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Though not in the front line, Leicester and Leicestershire played a significant role during the Second World War in the battle for the skies and in clothing the troops. Leicester was also a place of sanctuary. Regarded as a comparatively safe area, around 30,000 people, mainly children, were evacuated to Leicester during the first weeks of the war alone, to live in the city for the duration of hostilities. In the later part of the war, Italian and German prisoners of war swelled the city’s population. During the period of the war, more than two hundred and fifty homes were completely destroyed, more than one hundred people lost their lives and several hundred suffered injuries. |
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Leicestershire played a significant role in the battle for the skies. No less than twelve airfields were built in the county during the war years. The US 82nd Airborne Division was stationed in the county in 1944. The early development of the jet engine took place under Sir Frank Whittle at his Whetstone factory, and local people still remember the sleepless nights caused by the noisy testing firings of his engines. Whittle’s pioneering work is now commemorated by a full scale model of a jet aircraft mounted on a roundabout near Junction 20 (Lutterworth) of the M1 motorway. The nearby airfield at Bruntingthorpe was opened in November 1942 and served as a base for Wellington bombers of No 92 group. The site was later used by Whittle for testing his early Meteor jets, and is now the home of a museum of jet aircraft. The county’s topography was also brought into use, as Eyebrook Reservoir was used for practice by the RAF Dambusters before their raids on the Ruhr Dams in 1943.
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Sir Frank Whittle |
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| Taylorcraft Aeroplanes Ltd was founded in the village of Rearsby in November 1938 and their first aircraft flew maiden flights in the following year. Rearsby produced numerous aircraft which served in nineteen RAF squadrons, adopting the name `Auster’ from the Latin word for a warm southern breeze. Components for many other aircraft including Spitfires and Hurricanes were manufactured there throughout the war. |  |
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Leicester, a centre for the textile industry, provided an immense amount of clothing for the county’s troops. The Corah factory at St Margaret’s produced no less than 26 million items including 17.5 million pairs of socks and almost half a million anti-flash helmets, even though half their workers had been called up. Thirty six members of the workforce lost their lives during the war including a young member of the Corah family. In addition, the company’s engineering works manufactured over 80,000 gun parts and 30,000 parts for tank landing craft. | |
| St Margaret's works of Nathaniel Corah & Sons Ltd | ||
| Many of Leicestershire’s country houses were used for war-related purposes. Staff at Donington Hall, now the headquarters of air carrier BMI, were given just five days to clear the house. For sixteen years, the hall served as one of the largest army transport bases in the country with thousands of army vehicles covering the golf course and the adjacent Donington Park race track. The military finally left in 1956 leaving, according to newspaper headline, `half a million derelict vehicles’ which had to be towed away for scrap, the metal from which could be made into items such as appliance parts. |
| Beaumanor Hall near Loughborough served a very different purpose. It was the headquarters of the War Office Y Group made up of hundreds of secret listeners, most of whom were amateur radio enthusiasts, who would intercept enemy signals and send information back to Bletchley Park for decoding. Some scenes in the recent film `Enigma’, telling the story of Britain’s wartime code breakers, was filmed at the nearby restored Great Central Railway. |  |
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| Beaumanor Hall | ||
| However, the area did not escape the horror of war. Between June 1940 and March 1945, the city experienced 192 air raid alerts, the longest lasting ten hours and twenty-three minutes. Unlike cities in the West Midlands, Leicester escaped major enemy bombing raids except for one memorable night when the city experienced the true horrors of the blitz. |
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German bombers struck on 19th November 1942. It was an ideal night for the raid, with little cloud, no rain, and the moon on the wane. The raid lasted 8 hours and 17 minutes, and in that time over 150 bombs and parachute mines landed on the city. Incendiary bombs landed in a line from the gasworks in Aylestone Road to the Great Northern railway station in Belgrave Road. One 600lb incendiary landed on the Town Hall but failed to explode. The Church of the Holy Cross in New Walk was the first public building to be hit. Forty one people were killed in the densely-populated Highfields area including members of the Royal Army Pay Corp who were billeted there. On Sparkenhoe Street, a number of homes and the local Post Office were demolished, killing two people. The Freeman Hardy and Willis shoe factory on Rutland Street was also badly damaged.
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| In all, eleven factories and warehouses were destroyed, and a further 72 were seriously damaged. 550 houses were rendered uninhabitable. 4200 houses were damaged to a lesser degree. 102 people were killed and 203 were injured. | ||
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Text and images © Stephen Butt
2004-2008 except
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