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Although Letchworth escaped serious attack during the war, the proximity of air bases meant that allied planes flew over most nights on their way to raids, and enemy planes were also seen in the sky.
One afternoon as we left school we heard first, the eerie sound of the air raid siren alert, then the loud sound of an aeroplane. We had reached the corner shop in Spring Road and many of us children just stood staring in fascination as an aeroplane roared so low over our heads that we could clearly see the pilot in the cockpit. Then we saw that the plane had a swastika on the side and we knew that it was a German plane. Some children screamed and scattered, but my sister and I were rooted to the spot and watched it until it disappeared over the rooftops. We ran all the way home to tell our mother what we had seen, and were very upset and subdued when we were roundly told off for being so silly as to stand and watch the plane. Didn't we know that we could all have been machined-gunned and killed? No, we had not thought of that, but it had all happened so quickly and to us it had seemed an exciting adventure!
When the war started I was at Hillshott School. I can remember things like one playtime we were out there and a German plane followed by a Spitfire came across so low that we could see the pilot, and we did hear that the English one shot the German plane down somewhere near Royston.
I came to Letchworth in 1938, my father was a miner. I went to Westbury School, and later Pixmore School. I was at Westbury school when war started and I remember quite distinctly a Dornier 17 coming over and the teacher shouting out, 'get down in the kerb put your hands under your bellies' so we did this, not realising what it was all about basically. I sort of looked up and you could see the rear gunner in the turret quite distinctly from where we were. Apparently they traced it and shot it down over the North Sea. Scary at the time, nevertheless no damage done anywhere.
I remember bomber bases. These 100 bombers and that, you could see them up in the sky. I've seen them flying around. The old Flying Fortresses used to come over in large numbers. Duxford was quite productive in those days, and Litlington, just over the other side of Ashwell, and some of the sheds are still there.
There were many airfields throughout East Anglia and as the Allies went on the offensive with bombing attacks on Germany, it became commonplace to see our planes going out over Letchworth. In daytime it would be formations of Flying Fortresses, but at dusk there would be single Lancasters of the RAF flying over at regular intervals, all set on the same course, but looking very lonely by comparison.
After Coventry was devastated, the Blitz of Germany by our bombers blackened the sky, and after the ritual counting on their return we (all the neighbours) were about to go into our houses again when from the distance a broken humming noise was heard. And then we saw the American bomber limping home with its tail and a wing on fire, barely above the rooftops. We all prayed for a safe landing, and learned the next day that it was safe at Bassingbourne, and that as the pilot stepped from the plane he collapsed, saying he had "brought the boys home". Every man inside the plane was dead. I believe this was used in a TV serial entitled Yanks, which was taken from factual accounts; but there are some of us left who still remember the actual event.
Our War in Letchworth seemed to start with a stray German fighter - who I presume was returning back to base and had some spare bullets in his machine-gun, machine-gunning the Letchworth railway line.
Well I can remember walking down Icknield Way with my son, who was about four, and I looked up and saw this German plane. I was terrified and thought it was going to bomb us, and so I pushed my son and we both went under this hedge, in somebody's garden and stayed there until it had gone. When I had got to Glebe Road and I told my Mum and one of the neighbours, they said that it was a reconnaissance plane.
It seemed to take a long time for anything to happen, until the night skies suddenly became interesting with scatterings of barrage balloons and searchlights. It became even more exciting when, one day after the all-clear had gone, our teacher took the class for a nature walk from Norton Road School and to get some fresh air. (We had been made to wear our gas-masks while the raid was on.) We were walking in single file opposite Cashio Lane when a German plane roared out of the clouds and began firing a machine gun at us. Remembering our drill we all threw ourselves onto the ground as bits of slate from a nearby house flew into the air. Quite recently I was driving past this same house and noticed they were having the roof re-tiled. I longed to knock at the door to ask if they found anything interesting in the roof, like a few German bullets!
I remember another thing on a Sunday morning. A very misty morning although there were breaks in it. I used to live in Cromwell Road which was next door to the British Tab, as it was in those days, and on top of their works they had two look-out posts with machine guns on them. There was this droning noise, about mid-morning. All of a sudden, right over the railway line which was only about a hundred yards further over, low down, only a few hundred feet up was a black Dornier bomber. The fellows on the Tab roof opened fire at it and we understand it came down in Cambridgeshire. He was hurt, anyway, because smoke was belching out of him. It was either the Home Guard or their own security guards. I don't know which was which, but I know they had a pop at it.
I remember all the barrage balloons, but most of all I used to stand outside school and I used to watch all the Super Fortresses and the gliders, night after night. I used to watch all the searchlights, a long way away.
We came out one night - it was double summer time, and it was quite late, tennish - and the sky was full of aircraft pulling gliders. We could see them as far as you could see, these aircraft pulling gliders. It could have been Arnhem. I remember standing in the Broadway looking up at them absolutely astonished. They used to come over regularly. They came over the night we went to Coventry. You could hear them going and hear them coming back.
I can remember a wreck of a German plane - I have a memory of a firm called Shirtliffe in Icknield Way. Off the track parallel to Icknield Way. I can remember clambering up the fence and looking at the remains of this German plane - it must have been brought there to be cut up - for scrap metal I guess.
Some bombs were dropped in Letchworth, although no real damage was done.
I remember them dropping one or two small bombs on Norton Village school. That rocked the house a bit and there was also some dropped down by the railway line.
They dropped a stick of five or six down Wilbury Road by that big island railway bridge. If you go in the train to Kings Cross and look out you can see the five colours where they blew ruddy great holes in the floor.
They dropped two bombs, thousand pound bombs, either side of the railway up Wilbury Hills way and the craters are still there, white chalk marks about 50 feet across, on each side of the railway where the bridge is.
The two big craters they must have been 40 or 50 ft deep with a span of about, roughly forty foot in diameter and if you go down there today you can see these craters either side of the railway. If you went up there now you wouldn't see anything because they've got cornfields either side, Once the corn's been harvested you'll see them, round rings of chalk they lay there for some time until they were covered over and filled in. They filled them with chalk and stuff like that.
But I do remember the bombs - Letchworth was targeted. There were two bomb craters this side of the railway line because we went down to play in it - much to our parents' disapproval - and there was also two the other side of the railway line - this end of the bridge - the road bridge. I remember that quite well. So the Germans were definitely after that line because of the K & L, because I think K & L used to provide tanks. I remember the tanks coming through on the goods trains. We used to stand up there and watch them.
Incendiaries were dropped on Letchworth during the time of the London blitz and one night a number landed on the field opposite the Haselfoot houses. Mrs Green (widow of Fred Green the APP Warden.) remembers members of the family helping to stamp out the flames. As they had come down slowly she remembers they lit up the Spirella Building as if floodlit.
One final memory - the first (and I believe only) bomb to land in Letchworth was plonk in the centre of Wymondley Road (near the Airman's Memorial). The explosion made a great crater and the first casualties were a rabbit and two birds. I took a pretty picture of the scene - but the picture was censored. Presumably as it might have given away vital information to the enemy!
I remember my bed shaking. We had sent Mother off to recoup from all her troubles, and Father and I were there on our own. I was terrified. I didn't get out of bed and get underneath, which was the proper procedure. I thought I would shake it down if I moved! We were lucky. They fell all around. Whether they were aiming at anything here I don't know. They could have been aiming at K & L. It was said that Letchworth could not be seen from the air, because of all the trees.
It is hard to believe you could see the glow of London from Letchworth, but you could. I know one night the bombs were going off so much that my stepbrother had a bed with brass knobs on and they all rattled, and the windows all rattled. Surely that must have been closer. They must have dropped something closer than London.
Considering the industry in this area the town was extremely lucky, the nearest disaster that I was aware of was a flying bomb landing on Pirton.
Doodlebugs used to fly over, and cause much worry amongst the residents, especially when they went silent.
The next ones were the doodlebugs. You could tell the doodlebug because you could hear it whistling. "Here it comes", they'd say. "Under the stairs as soon as the engine cuts out". One of them hit a greenhouse in Pirton. Then they brought out the VII rocket. It landed in Luton. It was meant for Vauxhall Palace but it hit a hosiery factory.
I remember one night hearing the drone of a doodlebug. I remember looking out of the window and seeing the flame go out, which meant it was going down somewhere. I think they used to travel quite a way after. It could have gone as far as Hatfield, or something like that.
Another terrible thing was when mother, Marian Leitner, and myself were standing at the front door of the Spring Road house one night in 1944. There were a lot of VI missiles coming over. My father was away on Fire service so just the three of us standing at the front door watching these things go over. They came from Broadwater Avenue direction across Spring Road, and one particular one, the fire in the tail went out as it seemed to be over High Avenue. Instead of getting down we just stood there in horror and the explosion blew our hair - the warm air on our faces and our hair blew up. This VI must have landed behind Hillbrow - in the fields between Letchworth and Hitchin. This was our nearest miss luckily during the whole of the War. Although a lot of planes - enemy and our own - passed over Letchworth, we were very lucky that there was nothing in the way of great bomb tragedies at all - that was a near miss that night.
Letchworth really escaped contact with the War as far as bombing or anything like that was concerned. I remember a flying bomb going over. I don't know where it landed. I can't remember any air raids in the times I was here.
One of my vivid memories is of my grandparents coming to stay with us. It would have been either late 1944 or early 1945, and they had only been with us a short time and it was a Sunday evening and I heard a noise which I had not heard before but which my parents recognised as a VI.
We had not got an Anderson shelter in the garden - our air-raid shelter was a solid oak table in the living room and I've got vivid memories of cowering under that. Anyway there were my parents, myself and my grandparents cowering under the oak table and, of course, the inevitable happened - the familiar buzz of the VI stopped and we waited for the explosion and, in fact, we heard it. We learned afterwards that it had fallen into a field near Pirton and the sole casualty was a rabbit which was killed by the blast. I can also remember just after that time - again on a Sunday evening - when there was a fairly muffled explosion which we learned afterwards was a V2 but I don't know how close that was to Letchworth. I am reliably informed that the nearest a V2 fell to Letchworth was actually over at Arlesey near to the brick fields.
We had one famous doodlebug that came right over, and it came over every house in Letchworth, to hear people talk! One of them came down at Pirton, I think. That passed over Letchworth. The warden on duty at the end of Bedford Road set off running across here, because he thought it had fallen on this part of the estate. So that did come fairly near us.
Say 1941/42, I remember the old doodlebugs they sent over. They were just like a kind of bomb, shaped like a bomb, with two little wings on the back and two big ones on the bottom. The wings were square and there was a little propeller, a motor in it and high explosives. They had a range of about 1500 to 3000 miles and they were basically built to hit a target. The engine would cut and then they would glide for a mile or two miles and then anything that was in their way, that was it. One landed in Pirton, a little village the other side of Hitchin. It did extensive damage to greenhouses and sheds and outbuildings. I don't think there was anybody killed or injured.
They (doodlebugs) were funny looking old things. They made a funny old noise when they come over. We got used to them, you always knew when one was coming. Then there was the V 2 rocket. That was a little more devastating. The first one they sent over, though l think it was meant for somewhere else, went into Luton. In my opinion Vauxhall Motors was the target or an armaments factory in Luton and I know there was some fatalities there, quite a lot of injuries, a house was destroyed. Hitler was not all that clever; too clever for his own good or else we would not have been here today to tell the tale.
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