V1 and V2 bombs in Forest Gate 1944 - 1945 - second part of bombing round up

This is the second of a two-part post on World War 11 bombs and Forest Gate, covering the last two years of the conflict. The first post can be found below.

As we explained in the earlier article, we have pulled together information from a range of official sources, together with some contemporaneous photographs, press reports and eye-witness accounts, to try and provide as definitive a record as possible.

We accept, however, that it is not complete, may well underestimate the scale of fatalities suffered and tries to aggregate different lists measuring different outcomes (see previous post for consideration of methodology and difficulties presented). 

It is presented, however, as what we believe is the first and most likely near-comprehensive account of the affect of World War 11 bombings on the area and civilian population of Forest Gate.

West Ham, as a borough, saw about 14,000 houses - or a quarter of the housing stock - destroyed by bombs in the World War 11. Forest Gate was heavily hit, although considerably less so than the southern part of the borough, which embraced the docks and some strategically important industries and factories.

After the Blitz (1940-41) there was a lull in German bombing of London, while German military engineers developed more horrific weapons to inflict by air. The conceived their Vergeltungswaffe - vengeance weapons - understandably abbreviated to V1 and V2 bombs.

Clearing up after June 1944 Upton Lane bombing

Each bomb was 25 feet long and had a wing span of 16 feet, driven by an engine, that hummed. They were dubbed Buzz Bombs, or Doodlebugs by British civilians who were on the receiving end of them.
.
The first was launched in June 1944.  Within three days over 500 people had been killed in London. They came to terrorise the city, and their impact were felt on some of the most savage subsequent attacks on Forest Gate.

1944

January
22nd - (West Ham Cemetery)

29th - Crosby, Knox, Vansitart (Forest Gate Hospital, Wanstead Park Station, Upton Lane School)

30th - Claremont

February
2nd - Romford x 2

7th - Sprowson

19th - Strode

20th - Tylney

21st - Romford

22nd - Sprowson, Whyteville, Romford

24th - Dunbar, Forest Street, Windsor (West Ham Cemetery)

March
22nd - Vansitart

April
18th -Katherine Rd - Trebors 
This bombing does not appear in the ARP listings of bombings in West Ham, but features significantly in the company's official history, The Trebor Story by Michael Crampton. The book publishes the photograph, below and the accompanying text says:

Factory caretaker, Mr G Taylor reported the following, of the night of 18 April 1944 "The building was severely damaged because the bomb landed in the warehouses and set fire to a great deal of tea chests and tins of dry lemonade. A row of shops across the way was destroyed by blast and through the heavy shutters of the garage being thrown across the street. Several of the people in the houses were killed, including one of the firm's stokers.  But there was one miracle. For most of the war the firm had thrown open the basement to the public, and about two hundred of them were sheltering there that night. Imagine my relief on entering the basement to find not one casualty among them.

Trebor factory on Katherine Road, after
 the unreported bombing. Note presence
 of police on far right of photo. He was
 there to prevent looting of sugar

 June
16th - Upton Avenue (Death: May Wright, aged 30, 41 Upton Avenue)

Upton Lane after bombing on 16 June 1944

July
5th - Osborne

19th - Romford

27th - Dames (Deaths: Gladys Blackman, aged 39, Dames Road; Wendy Blackman, aged 4, Dames Road; Abraham Ince, aged 76, Dames Road; Edith Tilley, aged 41, Dames Road). This was the Dames Road trolley bus bomb, featured at length in the post on the Page family of bootmakers, see here.

The quote from Cyril Marne, who was later to become West Ham's Chief Fire Officer, in that article suggests that many more than the people named here were killed. Indeed, the Straford Express article, covering the incident produces the names of a small, but entirely different group of fatalities of that explosion. They presumably did not live in the immediate local area (see discussion on methodology for explanation).

Doodlebug of the kind that hit Dames Road -
 25 feet long and 15 wide. Unsurprisingly, the
 devastation it created was horrific

28th - Forest Lane (Deaths: Lilian Simpkins, aged 64, 103 Forest Lane), Woodgrange

29th - Junction of Woodgrange and Earlham Grove (Ronald Stuchbery, aged 16, at Rio Cinema, and Robert Scales, ofTower Hamlets Road)

August
12th - Upton Lane School: Deaths: Ursula Mercer, aged 32, an SRN at Upton Lane School; Kate Skingle, aged 67)

Upton Lane school, hit 12/13 August 1944

Stratford Express reports Upton Lane
 school bombing, without mentioning
 its name, or location. It does,
 however mention those killed.

15th - Wellington (Deaths: Eli Nightingale, aged 63, 133 Wellington Road; Ernest Tickel, aged 59, 20 Odessa Road)

October 
27th - Romford Road

30th - Earlham Grove (Deaths: Clara Hall, aged 69, 7 Earlham Grove; Alice Everitt, aged 66, 7 Earlham; Annie Everitt, 56, 7 Earlham; Ellen Everitt, 64, 7 Earlham; Charles William Hazell, aged 14, 3 Earlham Grove; Edith Read, aged 42, 5 Earlham Grove; Terence Read, aged 7, 5 Earlham Grove; Agnes Turner, aged 55, 3 Earlham Grove; Agnes Turner, aged 24, 3 Earlham Grove; William Turner, aged 13, 3 Earlham Grove)

November
1st - (Wanstead Flats)

1945

January
28th - Kitchener (Deaths: Alfred Chamberlain, aged 43, 90 Kitchener; Catherine Chamberlain, aged 66, 90 Kitchener; Alice Dearson, aged 70, 90 Kitchener; George Dearson, aged 87, 90 Kitchener; William Eyre, aged 46, 95 Kitchener; Arthur Finch, aged 32, 100 Kitchener; Ernest Johnson, aged 30, 96 Kitchener Road; Kenneth Johnson, aged 22 months, 96 Kitchener Road; Louisa Johnson, aged 30, 96 Kitchener Road; Patricia Johnson, aged 5, 96 Kitchener Road; Annie Kenovan, aged 41, 98 Kitchener Road; Patrick Kenovan, aged 39, 98 Kitchener Road; Phillip Kenovan, aged 2, 98 Kitchener Road; Albert Poree, aged 30, 94 Kitchener Road; Alice Shekyls, aged 28 99 Grosvenor Road; George Skekyls, aged 30, 99 Grosvenor Road; Mabel Vamplew, aged 55, 94 Kitchener Road; Doris Wales, aged 22, 92 Kitchener Road; Jane Wales, aged 48, 92 Kitchener Road; Margery Wales, 92 Kitchener Road; William Wales, aged 50, 92 Kitchener Road; Eliza Walker, aged 74, 102 Kitchener Road; Harriet Walker, aged 47, 102 Kitchener Road; Joseph Walker, aged 74, 102 Kitchener Road).

Stratford Express covers the
 Kitchener  Road bombing, or
 as they locate it, as "a residential
 district in southern England."
 Official records identify 24
 dead, but this report only 12.

March
6th - Earlham Grove (Deaths: Joyce Adams, aged 25, 56 Earlham Grove; Edgar Adams, aged 50, 56 Earlham Grove; Beryl Joyce Adams, aged 18 months, 56 Earlham Grove; Hetty Bogansky, aged 31, 62 Earlham Grove; Nathan Bogansky, aged 29, 62 Earlham Grove; Geoffrey Golding, aged 2, 60 Earlham Grove; Hilda Golding, aged 30, 60 Earlham Grove; Jack Golding, aged 23, 60 Earlham Grove; Sadie Golding, aged 22, 60 Earlham Grove; Sarah Golding, aged 61, 60 Earlham Grove; Samuel Hainsville, aged 85, 64 Earlham Grove; David Coles, aged 43, Freemasons Tavern, Romford Road; Ellen Coles, aged 39, Freemasons Tavern, Romford Road; Albert Lucas, aged 63, 104 Kitchener Road; Alfred Lumley, aged 60, Grosvenor Road; Mamie Lumley, aged 54, 97, Grosvenor Road: Bernard Marcovitch, aged 16, 58 Earlham Grove; Rachel Marcovitch, aged 38, 58 Earlham Grove; Rose Schector, aged 62, 62 Earlham Grove)

 Poor reproduction of
a small Stratford Express
 article of 9 March 1945.
 It appeared on page 9
 and in a matter of fact
 way reported the Earlham
 Grove  bombing, in which 19
 people died. The article
 only refers to eight people

11th - Romford Road (Deaths: Nicholas Mackey, aged 43, 342 Romford Road; Rose Seeley, aged 56, 342a Romford Road; Violet Seeley, aged 31, 342a Romford Road; Elizabeth Sharpen, aged 67, 1 Westbury Road).

Conclusion/summary/observations

Although the Blitz (1940 - 41) saw the largest number of hits on Forest Gate during the war, it was the deadly V1s and V2s, in the final eight months of the conflict, that caused the greatest number of civilian deaths in the area.

Between 1940 and 1943 there were a total of 197 recorded hits on Forest Gate, and 54 Forest Gate civilians killed by enemy action. 1944 - 5 only saw a fifth of the number of bombs (38), but 40% more deaths (70).

The most lethal attacks on Forest Gate during the war would appear to have been:

28 January 1945 - Kitchener Road - 24 identifiable deaths

6 March 1945 - Earlham Grove - 19 identifiable deaths

21 March 1941 - Eric Road - 17 identifiable deaths

30 October 1944 - Earlham Grove - 10 identifiable deaths

23 September 1940 - Odessa Road - 9 identifiable deaths

24 September 1940 - Clova Road - 7 identifiable deaths

9 September 1940 - Disraeli Road - 5 identifiable deaths
27 July 1944 - Dames Road - five identifiable deaths - most certainly a gross underestimation of total killed.

17 April 1941 - Claremont Road - 5 identifiable deaths.

German bombing, for the most part, became more accurate and direct as the war wore on. The fact two of the three most destructive hits in the latter stages of the war fell on Earlham Grove brought to mind a remark in Bryan Forbes' autobiography, when talking about his childhood in Forest Gate (see here). 

He referred to Lord Haw-Haw's German propaganda radio messages during the conflict, in which he ranted:

We shan't be dropping bombs on Earlham Grove tonight, we'll be dropping Keating's Powder (a disinfectant).

Perhaps the Earlham Grove bombs, on the road of the West Ham synagogue (Essex's largest) - in the most Jewish area of Newham - were, in fact, deliberately aimed to be a part of the "Final Solution", the Nazi's adopted in their attempt to destroy the Jewish people, world-wide.

In previous posts on this blog (see here, in particular), we have referred to the presence of barrage balloons on Wanstead Flats. They were there to deter low-flying aircraft from bombing locally. 

What is now known as "the village" area of Forest Gate - between Sebert and Capel Roads - was probably the least bombed part of Forest Gate during the war, perhaps this was in no small part due to the effective deterrent effect of those barrage balloons.

We have, similarly, covered the presence of Prisoners of War camps on Wanstead Flats during the war, in previous posts (see here, in particular).

Perhaps the German high command was not too concerned about bombing their own captured soldiers - as the Dames Road Doodlebug refrered to above fell only a couple of hundred metres from the PoW camp location.

Forest Gate during the Blitz

The most significant series of events of the last century to affect the constituent parts of Newham: East Ham and West Ham - including Forest Gate - were the World War 11 bombings.

The whole physical structure of the borough was transformed by the destruction caused. Everyone today "knows" that the East End was badly hit, that local people were "plucky" and that sporadic visits to the sites of destruction by royalty litter the folklore of the area.

Distinctive outline of the Thames
 made targeting East London
 easy for the Luftwaffe, even
 when the radar was rudimentary

No sane person can deny the extent of the destruction.  Anyone with half an eye on architectural styles can spot areas hit by bombs, where late nineteenth buildings have been replaced by post-war structures - the lower east side of Woodgrange Road simply being the most obvious local example.

Whole swathes of the borough - particularly in the south, on the banks of the Thames - where the strategically crucial docks and other war-related industries were located - were flattened by German bombers, as they sought to disable the British war effort and demoralise the local population.

But, relatively little reliable detail of the profound reconfiguration of our area actually survives.

There is no definitive, hit-by-hit history  of the bombing of London in general and Newham, in particular - just lots of fragments, that often don't correlate too well with each other.

Hundreds of books have been published about London, the war and enemy bombings and some give very compelling eye witness accounts of specific incidents, such as Cyril Marne's of the Dames Road trolley bus doodlebug of 1944, recently covered on this site, here. But there is no overarching comprehensive account publicly available.

A website www.bombsight.org was launched recently to much acclaim.  It locates all the main bomb hits of the Blitz (October 1940 - June 1941), and can be searched by post codes, offering very useful maps to site visitors.  But it only covers a fragment of the war and offers no detail of casualties, the impact of individual hits, photos of the bomb sites, or eye witness accounts - certainly not of the Forest Gate area. Hopefully, these will follow, as the site is developed, over time.

Some official records exist and are in the public domain. The former West Ham Council Civil Defence team published a summary of air raids on the borough, between 28 August 1940 and 8 May 1945. ARP (Air Raid Precaution - the civil defence organisation) records provide details of bomb hits, and they can be analysed by area. 

The War Graves Commission, in 1954, published a list of British civilian dead (including local people), West Ham Council produced its own roll of civilian remembrance from the war. 

Many of these records, however, are incomplete, and do not reconcile with each other. For example, the list of bomb hits obviously refers to the location of the dropped bomb, but the list of civilian dead is by the deceased's address, which is not necessarily where they were killed. 

It is not unreasonable to assume that when bombs fell in the early hours, in a particular road on a given day and people from that road were reported as having been killed on that day, that the deaths were as a result of the bomb in question.

But other people, with addresses elsewhere may have been in the area when a missile struck, and could have been killed, but they would not have been recorded as a victim of that bomb.

That was certainly the case of the Dames Road Doodlebug incident (see above). The eye witness account talks of several bodies being thrown about as the crowded trolley bus was blown up. By definition, most of those people were travelling and may not have lived in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. The civilian deaths would have been recorded by the home address and not the location of the explosion. 

Another dramatic example of this was probably the worst air raid to affect West Ham. It occurred on 10 October 1940.

Several hundred people, bombed out of their homes, gathered in the South Hallsville school, Canning Town, waiting for evacuation. The transport did not arrive and the school received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb.  The official council figure indicates that 73 people were killed and hundreds injured. 

To this day, survivors and their relatives are convinced that in fact many hundreds were actually killed, and the total number was hushed up, for fear of adversely affecting morale.

it is difficult to tell, because of the circumstances, many of those killed did not live in the vicinity of the school, so their deaths would have been recorded at the locations of their homes. It is unlikely, however, that a true total list of fatalities and casualties will ever be established.

This is the first of two articles on WW11 bombing in Forest Gate.  It attempts to bring together the various records and supplement them with surviving photographs and some eye-witness accounts of specific incidents.  It also reproduces some articles from the Stratford Express, which were heavily censored, extremely vague, and again, underestimated the numbers of deaths inflicted.

The opening paragraph of this article
 from the Stratford Express of 25 April
 1941 illustrates the censorship under
 which papers worked under, and how
 little real information readers could
 gain from them. We presume it refers
 to the Eric Road bombing, see below
 - but the road, or even the district are
 not mentioned and the copy is vague in
 the extreme. It reads: "We are now
 permitted to relate some incidents which
 occurred in a violent raid a few weeks ago
. It was more severe than any in the  vicinity
 for some months and resulted in a
 considerable  number of fatalities.
  It carries on in the non-informing way.
 In fact, that bomb resulted in at least 17
 deaths, not that you would know it, or
 the location from the report

This post deals with the first half of the war, up to the end of 1943; it is mainly focused on the Blitz (October 1940 - June 1941). Next week's installment covers the second half of the war - particularly the horrific V1 and V11 bombings.

West Ham Civil Defence statistics claim that although the first air raid was on the opening day of the war 3 September 1939, the first bomb did not land in Newham until almost a year later 28 August 1940.  ARP figures, however, indicate that the first bomb hit Forest Gate six months earlier! Just the first and most obvious lack of reconciliation between different bombing records and accounts.

These, admittedly less than reliable, Civil Defence statistics, suggest that there were a total of 1,227 air raid alerts affecting the borough and 194 actual raids. Many of the raids, of course, resulted in multiple bombings. They estimated that there were 3,221 hits in the borough; about a third of which were high explosive bombs, a third incendiary bombs and the remainder a variety of other missile devices - some of which remained unexploded.

The bombed interior of one of Forest
 Gate's then most recognizable landmarks,
 the former Methodist church building on
 Woodgrange Road. 

Their figures suggest that 1,207 West Ham civilians were killed in these raids, with 2,545 received hospitalisation and 3,322 received treatment at a first aid post. This is almost certainly an underestimate.

What follows is the ARP's listing of bomb incidents in Forest Gate, by date and location. In brackets and italics are the names of civilian fatalities identified by either the War Graves Commission or West Ham council's rolls of civilian dead most likely to have been the result of the bomb hit recorded.

Public spaces, or buildings identified in the records are presented in bold italics.

Using those figures, it can crudely be estimated that there were approximately 245 incendiary devices of different kinds dropped on Forest Gate during World War 11, and 124 Forest Gate civilians were killed during the war. 

But, for reasons explained above, we cannot deduce from this that 124 Forest Gate civilians were killed in the district during the war, or that only 124 people were killed in Forest Gate!

Contemporaneous photographs, and some Stratford Express reports have been inserted following details of some of the most significant bomb hits.

We are sure what follows is far from definitive, so would be delighted to receive any corrections or additional eye witness accounts from the surviving band of war time residents of the area - which we will happily append to this post, with full credit being given to the source (if they wish).

Next week - Part 2 - 1944 - 1945.

WW11 Forest Gate Bomb hits, by road

1940

March
29th - Latimer Road

June
29th - Gower Road

August
15th - Woodgrange

September
3rd - East London Cemetery

7th - Margery Park, Odessa, Sebert, Station Road, Wellington, Avenue Road, Upton Lane

8th - Upton Lane, Forest Street, Hampton, Latimer (Forest Gate Station)

9th - Osborne, Capel, Clova, Disraeli (Deaths: Ada Louisa Barnes, aged 40, 81 Disraeli; Ada Dorothy Barnes, aged 14, 81 Disraeli; Brenda Beach, aged 12 months, 81 Disraeli,;Dorothy Beach, aged 25, 81 Disraeli; Leonard Beach, aged 24, 81 Disraeli), Dunbar x 2, Upton Lane, Sebert, Wyatt (West Ham Cemetery)

10th - Romford x 2, Earlham Grove, Clova

16th - Sidney, Woodford x 4, Woodgrange, Dames, Forest Lane x 3

17th - Upton Lane

18th - Odessa, Ridley, Wellington

20th - Odessa, Sebert, Tower Hamlets (Deaths: Alice Scott, aged 69, 140 Tower Hamlets Road; Isabella Scott, aged 34, 140 Tower Hamlets Road, William Scott, aged 44, 140 Tower Hamlets Road), Wellington

23rd - Cranmer, Hampton, Odessa x 2 (Deaths: Elizabeth Clarke, aged 46, 29 Odessa; George Clarke, aged 46, 29 Odessa; Harry Clarke, aged 14, 29 Odessa; Lily Clarke, aged 8, 29 Odessa; Arthur Clayden, aged 37, 29 Odessa; Lily Clayden, aged 8, 29 Odessa; Margaret Clayden, aged 8, 29 Odessa; Mary Clayden, aged 67, 29 Odessa; Annie Hopgood, aged 26, 23 Odessa), Upton Lane

24th - Capel, Disraeli, Clova (Deaths: George Hamer, aged 87, 70 Clova; George Frederick Hamer, aged 56, 70 Clova; Mary Hamer, aged 79, 70 Clova; Cecil Partridge, aged 52, 68 Clova Road; Daisy Partridge, aged 56, 68 Clova Road; Hubert Partridge, aged 42, 68 Clova Road; Lilian Partridge, 68 Clova Road), Romford (Upton Lane School)(Death: Ronald Harris, aged 17, 32 Wellington)

28th - Windsor

The top of Windsor Road after the bombing,
 and the debris had been cleared

29th - Knox, Skelton

Communal grave of early air raid casualties,
 established September 1940 in East London Cemetery

October
1st - Sprowston (East London Cemetery)

2nd - Forest Lane, Odessa, Woodford (Forest Gate Hospital : Death: Elizabeth Sinclair, aged 61 at FG Hospital, Wanstead Flats)

4th - Hampton (Deaths: Hilda Humphreys, aged 23, 73 Hampton Road; Joyce Humphries, aged 23, 73 Hampton Road), Latimer

7th - Nursery Lane

8th - East London Cemetery, Dames

9th - St James', Romford x 3, Balmoral, Odessa (Forest Gate Hospital)

14th - Earlham Grove, Sebert, Station Road, Romford, Woodgrange

15th - Dames, Forest Lane, Leonard, Vansitart (East London Cemetery, West Ham Cemetery, Forest Gate Hospital) Deaths: Mrs Sabbon, aged 62, 102 Earlham Grove. (In October 2021 this site received an update on this reference from the Great Grand-daughter of "Mrs Sabbon", who offers a fascinating insight. The deceased's name, in fact was Mrs Loetitia Sablon, the widow of Charles Sablon. Mrs Sablon's son, naturally, remembered the incident well and told his family that his mother had refused to go to an air-raid shelter on the night of the bombing, when the signal was given. He and she were sheltering under the table in their home when the bomb dropped. It took a day for the rescuers to uncover him, when they took him straight to hospital. By the time he was discharged, his mother had already been buried. Her death certificate had already been issued with inaccuracies, including the mis-spelled name "Sabbon" on it, with no first name for the deceased or her former husband inserted. The son formally corrected the certificate three months later, giving the deceased's full, proper, name as Loetitia Amelie Sablon, aged 67 - not 62, as originally cited - and naming her former husband as Charles Sablon. We are happy to record this correction, and are left wondering how many more Home Front war-time deaths were similarly orginally mis-recorded.)

16th - East London Cemetery

17th - Dean

18th - Sebert

22nd - Upton

27th - Romford

28th - Glen Parke

November
15th - (Death: Charles William Bryant, 67, an APR of 1 Dunbar Rd, killed Royal Albert Dock)

18th - Dunbar, Upton Lane x 3, Skelton

23rd - Ridley

December
3rd - Odessa, Sylvan, Whytevlille, Romford x 4, Woodgrange, Upton Lane, x 2, Kitchener x 2, Knox, Glen Parke, Gower, Green Street, Chaucer x 2, Claremont, Disraeli x 3, Earlham Grove, Clova x 3 (Emmanuel Church)

4th - Clova

9th - Margery Park, St James, Tower Hamlets, Whyatt, Romford x 7, Clova, Crosby, Earlham Grove x 4, Leonard, Upton Lane (Forest Gate Hospital, Upton Lane School)

 

What at the time was the maternity hospital on
 Forest Lane, after one of the six hits,
 in total it received during the war 

19th - Odessa, Forest Lane

29th - Upton Lane

1941

January
11th - Disraeli

19th - (Forest Gate Police Station)

29th - Clova, Osborne, Green Street

March
8th/9th - Claremont x 3, Forest Gate Station,  Vale, Romford x 3, Vale (East London Cemetery)

19th - Wellington, Windsor, Talbot, Sidney, Knox, Hampton, Green Street x 3, Clova, Bignold, Atherton (Godwin School)

20th - Eric Road (Deaths: Albert Clements, aged 15, 25 Eric Road; Joyce Clements, 12, 25 Eric; Sarah Louise Clements, aged 52, 25 Eric; Ivy Denham, aged 26, Eric; Elizabeth Goddard, aged 70, 19 Eric; Frederick Ellis, 41, 161 Station Road; Alfred Middlehurst, aged 35, 20 Eric Road; Babrara Murrell, aged 2, 24 Eric Road; Doris Murrell, aged 18, 24 Eric Road; Dorothy Murrell, aged 13, 24 Eric Road; Rose Murrell, aged 16, 24 Eric Road; Susan Murrell, aged 46, 24 Eric Road; Thomas Murrell, aged 20, 24 Eric Road; Elizabeth Spooner, aged 51, 22 Eric Road; Annie Tallintire, aged 53, 21 Eric Road; Betty Tallintire, aged 14, 21 Eric Road; Charles Tallintire, aged 65, ARP stretcher bearer, 21 Eric Road)

Iconic photograph of Eric Road after
 the bomb. It is a small side
 road, just off Station Road

Parachute mine, of the kind that hit Eric Road

April

8th - Sebert (Godwin school)

Godwin school, after 1941 bombing

16th - Ridley

17th - Woodgrange (Methodist Church)(Deaths: Lucy Bruce, aged 68, 5 Claremont; William Bruce, aged, 68, 5 Claremont; Myer Cash, aged 65, 6 Claremont; Rosetta Cohen, aged 23, 3 Claremont;  Ruth Cohen, aged 19, 3 Claremont)

Above the bomb damaged Methodist
 church on Woodgrange Road

Once more, the Stratford Express
 report is very vague about location or
 details, but it probably refers,
 in very vague terms to the
 bombing of the church, which
is vaguely mentioned in the third
 paragraph in a small article,
 the week after the hit.

18th - Romford

19th - Earlham Grove x 3, Romford (Princess Alice Pub)

Bomb site left where original Princess Alice
 pub stood, junction of Romford and Woodgrange Roads

20th - Margery Park (Deaths: Herbert Kaye, aged 60, 1 Woodgrange Road)

29th - Romford (Queen's cinema)

Queen's cinema, soon after 29 April bomb

December
9th - Margery Park

1942

July
27th - Vansitart

1943

January
17th - Palmerstone, Romford (Death: Ronald Kirby, aged 18, a firewatcher)

18th - (Forest Gate Station)

March
3rd - (Forest Gate Hospital)