Comments on: November 1944

By: Martyn Wait

Martyn Wait — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 10:21:47 +0000

I hope this site is still active, I found it extremely useful in getting to the bottom of a mystery. While at Chadwell Heath cemetery, Dagenham I came across a War Grave headstone for Sgt Janet Harding of the WAAF, intriguing because it is very unusual to find a female with a War Grave. The DoD was 05/11/44. I tried various sources (books, internet) in vain but one blog stated that Sgt Harding died at 321 Hatton Rd, Bedfont, Middx together with her mother Rosa Harding and her sister Millicent Mullery. Dubious about this, I wasted a lot of time trying to put it together. Cutting to the chase, the booklet Danger over Dagenham lists Mrs Janet Harding with a DoD of 05/11/44 at 122 Lymington Rd. Her married name and the location undermined the Bedfont theory. Tracing her husband (they married in 1943) and in-laws by that address in the 1939 census, it placed her in the right spot and your website shows the location of a V2 strike on Dagenham on 05/11/44 approx 100 yards from the back garden of that house in an area used at the time for allotments. Sadly, Janet was in the wrong place at the wrong time, the only fatality. It’s now clear that she must have been caught in the blast, maybe in the garden, maybe on the allotments, maybe walking a dog – I don’t know but at least I have been able to solve the mystery for my own satisfaction due to your website giving an accurate, precise location for Big Ben 153. I will now be able to use it for further investigation of other V2 conundrums, so thank you to the people who took the time and trouble to create this exceptional website. PS Coincidentally, just a few yards from where the V2 struck is the block of flats that burned down and featured on the national news on 26/08/24, another disaster but fortunately with no fatalities on this occasion.

By: oozlum

oozlum — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 22:23:06 +0000

In reply to Antony Seville. My family lived just around the corner in Flamstead, I was yet to be born. There seem to be different numbers of dead, seemingly 1 or 3. My mother only told me of one death, a lady who was hanging her washing out at the time, they never found any remains. Unfortunately, I do not have her name.

By: Paul Marsh

Paul Marsh — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 22:19:58 +0000

Should add …. Hardcastle street se15 …Peckham London ..

By: Paul Marsh

Paul Marsh — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 22:11:47 +0000

My father lived in hardcastle street as a boy ..he and his family were bombed out …… He remembers him and his brother being ordered to stack sewing machines from a corset factory by a ARP warden when on their way to school
Hope this helps

Regards Paul Marsh

By: Brian Harris

Brian Harris — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 15:50:45 +0000

Incident 198
My parents Leonard and Winifred Harris and my sister Patricia then aged 8 Were living at 113 Mildmay Road Islington which is near the school on which the V2 landed. My sister went to the school. I was not born until June 1945. My mother told me about the rocket attack. That night was very cold and my father was on leave from Chatham. Because it was so cold all three decided to sleep in one bed. They were woken by the explosion which shattered the windows which faced the school. My sisters bedroom, which fortunately she did not sleep in that night was covered with broken glass and her bed was covered with many sharp shards of glass. Had she been in it she would have been cut very badly, but as she slept that night at the other side of the house, where the windows did not break, she and my parents were fine.

By: Peter Chappell

Peter Chappell — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 11:30:26 +0000

I lived in Luton, Bedfordshire during the war and I remember the V2 landing on 6th November 1944. It was five days before my 4th birthday and it is my most vivid memory of the war. I was in our dining room in the morning and there was suddenly a huge bang. I ran to my mother who had heard the bang and thought that it was in the direction of the house of her stepmother, so we immediately went off to walk to her house. Very quickly we discovered a lot of damage in streets at the Commer Cars truck factory which was about half a mile from our home. We walked round the damage and got to my mother’s stepmother’s terraced house which was empty. She had gone shopping and returned soon after we arrived. When we went inside we saw a large crack down the wall inside, bur the house did not appear to be seriously damaged. It turned out that 19 people had been killed and 196 injured, and about 1500 houses had been damaged, and the new Commer dining room had been destroyed. The rocket landed at about 9:50 am and the dining room was empty. If it had landed only 10 minutes later the dining room would have had lots of people inside having tea and may more would have been killed. When we got home we saw that the windows in the house opposite us had been blown out, but we had no damage.

By: Coral Gosling

Coral Gosling — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 16:14:18 +0000

RE: Incident Number 212

While tracing my family tree, my mum told me of the V2 rocket that hit the corner of our road. I didn’t know the date but managed to look it up on your map. Our house was built in 1903 & had 5 generations living in it on the night of the attack, my great nan was sleeping downstairs after having a stroke, my nan was with her, the rocket hit the corner of Fourth Ave & Dagenham Rd. As ours was the first house it took some of the blast & knocked down part of the staircase, wall & damaged the fireplace ( still in the house today) if my great nan had been in her bedroom, she wouldn’t have survived, but luckily they were downstairs &survived.

By: Graham Hall

Graham Hall — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 17:37:32 +0000

Re no 164. It may have been a tenement block but it was also the site of the Norwegian Naval college in London.

By: Simon Neil

Simon Neil — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 14:15:41 +0000

Reference Incident Number 284

I lived in Reynolds Place SE3 in the 1980s and our neighbours who were children in 1944 told us about the V2 strike that wiped out houses in the next street. I had wondered why there were new flats there and the Victorian terrace houses that filled the streets in that estate were missing. They remembered it coming down in the middle of the night with a huge bang and shaking everything off the walls. They said only 1 person of the listed dead was in Reynolds Place, even though it landed in the next street, which shows how highly localised a V2 strike was. The person who died survived the strike, but were trapped in an upstairs bedroom by debris, and the gas line to their fireplace broke and they died from breathing the escaping gas before they could be rescued.

By: Roger Hayward

Roger Hayward — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 19:35:19 +0000

Re: Incident Number 227
Just before the war my parents bought a brand new 3 bed semi in Trevose Road E17.
I’ve recently found the details. Deposit of £40 on a sale price of £750. My mother spent the war
working as a clippie on the buses even walking on raid nights to Edmonton garage for her shift. At
noon on the 21st November 1944 8 months pregnant with me a V2 landed between Longacre and Trevose
Road (location is incorrect on site) slightly into the forest. It demolished 6 houses in Trevose
Road and partially destroyed another 12. She was alone upstairs in the front bedroom as it struck,
but by a miracle the door blew off hit her and wedged itself at an angle against the iron bed frame,
with her underneath, a second later the entire first floor side of the house including the chimney
collapsed in the bedroom, but that heavy door saved her. In fact after they dug her out they found
she had no injuries at all, very lucky my Mum.