Bankie born and bred, family home in Second Terrace was destroyed in the bombing, grandparents and my mum aged 8 crawled out through a hole blasted in the living room wall and made their way along Second Avenue, she described the heat of the road burning the soles of her bare feet as she was only in her nightie ... the family escaped but lost everything...the upstairs neighbours all died. RIP all innocent victims of war.
"a lovely moonlit night"...where no one in the Air Defences monitored German bombers moving towards the Red Clydeside ...who carried the can for THAT debacle My Parents were survivors
The Duke of Hamilton was, I believe, in charge of the Central Belt air defences or, at the very least, in a very senior role at RAF Turnhouse (Edinburgh) on the nights of the 13th and 14th of March, 1941. As you no doubt know he was the guy that Rudolf Hess flew in to see a couple of months later. There are rumours that the landing lights were on (during the blackout!) at the Duke's airstrip at his Dungavel estate the night Hess flew in. All very murky! 🤨 Returning to the Blitz. It was a catalogue of 'errors.' Everyone expected Greater Glasgow to be bombed but Clydebank District Council hadn't got its act together enough to construct proper shelters for the tenement dwellers. Money was surely not the issue because the town was 'booming' on account of all the war orders. Most of the communal 'shelters' that had been built didn't even have roofs! So, the poor souls had to 'take shelter' in the ground floor of their tenements or basements if they were available (mostly they weren't.) One of the biggest problems with the tenements was that they were constructed from large blocks of solid sandstone. Imagine one of them falling on you - nae chance! Many terrified people fled the crumbling and/or burning tenements in the middle of the raid and took their chances in the parks. (Why weren't communal underground shelters constructed in Dalmuir Park; the High Park etc. etc. ?!) So, the inadequate preparations were grossly negligent to say the least and probably accounted for far too many of the casualties. As for the nights of the raid itself. The Germans used radio navigation beams to direct their bombers on to their targets. Because of the relatively long flight times (compared to the south of England) these beams were detected by British monitoring stations as early as 6 PM on the 13th of March. So, the authorities knew with a very high degree of certainty that the Luftwaffe was headed for the Clyde. By 1941 the British were able to interfere with the German beams and thus send the incoming bombers off course but this was not done on the 13th and 14th of March, 1941. WHY?! 🤨 The bombers left from several different airfields in France and the Low Countries and mostly flew in over the North Sea. Radar stations on the English east coast tracked them coming in and must have seen that it was a large fleet. Observer Corps posts got eyes on the bombers as they crossed the Northumberland coast. I met ordinary people from the Borders who saw some flying over and surmised correctly that Greater Glasgow was about to be hit. Despite all that, the air raid sirens only sounded in Clydebank AFTER the first bombs had started falling at 9 PM. WHY?! 🤨 All Bankies know well that given as little as 30 minutes to an hour advance warning many people could have made it to the hills above the town and relative safety. However, most probably wouldn't have bothered because as those who lived through those awful nights related there had been as many as 40 false alarms in the months leading up to the Blitz. WHY?! 🤨 Another thing that inexplicably apparently didn't happen was that RAF 603 (City of Edinburgh) Sqn. wasn't scrambled and sent up to intercept the incoming bombers. WHY NOT?! Sure, they would never have got them all but they might have got a few seeing as it was a clear moonlit night! 🤨 RAF 602 (City of Glasgow) Sqn. was scrambled and ordered to circle the Clyde at around 20,000 ft (or something fairly high) and await the bombers. They were tasked to implement an RAF 'tactic' never used before (or after) in the Blitz called Operation Fighter Night. The idea was they were to stay above the range of the Ack-Ack and only engage the bombers after they ascended to avoid the Ack-Ack. But the bombers didn't ascend and very quickly the 602 pilots radioed this in and requested permission to descend and engage. Permission was denied. WHY?! 🤨 Why did the Duke and his fellow officers refuse permission for their pilots to defend their own city?! Instead, the pilots could only look down in horror at the unfolding carnage beneath them. 602 Sqn. was grounded around midnight and never sent up again. All the Ack-Ack guns in and around Clydebank ran out of ammo at 2 AM which meant that the guns of the Polish destroyer ORP Piorun (being repaired at John Brown's) were the only guns left firing at the bombers. Despite there no-longer being any Ack-Ack 602 Sqn. wasn't scrambled again. WHY?! 🤨 In summary, the people of Greater Glasgow and in particular Clydebank were left defenseless sitting ducks! How could such a shameful series of 'blunders' have been allowed to happen? Just incompetence and negligence or were there perhaps other reasons? 🤔🤨 To my knowledge Red Clydeside was the only place in the whole of the UK to have a strike in the war. Several thousand shipyard apprentices downed tools along the Clyde just days before the Blitz to protest the fact that while the shipyard owners and senior management were coining it in they were still scraping by (many had families) on absolutely pitiful wages. Whitehall had been worried about a Soviet style revolution breaking out on Red Clydeside for some time. Adding to their worries was the fact many of these Scottish Stalinists weren't exactly all in for the war seeing as their main man Stalin was still allied to Hitler in a peace pact. Did Whitehall and complicit traitors in Scotland let Clydebank get hit hard in order to snuff out the simmering embers of revolt? At least one Bankie woman who survived the Holy City inferno (the incendiaries setting off the flat pitch roofs led to at least 70 deaths) thought so. I was told she even wrote a book espousing this theory but I've never been able to track it down. Why was Clydebank hit so hard? The Germans' code word for the target was 'Gregor' which almost certainly stood for Glasgow. The Luftwaffe was supposed to hit many targets in Greater Glasgow (including the huge Rolls Royce Merlin factory at Hillington) over the two nights but ended up missing most and concentrating their efforts on Clydebank. WHY?! 🤨 (A notable exception was Yarrow's shipyard at Scotstoun where around 40 men on nightshift were killed when their shelter took a direct hit.) Compared to the RAF the Luftwaffe weren't actually very good at area bombing. While the RAF had raid coordinators who circled above the target and told their incoming bombers which pathfinder coloured flares to aim at ("Bomb on green!" etc.) thus evenly distributing the carnage, the Luftwaffe didn't bother and instead their bomb aimers tended to aim at the first big fires they saw and so certain areas got bombed relentlessly all night and others left relatively unscathed. Clydebank was bombed relentlessly on the 13th of March because it had the 'misfortune' to have not one, but THREE huge blazes (aligned in an almost perfect straight line that ran from the western to the eastern boundaries of the town) start almost as soon as the first bombs fell: the Admiralty oil tanks at Mountblow; Singer's wood yard and a whisky distillery in Yoker. What terrible, terrible luck! Or, was it? Could these infernos that shone like beacons and helped to guide the first waves of bombers to Clydebank have been deliberately started by traitors on the ground? 🤔🤨 Very soon huge swathes of the town were ablaze. The infernos in Clydebank could be seen at ground level at least as far away as Dunoon. RAF aircrews based at Dyce in Aberdeenshire also observed the burning town. News of the raid was heavily censored with the extent of the devastation and number of casualties (1,200+ killed in total in Greater Glasgow over the two nights - making it at least as deadly a raid as the one on Coventry!) hugely played down. WHY? Just for reasons of morale (like the heavy censoring of the many raids on Merseyside), or perhaps other reasons too? 🤨 I think it's time for Bankies (or descendents of Bankies) like us to start asking serious questions. We owe it to our forebearers.
Always proud to be a Bankie
My dad survived the Blitz
Our house was one of so many damaged
After the war Clydebank was a great place👍👍👍
Bankie born and bred, family home in Second Terrace was destroyed in the bombing, grandparents and my mum aged 8 crawled out through a hole blasted in the living room wall and made their way along Second Avenue, she described the heat of the road burning the soles of her bare feet as she was only in her nightie ... the family escaped but lost everything...the upstairs neighbours all died. RIP all innocent victims of war.
Very good documentary, a timely reminder of the horrors of fascism and war, and the consequences for ordinary people.
Thank you David. It's important to keep remembering.
Stunning piece of music, and deeply moving
Thanks Alan!
Went over to visit the memorial at Dalnottar Crem today 😥🙏🏼 rest easy
Brilliant production and very evocative music from Chris
Thank you, Fiona!
This is the first thing that I’ve seen in school that I am willing to take the half out out of my day to reacerch
You need spelling lessons
"a lovely moonlit night"...where no one in the Air Defences monitored German bombers moving towards the Red Clydeside
...who carried the can for THAT debacle
My Parents were survivors
God Bless them
My dad too,survived the Blitz
RIP. dad much missed
The Duke of Hamilton was, I believe, in charge of the Central Belt air defences or, at the very least, in a very senior role at RAF Turnhouse (Edinburgh) on the nights of the 13th and 14th of March, 1941. As you no doubt know he was the guy that Rudolf Hess flew in to see a couple of months later. There are rumours that the landing lights were on (during the blackout!) at the Duke's airstrip at his Dungavel estate the night Hess flew in. All very murky! 🤨
Returning to the Blitz. It was a catalogue of 'errors.' Everyone expected Greater Glasgow to be bombed but Clydebank District Council hadn't got its act together enough to construct proper shelters for the tenement dwellers. Money was surely not the issue because the town was 'booming' on account of all the war orders. Most of the communal 'shelters' that had been built didn't even have roofs! So, the poor souls had to 'take shelter' in the ground floor of their tenements or basements if they were available (mostly they weren't.)
One of the biggest problems with the tenements was that they were constructed from large blocks of solid sandstone. Imagine one of them falling on you - nae chance! Many terrified people fled the crumbling and/or burning tenements in the middle of the raid and took their chances in the parks. (Why weren't communal underground shelters constructed in Dalmuir Park; the High Park etc. etc. ?!)
So, the inadequate preparations were grossly negligent to say the least and probably accounted for far too many of the casualties.
As for the nights of the raid itself. The Germans used radio navigation beams to direct their bombers on to their targets. Because of the relatively long flight times (compared to the south of England) these beams were detected by British monitoring stations as early as 6 PM on the 13th of March. So, the authorities knew with a very high degree of certainty that the Luftwaffe was headed for the Clyde. By 1941 the British were able to interfere with the German beams and thus send the incoming bombers off course but this was not done on the 13th and 14th of March, 1941. WHY?! 🤨
The bombers left from several different airfields in France and the Low Countries and mostly flew in over the North Sea. Radar stations on the English east coast tracked them coming in and must have seen that it was a large fleet.
Observer Corps posts got eyes on the bombers as they crossed the Northumberland coast.
I met ordinary people from the Borders who saw some flying over and surmised correctly that Greater Glasgow was about to be hit.
Despite all that, the air raid sirens only sounded in Clydebank AFTER the first bombs had started falling at 9 PM. WHY?! 🤨
All Bankies know well that given as little as 30 minutes to an hour advance warning many people could have made it to the hills above the town and relative safety. However, most probably wouldn't have bothered because as those who lived through those awful nights related there had been as many as 40 false alarms in the months leading up to the Blitz. WHY?! 🤨
Another thing that inexplicably apparently didn't happen was that RAF 603 (City of Edinburgh) Sqn. wasn't scrambled and sent up to intercept the incoming bombers. WHY NOT?! Sure, they would never have got them all but they might have got a few seeing as it was a clear moonlit night! 🤨
RAF 602 (City of Glasgow) Sqn. was scrambled and ordered to circle the Clyde at around 20,000 ft (or something fairly high) and await the bombers. They were tasked to implement an RAF 'tactic' never used before (or after) in the Blitz called Operation Fighter Night. The idea was they were to stay above the range of the Ack-Ack and only engage the bombers after they ascended to avoid the Ack-Ack. But the bombers didn't ascend and very quickly the 602 pilots radioed this in and requested permission to descend and engage. Permission was denied. WHY?! 🤨 Why did the Duke and his fellow officers refuse permission for their pilots to defend their own city?! Instead, the pilots could only look down in horror at the unfolding carnage beneath them. 602 Sqn. was grounded around midnight and never sent up again.
All the Ack-Ack guns in and around Clydebank ran out of ammo at 2 AM which meant that the guns of the Polish destroyer ORP Piorun (being repaired at John Brown's) were the only guns left firing at the bombers. Despite there no-longer being any Ack-Ack 602 Sqn. wasn't scrambled again. WHY?! 🤨
In summary, the people of Greater Glasgow and in particular Clydebank were left defenseless sitting ducks! How could such a shameful series of 'blunders' have been allowed to happen? Just incompetence and negligence or were there perhaps other reasons? 🤔🤨
To my knowledge Red Clydeside was the only place in the whole of the UK to have a strike in the war. Several thousand shipyard apprentices downed tools along the Clyde just days before the Blitz to protest the fact that while the shipyard owners and senior management were coining it in they were still scraping by (many had families) on absolutely pitiful wages. Whitehall had been worried about a Soviet style revolution breaking out on Red Clydeside for some time. Adding to their worries was the fact many of these Scottish Stalinists weren't exactly all in for the war seeing as their main man Stalin was still allied to Hitler in a peace pact.
Did Whitehall and complicit traitors in Scotland let Clydebank get hit hard in order to snuff out the simmering embers of revolt? At least one Bankie woman who survived the Holy City inferno (the incendiaries setting off the flat pitch roofs led to at least 70 deaths) thought so. I was told she even wrote a book espousing this theory but I've never been able to track it down.
Why was Clydebank hit so hard? The Germans' code word for the target was 'Gregor' which almost certainly stood for Glasgow. The Luftwaffe was supposed to hit many targets in Greater Glasgow (including the huge Rolls Royce Merlin factory at Hillington) over the two nights but ended up missing most and concentrating their efforts on Clydebank. WHY?! 🤨 (A notable exception was Yarrow's shipyard at Scotstoun where around 40 men on nightshift were killed when their shelter took a direct hit.)
Compared to the RAF the Luftwaffe weren't actually very good at area bombing. While the RAF had raid coordinators who circled above the target and told their incoming bombers which pathfinder coloured flares to aim at ("Bomb on green!" etc.) thus evenly distributing the carnage, the Luftwaffe didn't bother and instead their bomb aimers tended to aim at the first big fires they saw and so certain areas got bombed relentlessly all night and others left relatively unscathed. Clydebank was bombed relentlessly on the 13th of March because it had the 'misfortune' to have not one, but THREE huge blazes (aligned in an almost perfect straight line that ran from the western to the eastern boundaries of the town) start almost as soon as the first bombs fell: the Admiralty oil tanks at Mountblow; Singer's wood yard and a whisky distillery in Yoker. What terrible, terrible luck! Or, was it? Could these infernos that shone like beacons and helped to guide the first waves of bombers to Clydebank have been deliberately started by traitors on the ground? 🤔🤨
Very soon huge swathes of the town were ablaze. The infernos in Clydebank could be seen at ground level at least as far away as Dunoon. RAF aircrews based at Dyce in Aberdeenshire also observed the burning town.
News of the raid was heavily censored with the extent of the devastation and number of casualties (1,200+ killed in total in Greater Glasgow over the two nights - making it at least as deadly a raid as the one on Coventry!) hugely played down. WHY? Just for reasons of morale (like the heavy censoring of the many raids on Merseyside), or perhaps other reasons too? 🤨
I think it's time for Bankies (or descendents of Bankies) like us to start asking serious questions.
We owe it to our forebearers.
I’ve never seen this .👍🏴🤦🏻
Good documentary...pity about the music...Shostakovich...it ain't