lunch. Despite these successes, thousands of citizens were killed or injured.
Right: Often, whole blocks were obliterated, as can still be seen in this aerial image of Brockley. It took half a year for Allied forces to neutralise the threat. In that time, some Londoners lost their lives to the V Some did make it into the central areas, however. V-2 explosions devastated Selfridges, Speakers' Corner and Holborn. That isolated Caffe Nero near the mural on Tottenham Court Road stands on the still-undeveloped site of a blast that killed nine.
More seriously, people were slaughtered at Farringdon when a rocket hit a packed market building on 8 March The worst death toll of all came on 25 November , when people lost their lives after a direct hit on Woolworths in New Cross. These famous tragedies are well documented, but over rocket strikes, many with significant death toll, remain obscure.
We've mapped out some of the impact sites above, with more to follow when we can access further information. Make sure you zoom in and check satellite view. Commonly, an area hit by a V-2 is now covered with a car park or s housing estate. These areas are usually devoid of mature trees, and still stand out over 60 years on.
Records for the area then-governed by the London County Council LCC can be found in most libraries, and were recently published in one volume. Further out, we've used various web sites , books and eye-witness accounts to plot additional impacts. Deadly missile: The first V2 strike on Britain came on 8 September and hit Chiswick, west London, killing three people and injuring Begun five years ago, the map is crowd-sourced, and includes photographs, eye-witness accounts and details about individual V2 rocket attacks on London and its surrounds supplied by individuals.
Each strike site can be seen in more detail by zooming in and clicking on the yellow site markers. A work in progress, the map is still believed to be short of many strike sites, some of which can still be seen using the Sat[ellite] tab in the top right hand corner. Unlike its predecessor the V1, this was a rocket you couldn't see coming; a space age piece of technology that laid the path for the post-war space programmes of the United States and the Soviet Union.
Designed in Germany to attack Allied cities in retaliation for increased Allied bombing strikes against German cities, the V2s were also Hitler's answer to his country's disappointment that the V1s or doodlebugs didn't, as billed, knock Britain out of the war. Launched from mobile units, the 46ft 14m tall rockets were fuelled by liquid ethanol and oxygen and weighed almost 14 tons, and were the most advanced weapon used in the war until the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August The missile was launched vertically and could travel at more than 3,mph to hit targets more than miles away, making it the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile.
A V2 rocket launch site in Germany - the V2s were launched vertically, going straight up 50 miles into the air, before flying in a trajectory of miles. Desperate: The launch of the V2s against Allied targets was seen as Hitler's last throw of the dice.
When it landed, it left a crater 60ft wide and 16ft deep, and threw up around 3, tonnes of rubble into the air. Such was its speed, the noise of the rocket rushing through the air came after it landed. Notable V2 strikes on British soil included the first one, which hit Chiswick, west London, on 8 September , killing three and injuring 17, and an attack on a Woolworths store in New Cross, south east London, in November that year which left dead - England's worst death toll.
In total, the V2 attacks resulted in the deaths of around 7, British military personnel and civilians. Meanwhile more than 9, civilians and soldiers were killed in total in V2 attacks on the Allies. That excludes the estimated 12, labourers and concentration camp prisoners killed while making the missiles.
But despite the hype, and just like the V1, the V2 did not quite live up to its propaganda. Despite its sophisticated and pioneering guidance system, the V2 often missed its target. This situation was made worse when Britain leaked the misinformation that most V2s aimed at London were overshooting the capital by between ten and 20 miles.
As a result, Germany modified the rockets' guidance, and most subsequent rockets landed short of the city, often in underpopulated areas of Kent. And the rocket was extraordinarily expensive to produce, using vast amounts of fuel alcohol when Germany was desperately short of it.
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