Did Hitler bomb your house?

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

Seeing as how its the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Blitz...

How close was the Luftwaffe to getting your little piece of Brighton?

 

[Gwylan]

Well, my house didn't exist then - Coldean was mainly fields - but I'm amazed to see that a bomb did fall very close to where my house is. That must have just hit the odd sheep then.

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

Well, my house didn't exist then - Coldean was mainly fields - but I'm amazed to see that a bomb did fall very close to where my house is. That must have just hit the odd sheep then.

UXB under the carrots then.

 

[Barrel of Fun]

My folks' house was farmland in those days. The immediate area seems to have survived relatively unscathed.

 

[The Large One]

Missed our house.

They did hit the house my then two-week old dad was in (Argyle Villas) during the heaviest bombing of Brighton during the war - on 25th May 1943.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Seems like He (capital H for HITLER and not HIMUPSTAIRS) aimed at the Franklin on Lewes Road, my sister's once-favourite dingy pub, the shrapnel being lodged in the Spar's undying sense of overpriced self. Our house (in the middle of our street) seemed to have been bombed around, but not directly on.

 

[KZNSeagull]

Good map!!

It would appear that the North East Stand got clobbered.

I assume that these were stray bombs from planes being forced back from London or was Brighton specifically targetted?

 

[Horton's halftime iceberg]

These are amazing maps, where are they from.

You can see the single bomb that hit the Franklin Arms on Lewes Road. What problem did they have with the 12th hole on the golf course.

More importantly is their an unexploded one under Falmer, with 22,000 people rocking it could be the first and last game.

 

[Dave the OAP]

My wife's mum had a house in Queens Park Road. One afternoon the family were sat in the back garden and a meserschmitt came over , circled around and fired on the area they were all sitting. She recalls diving into the anderson shelter that her parents had dug out in the back garden, as the bulletts raked the wall of the house.

She said that the on the house up until it had been re-rendered about 15 years ago you could still make out the line of bullets going up the house. ( It was one of the large semi detatch houses near the Pepperpot seemly).

It does seem strange that a pilot would see people sat in their garden and open fire on them and then fly off.

 

[Horton's halftime iceberg]

Looks like they took out the main scoreboard at the county ground, just not cricket.

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

These are amazing maps, where are they from.

You can see the single bomb that hit the Franklin Arms on Lewes Road. What problem did they have with the 12th hole on the golf course.

More importantly is their an unexploded one under Falmer, with 22,000 people rocking it could be the first and last game.

Map was published by the Argus (might have been its predecessor) in 1946 and is on my brighton and hove.

If you look at the sites on street view you can see where there are mysterious new looking houses among the old ones.

 

[daveinprague]

I went to the Knoll School for young gentleman along Old Shoreham road...had no idea a string of bombs just missed the school....would have thought they would have mentioned it.....maybe they did.....when I was at school there during history or something, but I dont remember it ever being mentioned.

 

[Dave the OAP]

presumably the ones in Kemp Town were after the gas Works? and I am very surprised the Shoreham Docks and Power Station didnt get hit more

 

[Horton's halftime iceberg]

Map was published by the Argus (might have been its predecessor) in 1946 and is on my brighton and hove.

If you look at the sites on street view you can see where there are mysterious new looking houses among the old ones.

The Franklin Arms has always had that new rebuild look to me. The old folk around me always talk of the bombing around us and I believe quite a few died in that raid along lewes road. Was quite a run of bombs across Hollingbury towards the Barracks on Lewes Road.

 

[sam86]

What a brilliant map!

 

[Barrel of Fun]

Some amazing pictures on here...

BBC News - The Blitz, which began 70 years ago today, in pictures

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

presumably the ones in Kemp Town were after the gas Works?

They got it too.

The Odeon in kemptown was hit during a kids matinee...lots of deaths there.

 

[Stoo82]

By the look of the second map, the bastard missed me by 2 or 3 doors.

Up yours Hitler!

 

[Uncle C]

Mt old house at the junction of Aldrington Ave and Amherst Cres had been rebuilt after a bomb hit it.

It was generally reckoned to be a straggler trying to make use of his last bomb by hitting the railway line at Aldrington Halt, but he just missed.

After the war, building materials and in particular wood was in short supply. My house contained an assortment of bricks and concrete floors unlike my neighbour's who had wood.

My old neighbour who lived there then, worked at Harrington Coach Works at the top of Amherst. He heard the bomb drop and came running down the road to see his house demolished and his bedroom curtains hanging in the tree outside. He was lucky it did not drop at night.

 

[Chris45]

Ties in nicely with what I was told as a kid that a bomb was dropped on the corner of Amherst Crescent, very close to our family home next to the tunnel.