I learned about the causes. How tanks were made in this quiet backwater, and naval operations planned by the Admiralty, whose successor the Ministry of Defence still has major officers in Bath. How Harbutt’s Plasticine factory at Bathampton, famous for the craft toy it produced for generations of children, was mistaken by Nazi planners for a secret installation. And how Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary after the raids: “There is talk about scenes like those in Coventry. That is the sort of music we like to hear.”
The Bath Blitz
All about a bargain book which tells the story of the bombing of Bath, with masses of pictures, many taken during the raid.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Here it is...
I learned about the causes. How tanks were made in this quiet backwater, and naval operations planned by the Admiralty, whose successor the Ministry of Defence still has major officers in Bath. How Harbutt’s Plasticine factory at Bathampton, famous for the craft toy it produced for generations of children, was mistaken by Nazi planners for a secret installation. And how Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary after the raids: “There is talk about scenes like those in Coventry. That is the sort of music we like to hear.”
On the telly, too
On the fortieth anniversary in 1982, I wrote and presented an ITV documentary on the tragedy, starting in Milk Street (top, above) complete with the dramatic shrapnel scars. This brought further unpublished information to light. In a new edition, the book included fresh details on the RAF’s attempts to prevent the raid and hunt down the bombers. Much of it was provided by retired Air Chief Marshal Sir Denis ‘Splinters’ Smallwood, who commanded a squadron of night fighters at Charmy Down, where the skeletal remains of the old base can still be found in fields off the A46. He made an excellent interviewee in the programme as did Ron Shearn, who was filmed in his favourite Bath pub (second picture, above).
Goodness, another bomb
I also added a fresh chapter in a further new edition, on the curious IRA bomb attack on Bath in 1974, which caused no injuries but severely damaged the Corridor arcade. On the night in question, I had been to council meetings with the deputy news editor, John Donaldson, and was writing up reports with him in the office in Westgate Street. Although we were only a block away, we heard just a very slight ‘whump’ and felt an almost imperceptible shudder.
We were inclined to return to our typewriters but then the 'phones went mad. Such are the ways of blast and sound, that people in the valley from Widcombe to Limpley Stoke thought the world was coming to an end. It's all in the book, with pictures such as this one, courtesy of the Bath Chronicle, which were taken that night.
The ploy was counter-productive and hardened opinion against concessions in Northern Ireland - in much the same way as the Baedecker Raids did in 1942. The book includes some thoughtful passages on that subject from a woman in the countryside near Bath who kept a diary for Mass Observation - again, material which has not previously been published.