Hull Blitz
The Hull Blitz was the Nazi German bombing campaign targeting on the English port city of Kingston upon Hull, during the Second World War.
Large-scale attacks took place on several nights in March 1941, resulting in some 200 deaths. The most concentrated attacks were between 3 and 9 May 1941, resulting in 400 deaths, and another large-scale attack took place in July 1941 with around 140 fatalities.
The city spent more than 1,000 hours under alert during raids from 19 June 1940 to 1945, with around 1,200 people in the city killed as a result of the bombing.
Hull was the most severely damaged British city or town during the Second World War, with 95 percent of houses damaged. Hull had more than 1,000 hours spent under air raid alerts. Hull was the target of the first daylight raid of the war and the last piloted air raid on Britain.
Of a population of approximately 320,000 at the beginning of the war, approximately 152,000 were made homeless as a result of bomb destruction or damage. Overall almost 1,200 people were killed and 3,000 injured by the air raids.
More than 5,000 houses were destroyed and half of the city centre destroyed. The cost of bomb damage was estimated at £20 million (1952, £518,985,637 as a consumer price equivalent), with 3,000,000 square feet (280,000 m2) of factory space, several oil and flour mills, the Riverside Quay and 27 churches, 14 schools or hospitals, 42 pubs and 8 cinemas ruined; only 6,000 out of the 91,000 houses were undamaged at the end of the war. The extent of the damage was similar to that of the Plymouth Blitz.
Despite the damage the port continued to function throughout the war.
We lived in the middle of an industrial area that was a regular target for German bombers .. One night as we were all filing into the air raid shelter Mam dashed back into the house. "Where are you going, Mary," said Dad. "Back for my false teeth," she replied. "Come back here, the Germans are dropping bombs not meat pies," shouted Dad.
During the First World War Hull was bombed several times by Zeppelin airships. An intended raid on London by Zeppelin L9 was diverted to Hull owing to bad weather and on 6/7 June 1915 dropped 13 explosive and 50 incendiary bombs, destroying 40 houses and killing 24, and led to mobs attacking shops belonging to people believed to be of German origin. An attempted raid on Hull on 8/9 August 1915 bombed Goole by mistake owing to a navigation error. On 5 March 1916 two Zeppelins L11 and L14 were diverted to Hull from an attack on the fleet at Rosyth. Bombs were dropped on Earles shipyard (Docks) and on Paragon station (city centre) resulting in deaths. The raids showed that Hull was completely unprotected from aerial attack and public anger led to service personnel being mobbed. Further attacks came on 25 September 1917 and 10 March 1918.
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