Tag: world-war-ii

Air Raids and Communication during air attacks on Swansea, 1941

Just starting a new research project on the 1940s incendiary bomb attacks on Swansea. Although a few books have been written on wartime Swansea, the reliability can be suspect because of the lack of documentary records. The primary source is still John Alban’s keystone work on some of the archival sources that survived (Alban 1994). The response of a local authority to the challenges of an intense air attack varied widely across the country and has been the subject of a growing body of research, such as this thesis from 2020 (Wareham 2020)In this study, the author examines Cardiff Council’s response to wartime life and air attacks. It’s a mixed bag of successes and failures as the Council struggled to meet the challenges of maintaining services under air attacks. Some local authorities did little to meet their responsibilities, and civilians have died in various towns where bomb shelters, services and food supplies were poorly managed. As historians, we are not helped by the limited nature of the official history of civil defence, which barely investigated matters outside London (O’Brien 1955).

Swansea’s air raid precautions and defences worked well, and senior members of the Churchill government and officials of various agencies praised the efficiency of their response. However, local Swansea politicians criticised them and insisted on complaining that the ARP staff did not sufficiently recognise their role as politicians even amid incredible tragedy of 1941 (Alban 1994: 59–61).

Understanding the situation faced in the Blitz of February 1941 relies heavily on understanding the role of the ARP Controller, who led the entire local authority response to the bombing. For Swansea, this was the Town Clerk Howell Lang Lang-Coath. He was a veteran of over thirty years of Swansea’s local government processes, but at the end of his career, at sixty-six years old, his leadership and authority did much to save lives during and after the raids.

Understanding his role and effectiveness relies on understanding his communication flows and processes as he managed the ARP response from his control room in the Guildhall in Swansea. The dearth of contemporary records has meant I have had to reconstruct the communication flows from a wide range of local sources. Here’s my first pass through the information. Imagine having a small team of secretaries having to deal with over 8,000 messages for 561 incidents and controlling First Aid, Alarms, ARP staff, Rescue, Ambulances, Gas, Electricity and Water supply in an era where communications were unreliable telephones and a network of messengers in cars and on bicycles (often teenagers).

The police forces of the country were unwilling to share or modify their status and their responsibilities even during the hardest times of the war and a dual response method was imposed on the country where ARP and Fire services were managed separately. The success of this approach depended on the personal  qualities of the ARP Wardens. You can see this on the diagram with different communication flows to ARP Control (at The Guildhall) and the Fire Control Centre (at Central Police Station).

One of the surprises was the efficiency of the ARP M2 Reporting Form which allowed structured information at the correct level of detail to be quickly transmitted or passed to the staff andv the ARP Control Centre.

Alban, J.R. 1994. The Three Nights’ Blitz: Select Contemporary Reports Relating to Swansea’s Air Raids of February 1941, Studies in Swansea’s History, 3 (Swansea: City of Swansea)

O’Brien, Terence H. 1955. Civil Defence (London: HMSO)

Wareham, Evonne Elaine. 2020. ‘Serving the City: Cardiff County Borough in the Second World War’ (unpublished PhD, Cardiff: Cardiff University)

Above: The story so far on understanding the relationships between ARP Warden, Police, AFS, and the ARP Control Centre.

Above: A rough copy of the ARP M2 Reporting Form which was instrumental in allowing effective incident communication. People gave their lives moving these forms through the streets of the blitzed town in February 1941.

Bombs on Llandarcy, 1940

The technical problems of bomb aiming were massive for all air forces. The Luftwaffe began the war with an ambition of pinpoint accuracy for key targets and expected electronic systems to guide their attacks.

The Heinkel He 111 aircraft was an interim bomber that carried a light bomb load and had a cramped crew cabin making space for the bomb aimer challenging, as can be seen from this early illustration. The main Luftwaffe bomb sight was technically advanced for the 1930s but less effective in the more demanding flying conditions over wartime Britain.

The early attacks on the ports were daylight raids and allowed for accurate bombing. This near miss of four bombs at Llandarcy oil storage (below) was from a daylight raid in 1940. The switch to night time bombing and the need to bomb from higher altitudes led to more inaccuracy and error. Pinpoint targets such as grain mills, lock gates and warehouses, or ships in the docks were missed but the surrounding streets of the Welsh ports suffered badly from the inaccurate bombs.

P24-25 Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941.

A near miss. Bombs dropped on Llandarcy in 1940.

Incendiary bombs and the Welsh Ports

The Luftwaffe had a wide range of weapons available to drop on urban areas in the early years of the war. Lock gates, coal mines, and food storage all had buildings with varying levels of resilience and required different tactics to destroy them. The ports were susceptible to damage in some aspects such as power stations or cranes but generally quite hardy in the face of attack. Larger bombs over five hundred kilogrammes in weight with hardened steel noses were need for the power stations and lock gates. The Luftwaffe was always short of these types of bombs. However, the real terror weapon was the incendiary bomb shown below.

Page 20 of Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941.

This one kilogramme bomb (the ‘Elektron’) was dropped in thousands on the Welsh ports but it was only ever effective in destroying houses and shops. Creating a firestorm to kill civilians was eventually developed by the RAF and perfected by the US Army Air Forces. The Luftwaffe were experimenting in firestorm tactics in late-1940 and the raid on Swansea in February 1941 shows the early firestorm approach with early arrival of incendiary bombing followed up by high explosive bombs to kill firemen and civil defence staff. The damage to Swansea (shown below) was typical of intensive firestorms which could not be extinguished because firemen were killed and their pumps destroyed. Burning buildings collapse and obliterate the streets with rubble.
The RAF intensively investigated these early Luftwaffe raids and based their own strategic campaign against Germany on the nature of these early raids.

Above: Fire damage in Swansea immediately after the attacks of February 1941.

The Luftwaffe attacking Welsh steel

The steelworks of the Welsh ports were of obvious interest to the early Luftwaffe investigators. Iron and steel were strategic materials for all sides. The Dowlais steelworks in Cardiff was a huge target. In fact it was so big that it was difficult to work out exactly where to hit it to cause most damage. The largest high quality bombs were reserved for targets like this (500kg or more), with hard steel noses to penetrate concrete roofs. Incediary bombs were not very effective against industrial targets.

I cover Cardiff as a Luftwaffe target in Chapter 5 of Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941.

Above: The Dowlais steelworks as depicted in the Militärgeographische Einzelangaben from 1940. A difficult target to attack which required special bombs of larger size and hardened casings to penetrate concrete walls and floors. Incendiaries were practically pointless against a steelworks. There was also a need to attack at a lower altitude to increase accuracy. The presence of a couple of barrage balloons would frequently discourage crews from flying al lower altitudes.

Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941

My new book on the history of the Blitz bombing of Swansea and the other South Wales ports is now available from me.

This is the second edition of Eye of the Eagle, the first edition was published in 1993!

I’ve completely rewritten the history based on years of research in German Air Force sources and I’ve looked at the other ports the Luftwaffe attacked in 1940 and 1941. Over the years I’ve collected a large range of intelligence materials which are rarely seen because they were often destroyed at the end of the war.

In this history I have concentrated on Luftwaffe intelligence maps, photographs and other sources to give the real reasons why Swansea and the other ports were attacked and dispell some of the rumours from the past. I’ve also looked at the U-boat campaign against Swansea and Cardiff and included translations of key German war diaries and Luftwaffe intelligence records. I’ve described in detail the U-boat mining of the Scarweather lightship and the U-boat attack on Swansea.

Intelligence records are often difficult to understand so I’ve added a detailed examination of how photographs were taken in the preparation for invasion and the Blitz attacks on the ports.

I’ve made this book a big A4 size to take full advantage of the many maps and images that show Swansea and the ports as seen from the German point of view. Over 130 illustrations, many in colour.

Chapters: 1. Understanding Intelligence and Reconnaissance (The Munich Crisis, The decision to bomb Swansea, the bombs and the aftermath as seen by the Luftwaffe cameramen), 2. The history of the South Wales ports between 1933 and 1941 (The ports as targets, how they were selected, and how they fought their war). 3. Reconnaissance over Wales (the Units and aircraft), Detailed illustrated chapters on 4. Newport, 5. Cardiff, 6. Penarth, 7. Barry, 8. Port Talbot, 9. Llandarcy Oil Refineries, 10. Briton Ferry, and 11. Swansea, With Annexes on the U-boat mining of the Scarweather Lightship, Descriptions of the Luftwaffe intelligence records, and other information on the bombs that were dropped on the ports.

Eye of the Eagle: Luftwaffe Intelligence and the South Wales Ports 1939-1941, Nigel A. Robins, Size: A4, Paperback, 170 pages. Price £16.99.

Available from Nyddfwch Publishing, Swansea, or contact the author on nrcontact30@gmail.com. Or you can contact me here.

Available online in mid May.

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