The Plymouth Blitz

The local  paper, The Herald, has recently published a collection of pictures taken in the city during The Blitz.               (See Yesterday's post)

Here is a tiny sample of what the people of the city lived through during the war. I was too young to actually remember going into the air raid shelter when a raid was on, but I have very clear memories of the devastated city in the years immediately following 1945, 

Above is Fore Street, a busy shopping street in Devonport, just outside the Devonport Dockyard. I have roughly marked its position on the map below. It is the red symbol on the left hand side.  

This casual looking group is dealing with a massive unexploded bomb in the Mutley area, marked by the red symbol in the middle.The problem of unexploded bombs has gone on for many years after the war. The most recent that I can recall was when workmen unearthed a big bomb on a building in the city centre. It was exploded at sea on 24 February 2011. 

A day before this photo was taken these were ordinary people, with a home in an ordinary street. Now all that is changed. The red symbol on the right hand side roughly marks the location.