The Bombing of Bodmin 7 August 1942
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
- For an updated and corrected account of the Bombing of Bodmin buy the eBook
www.philhadley...
2012 sees the 70th anniversary of the day World War Two came to Bodmin. This video book tells the story of a tip and run raid by two German fighter-bombers which brought death and destruction to the county town of Cornwall, UK. Using eyewitness testimony, wartime photographs, read, see and hear the incredible stories of life and death from that fateful Friday. Nine were killed, 18 injured and 400 made homeless, but it could have been so much worse...
If you can add any detail to the story of that day with a family story, old photograph or historical research please add a comment.
This video has been made to honour the memory of James Edward Tippett and the 8 members of the Sargent family who died that day. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.
For two great wartime adventures set in Cornwall check out my novels "No Small Stir" which is set on the Bodmin Stop Line during the summer of 1940 and its sequel "A Place And A Name" set in 1941 both with the town of Bodmin featuring heavily:
www.philhadley...
I retired last year and have been spending a lot of my time writing about my family tree. This week I am researching my family on my mother's side who lived in Cornwall. Geroge and Winnie Sargent were my Uncle and Aunty and I remember my mother telling me about the bomb that dropped on the Sargent house. How surprised I was to see this on youtube! Thank you for bringing it to life for me. We used to spend lovely holidays with them and spent many hours walking up and around the Beacon.
What an amasing video. My Grandfather was living in Canada at the time and had been unable to make it back home for the Celebration or I would not be here.
Thankyou very much. Most interesting & informative.
you have spent a great deal of time and energy on this informative and wonderful home made documentary of Bodmin during the war, absolutely fascinating. My other half says that his relatives names of Hutchins were listed as at the funeral of the Sergeants, and we would both like to thank you for all your efforts and sharing this with us.
Superb video, very well researched and put together, Im a Bodmin lad ...way too young for the events shown but I remember doing a project on the Bodmin bombings at school in the 80s.
Really enjoyed this.
My nan Violet Gough (married as Violet Flower) who was 12 at the time lived just up the road from the dairy and when the first bomb exploded. She found herself diving under the old Victorian table with my great uncle Fredrick Gough as the explosion caused a parts of there house tO collapse in. Amazingly the table took all the impact and they walked away. If it wasn't for that table I would have never been born.
Excellent well put together documentary of this tragic event. A pleasure to watch.Very well done. Have to say I didn't know Bodmin had been a victim of Tip And Run raids until I saw this.
Yes, humble apologies. I have made a corrected version but have left the old one on here as it stops people ripping it off!! Thanks for the feedback.
Very good video my elderly friend and I enjoyed it ! Shame about the very loud audio in a couple of parts but good none the less !
I have very vivid memories of the bombing of Bodmin on Friday 7 August 1942. My father was on his milk round on
that day, and not long before the bomb was dropped in what was then named Mill Street (now part of Dennison Road) he was talking a grocer friend of his outside his shop at the bottom of Market Street when he said that he felt like he had
the flu coming on and decided to go home and have his lunch and take a couple of aspirins. He was near St. Leonard’s Terrace at the top of the town when he heard the explosions, being of a curious nature, he turned around and drove back down Burnard’s Lane and at the bottom near what is now a petrol filling station he saw the devastation the bomb had caused.
It was then he decided to come home to get me and not long after, we were standing at the bottom of Chapel Lane looking in total disbelief at what had happened. I clearly remember the site of windows blown out, slates off the roofs of the cottages all around us. The roofs and cars in Pool Street were covered in butter, margarine, cooking fat and other objects blown on to them by the bomb blast when it exploded; these came from the Primrose Dairy depot which was located in the old Mill opposite Chapel Lane. Ironically, the firm re-located to the old Workhouse in Cross Lane by the cemetery, and when I left school at Easter 1950 I was given a job as “Store-boy” with the firm!
Before my father arrived home to our Dairy farm in Little Kirland I was playing in our front garden when I hear the sound of aircraft approaching from the direction of Trekillick Farm just under half a mile to the south-west. They flew low over our house with their guns blazing as they machine-gunned the train travelling on the Bodmin-Wadebridge line just to the north of us towards Bodmin General Station.The sound of the gun-fire and site of the two aircraft with the black and white German crosses on the fuselage and wings with the pilots in their cockpits will remain with me for the rest of my life. One good thing that came out of that experience;
it gave me the inspiration to want to fly, so much so, as soon as I reached the age of 17 I volunteered for regular service in the RAF. Although I did not become a pilot, I had the good fortune to have a two and a half hour flight in a Gloster Meteor Mk. 7 when I was stationed in the Suez Canal Zone, Egypt in the 1950’s also many hours flying in other aircraft including helicopters!
One final word, when my father and I arrived home he went up into the fields above our farmyard and returned with his hands full of empty brass canon shells; I have often wondered what happened to them?
Gary James.
Thank you for sharing. Am I right in thinking the shop you mention was Helson's and run by Raymond Helson (mentioned as a boy in the video) until it closed?
Thank you for posting this very interesting video, I saw the Sargent graves when visiting the Bodmin cemetery recently. Can you tell me when Orange Terrace was demolished?
Thank you so much for reply you have been very kind, so often in documents Orange Terrace is mis spelt as Grange. It has been so difficult to pinpoint site before, thanks again
You are most welcome. All the best with your research.
My parents have just really enjoyed watching this. They were both in the vicinity of Pool Street during this time.Mr David Goss and Mrs Maureen Goss Nee Down witnessed the event as very young children.
+Jan Sturges Thank you for sharing.
Is it possible to obtain a copy of this video on DVD please?
very sad and poignant by the end i was in tears...i lived in Bodmin for a year on the Kinsman est,. very nice people in bodmin
What an amazing film, I never realised Bodmin was bombed. Such a shame they dont teach in schools.
Orange Terrace had been demolished by the mid 1970s when the overgrown site was used as a short cut between Berryfields and the Lorry Park. The church now on the site was built in 1981. The Fire Station was built on the old gasworks in 1968 so possibly then. Pat Munn's The Cornish Capital which gives a guide to each road makes no mention of Orange Terace. Sorry I can't be of any more assistance.
once found an old ww2 beyonet sticking out of a field when in was a kid the museum offered us any money we wanted for it but we said no still
I am a 5th generation Cornish Australian and am proud of my heritage my surname is actually Creeper and there are lots of tre's and other names in my ancestry.
Really hasent changed all that much after all these years
Anyone researched the Pilots?
WW2 1939-1945.