WW2 and Gatling Ave - Long Shot!

[tmj9815]

Absolute long shot this. In the late 70s I used to run errands for a lovely old lady who lived on Stovell Ave. As she got older, she used to get confused and forgetful, and would tell me things and then forget later on. One of the stories she told me was about Gatling Ave in World War 2. The story went, that one dark winters night, an air raid warning was sounded, and so she retreated to the back yard for shelter. She said she could hear aircraft overhead and then terrific explosions that rattled the yard and the surrounding houses. Seems the Luftwaffe tried to bomb the then Jackson’s Brickworks on Hemmonds Road, missed, and bombed Gatling Ave instead. And that was the reason why the houses on Gatling and Sutcliffle Ave and some on Hemmonds Road are not terraced like all the sourrounding houses, but semi-detached. The council rebuilt using reclaimed bricks from the bombed out buildings, but that could only stretch to semi detached buildings.

There seems logic to her story. The whole area is terraced housing with the middle bit all semi’s. I used to work in the British Legion on the old Palais car park, and I heard stories about bombs being dropped on Longsight. But that was 27 years ago and I can't remember details, so, can anyone substantiate this ladies story or do you have any stories about Longsight and the surrounding areas in WW2?

[aidanorourke]

Very interesting story, sounds plausible to me, but we need witnesses and testimony to confirm whether it's true or not.

Just for clarification, Gatling Avenue is near Crowcroft Park Longsight. Here's the location on Multimap.

Hope to get along there and take photos.

[Phil Blinkhorn]

Whilst i can't find any references to this it is possible to apply some logic and come up with some answers.

First of all the air raid. It is highly unlikely that Jackson's Brickworks would be a target. Hardly of strategic importance, the Luftwaffe had far more pressing targets in the immediate area. The Slade Lane railway junction would be the nearest prime target but bombing in WW2, as it is today even with so called smart bombs, was often a hit and miss affair.

The folk history of the what the Luftwaffe got up to over the UK is riddled with stories of how they hit x whilst meaning to bomb y but the truth is often far different to what was perceived at ground level.

Whilst the RAF under "Bomber" Harris is credited with the idea of using area bombing to cripple the enemy's infrastructure, the Luftwaffe had used the technique in the Spanish Civil War and did so over Rotterdam, London, Liverpool, Plymouth, Coventry, Southampton, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast and to a lesser extent over Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol and Newcastle.

Within less than 30 seconds flying time from Gatling Avenue and Slade Lane railway junction are Longsight railway sheds and the complex rail layout approaching the then London Road Station, Beyer Peacock's works, Gorton Tank, numerous factories and steelworks along Ashton Old Road, Crossley's, Fairey's and the complex of industries in Beswick, not to mention the city centre, all vastly more important than Jackson's - if indeed the aircraft had any particular target in view. Getting bombs on a specific small target from a JU88, DO217 or HE111 from more than 5000 feet, given the German bombsights of the time, was more by good luck than good judgement.

As to the houses, are the semis council built? I was under the impression that both the terraces and the semis were privately built and the semis are pre-war and were by the same developer who built the pre-war semis on Farrant Rd and Parry Rd, again, semis in an otherwise terraced area.

By the way, it takes far more facing bricks to build, say, 12 houses as semis than 12 houses in a terrace.

[aidanorourke]

Thanks for this, as usual very thorough and knowledgeable appraisal.

But aren't there are plenty of examples of 'stray' bombs hitting suburban streets? They might have been released accidentally before their target, maybe the pilots mistook their position or maybe some other reason.

We need to take a look in local annals of the time. There are a lot of very informative website, like this one, plucked at random from the Google results page

http://www3.telus.net/public/nixonkg/index.htm

But sometimes even eyewitnesses can get things muddled. Let's hope we can get to the bottom of this!

[Phil Blinkhorn]

"Stray bombs" are a euphemism. From a great deal of reading and, over the years, talking to RAF, USAAF and Luftwaffe aircrew it is clear that even the most refined 1940s bombsights were never more than 60% accurate.

The bigger the target, the bigger the chance of doing real damage but, if you want to understand just how hard it is to hit and destroy a small, defined and very specific target read the histories of the Amiens raid, the Schwienfurt raids or raids on specific bridges. Consider how the Stockport viaduct was a prime strategic target and how it survived.

When you are above 5,000 feet travelling at over 200 mph with variable wind between you and the target and all you have is 1940s technology plus Mk1 eyeball to find and lock onto your target which is shrouded in darkness, with flak bursting around you and cloud moving across your line of sight, "stray bombs" are a certainty and they destroy or damage what they hit.

There are, of course, many examples of crews totally missing targets (the bombing of Dublin, mistaken for Liverpool is a major example) and crews under attack, or having missed the target and turning for home, would just get rid of their bombs to help increase aircraft performance - often reporting they had hit their target (this happened in all air forces) but, if in 1939-1945 you lived within 3 miles of any target in Europe subjected to high level bombing, you stood a chance of getting hit due to poor target acquisition, misidentification or unsteady approach to target (a one minute straight and level approach at 20,000 ft was the norm if you wanted to stand a chance of hitting what you were supposed to and, I'm told, that minute seemed a lifetime).

My wife's mother lived in Farrant Rd as a teenager throughout the war and that area of Longsight was hit from time to time, especially between winter 1940 and the summer of 1942, though she doesn't recall any major incidents.

She does recall seeing Luftwaffe aircraft machine gunning Birchfields Rd and Moseley Rd whilst she was en route to school at The Hollies.

I wonder why Margaret’s Blog » World War II (para 2) recalls one particular incident but not what would have been a greater local disaster just a few hundred yards further south.

Talking as I was of misidentification, both Crowcroft Park and Gatling Avenue are in Levenshulme and, to get back to the subject, it is a little strange that, were there to be truth in the story of whole terraces being demolished, neither David Boardman's Longsight pages nor George Nixon's Levenshulme pages have any memories of what would have been a major local incident.

[aidanorourke]

The bombing of Gatling Avenue would surely have been mentioned in local history materials and in the newspaper reports of the day if it had happened. It would have been too big an event to be overlooked like that. I will go and take a look for myself this afternoon.

And on the subject of ill-fated aircraft movements, I've been contacted about the remains of aircraft that crashed on the moors. That's the subject of a new thread I'm about to start.

[Rocles]

One story I can definately relate, as both my Dad and Grandad were around the corner at the time. A bomb landed on Rushford St, Longsight, destroying a terraced house. There is still a gap in the terrace now, just between Macfarren St and Stanley Grove school fields. Story goes my Grandad was bringing in coal from outside yard (21 Macfarren St) as the bomb hit...needless to say, the coal shovel was dropped and several expletives uttered as he legged it inside!!

[Phil Blinkhorn]

The gap is on the left hand side of Rushford St (facing north) between Hopkins St and Hatton St, just up from MacFarren St.

Must have been one hell of a shock. Do you know which year this happened?

[Rocles]

Not sure of the date, I was led to believe around 1944/45?

I recently cleared the old family house in East Rd after my Dad died. Amongst the stuff I found was an application to the Government (MoD?) for reimbursement of repair costs...a Barrage balloon broke its moorings in Crowcroft Park, and as it drifted across East Road, one of the steel hawser retaining wires smashed into the roof of No 35, knocking a hole in the tiles!

[Rocles]

Re: the Rushford St bomb damage, you can see the gap in the terrace in this photo....look for the light coloured wall near the lamppost to the right of centre on THIS PHOTO from the Manchester Council Archive, circa 1965