‘The kisses on your windows won’t help you’
Liverpool and in particular Bootle were targeted by the
Germans – and badly hit – as a port town. The city had become a lifeline to
Britain during the Battle of the Atlantic and the convoys were controlled from
an underground command centre, the' Western Approaches' at Derby House in the
City Centre beneath a 1930s office building. The food, fuel, weapons and troops
that came in to Liverpool saved Britain and made possible the liberation of
Europe. Between May 1st and 8th, 1941, over seven consecutive nights, German
planes dropped 870 tonnes of high explosive bombs and over 112,000 incendiary
bombs, starting fires throughout Merseyside. Lord Haw Haw addressed the people
of Bootle with the words: ‘the kisses on your windows won’t help you’,
referring to the tape supposed to prevent flying glass. Here are just a few of
the photographs of the damage recorded by the City Engineers Department. Bootle
was extensively bombed by the Luftwaffe and only an unbelievable ten percent of
properties in the town were left unscathed. Because of its close proximity to
the docks it was a prime target and scenes like the ones below were regrettably
not unusual.
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| 74-76 Gonville Road after bombing in 1940 |
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| Aintree Road bomb damage |
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| Air raid bomb damage and salvage operation at Southey street in 1941 |
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| Bomb damage at St Monica's, Fernhill Road, Bootle in 1940 |
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| Bootle bomb damage |
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| Bootle bomb damage 1941 |
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| Brasenose Road bombed |
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| Bryant & May matchworks Bootle blitzed. |
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| County Hall, Pembroke road Bootle bombed in 1940 |
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| Garfield Street shelter |
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| Johnsons bombed at Mildmay Road. |
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| Keble Road bomb damage |
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| Kings Road bomb damage |
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| Radnor Drive bomb blast on 20.12.40 |
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| Rimrose Road bombed 2oth December 1940 |
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| Sidney Road, Bootle 1940 |
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| Surrey Street Bootle |
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| Surrey Street was Bootles worse bombing casualties with 109 killed in 1941 |
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| Viola street blitzed |
What happened in May was the culmination of a bombing
campaign which left a total of 4,000 dead, probably the heaviest loss per head
of population of any British city. Yet the Liverpool Blitz remains the
forgotten Blitz. It is still thought that, raids on Liverpool were not
publicised in the hope of concealing their accuracy and effectiveness from the
Germans.
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