LONDON-L Archives

Archiver > LONDON > 2001-06 > 0993831431


From: Jim Balmer <>
Subject: Re: [Lon] Poplar East London
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 17:17:11 +0100
In-Reply-To: <002f01c1006e$e3f26240$90147ad5@rdbjs>


I think this refers to the raid in which a Poplar school was bombed:

[13th June 1917]

The main body [of Gothas] in diamond formation, headed by a leader, some
twelve thousand feet up, kept on their course for the capital with the roar
of their engines as an index of their purpose.

Having passed through the various gun barrages the Gothas reached London
and dropped the first group of bombs between East Ham and the Royal Albert
docks. The leader turned when over the centre of the city, firing a white
flare as a signal for the rest to turn. The main attack was withheld until,
at a given sign from the leader, 72 bombs were released within a radius of a
mile from Liverpool Street station between 11.40 and 11.42 a.m. Three fell
on the station itself. After dropping their main load the Gothas wheeled and
seem to have lost their formation, one section circling to the north, and
the other to the south. Six crossed the Thames above Tower bridge and
dropped further bombs in Tooley street and in Bermondsey. The northward
phalanx bombed Dalston and Saffron Hill. They then proceeded east and
harassed Stepney, Limehouse and Poplar. 126 bombs in all, of a total weight
of some four tons, were dropped on the metropolis, seventeen in the City of
London.

Death and destruction were spread uniformly from Barking to Bermondsey,
from Aldgate to Hoxton. The wreckage included schools, stables, sundry
domestic works, a brewery and private houses, mainly in crowded quarters
east and north-east. At Liverpool Street station one bomb which shot through
the roof shattered a coach and ignited two others, while two fell on
platforms.

The raiders passed out whence they had come. In vain did lonesome pilots
hurl themselves against their solid ranks, and in vain did every available
gun open fire upon the spent bombers.

Captain C. W. E. Cole-Hamilton, who with Captain C. H. C. Keevil as
observer, had gone up in a Bristol Fighter from No. 35 Training Squadron at
Northolt, attacked three enemy machines over Ilford. The Gothas returned his
fire, and he only broke off the unequal combat after his gun jammed and
Keevil was killed.

The five bombs dropped by the Margate raider injured a man, a woman and
two children, while in Essex six bombs wounded a man and child at
Shoeburyness. The casualties for London were, 162 killed and 432 injured,
making a vast total for the raid of 594 killed and injured. These were far
and above the greatest ever inflicted in any one raid. In fact, they were
not far short of the total for all the Zeppelin raids of 1915, and with a
tithe of the weight of the bombs dropped during these.

[The German Air Raids on Great Britain 1914-1918, by Captain Joseph Morris.
Sampson Lowe, Marston & Co, c.1925]

Jim Balmer

(Researching BALMER, all periods, all UK & Ireland)

This thread: