Chelsea’s deadly V2 strike- 3rd January 1945

Wednesday 3rd January 1945

At 8.44 a.m. in the morning the mobile German V2 battery unit 444, operating in the Hague area of occupied Holland launched a V2 long range rocket which landed four to five minutes later in the Royal Hospital grounds in Chelsea.

Chelsea Air Raid Precautions, the Control Room at Chelsea Town Hall in the King’s Road, and London Home defence recorded the strike as 8.50 a.m.

It was a direct hit on the Doctor’s House, on the East side of the Royal Hospital buildings.

The precise location of the launch site is at present unknown though it was somewhere in the Hague area on Holland’s coast.

The detonation site is, of course, iconic in British military history and one of Chelsea’s most famous landmarks.

In the Historic England aerial photograph at the top of this posting, which was taken in 1952, the destruction caused by the blast opposite Burton’s Court is still very evident and it is amplified in the close-up below.

Five people died and 27 were seriously injured.

Location as it is now.

We do know that four hours later the Battery 444 V2 unit moved to Wassenaar, Rennbahn, and fired off another missile carrying around a ton of explosives and this impacted on open ground in Southminster, Essex.

This time there was no damage and there were no casualties.

This V2 attack on the Royal Hospital was the deadliest intercontinental ballistic rocket attack on Chelsea.

This was also the last enemy air raid attack on Chelsea during the Second World War.

There were many more V2 impacts on London with far greater casualties- the worst being on the New Cross Road in Deptford on November 25th 1944.

The New Year’s attack on the Royal Hospital was in fact the only V2 strike on Chelsea. Other London boroughs fared much worse, with Deptford receiving the impact of nine V2 missiles.

Air Raid Waden at Post Don in Glebe Place, Jo Oakman, wrote in her diary that the V2 rocket fell: ‘…with a resounding crash at Royal Hospital Road in Franklins Row, bang on the doctor’s house, near the cemetery. It was preceded by a vivid orange flash and six seconds later by the explosion. There were five dead and 28 injured.’

There could be no alerts for these rockets unlike the other aerial bombardments on Chelsea. They arrived without warning coming out of the sky at any time of the day or night. The light and blast of contact was experienced before it could be heard because the velocity of the rockets was faster than the speed of sound.

The London Home Defence infrastructure was alert to every V2 incident and compiled detailed reports designated as ‘secret’ until after the war.

The London Regional Commissioner for Civil Defence, Sir Edward Evans, well known as an Antarctic explorer before the Great War, arrived on the scene within fiften minutes.

He would later receive a Peerage as Baron Mountevans, of Chelsea in the County of London.

He was accompanied by J.A. Gough, A.R.P. Controller, and Brigadier Airey, No. 1 Group Regional Officer. This incident can certainly be said to have brought in ‘the top brass.’

A Pathé News camera reporting team was on the scene and the archive of the film which they shot captures accurately and powerfully the rescue scene in the Royal Hospital Road.

Sir Edward’s report is more detailed than journalists were able to produce at the time for their publications:

‘The area was not under an “Alert”. An enemy Long Range Rocket detonated on the open garden area of the North Eastern 2-storey Hospital Staff Block, of sound construction with 18″ and 13 & 1/2″ walls, wooden floors and tiled roofs erected about 250 years ago. The rocket formed a crater about 12 feet across by 5 feet in depth. Blast caused partial demolition of the Staff Block, considerable damage to the main Hospital Buildings and Burton Court flats at the South Eastern angle of Franklin’s Row with Royal Hospital Road. Damage to windows was of a rather larger character than usual and extended to an area within a radius of about 500 yards from the crater.

The Rescue Service was well organized under the direction of Mr. Thurston, L.C.C. Assistance District Rescue Officer, 1 Group Mobile Crane and Rescue parties, 2 Heavy and 2 Light Rescue parties, assisted by about 20 R.A.S.C. personnel from the neighbouring billets, and N.F.S. personnel.

Search was proceeding for 2 known trapped casualties in a basement and a third under light debris – this one was problematic.

Mr. Evans, the I.O., gave casualties as follows:-

12 injured to Hospital (1 died on route)

10 dealt with at the Heavy Mobile Unit, with Dr. Symes in attendance.

Search proceeding for 3 persons, of which 1 was doubtful.

It was ascertained that the greater number of casualties dealt with were residents in Burton Court.

At about 9.30 hours the A.R.P. Controller called for M.A.P. dogs for work in different positions of the 3 trapped casualties.

The Sound Locating Unit was dispatched by R.H.G. in accordance with Operations Circular No. 132, (L.R. 3010), paragraph 6, but returned to depot as the type of incident was not considered suitable for its application.

In view of the damage to the historic Hospital buildings, reference was made to the Chief Executive of the L.C.C. Heavy Rescue Service on my return to R.H.Q., who will take the necessary action within the terms of London Region Circular 369 “Air Raid Damage to Buildings of Historic Interest.

Mobile canteens were in operation but it was understood that a W.V.S. Enquiry Point had not been set up as it was not considered necessary.’

Sir Edward’s report was dated and signed on the day of the attack and he had not been apprised of the final figure of casualties.

War-time censorship meant the West London Press and Chelsea News did not report on the incident for their edition coming out two days later on Friday 5th January. The following edition for 12th January 1945 published this brief five paragraph report on page 2. The location of Chelsea and its Royal Hospital continued to be censored:

‘V-BOMB FELL ON HOSPITAL- Doctor and Daughter Among Killed

A V-bomb which fell recently in Southern England hit the doctor’s quarters of a hospital, where three persons were killed and six seriously injured.

The doctor, an Irishman, and his 17-year-old daughter were among the killed. His wife and an elder daughter, who were upstairs, were rescued unhurt.

The bomb struck a section of the older part of the building and the greater number of people trapped, members of the staff, were rescued in a very short time. Six were injured, some seriously, and recue workers dug for hours before they reached those who were killed.

Patients Escaped

Soon after the bomb fell a number of convalescent patients rushed to the scene. They were disappointed at not being allowed to work after the arrival of the Civil Defence personnel. Soldiers helped with the recue work.

An official said: “All the patients escaped except for a few who had scratches, because they were on the far side of the block.’

The Royal Hospital, being a military institution, kept a war diary of all events through the Second World War and a contemporary historian, Martin Cawthorne, has published an excellent volume The Royal Hospital Chelsea At War (2024) which provides much detail and context for how the Royal Hospital and its community of inpatients and staff experienced the conflict.

The rocket bomb fell on the North Front of the Royal Hospital about fifteen feet from the Deputy Surgeon’s house in the Wing, destroying most of it and the houses on either side of it and bringing down two middle chimneystacks. The buildings affected have been reconstructed to full restoration in the present age.

More destruction was caused to some of the East Wing and Main Guardhouse. All the windows overlooking the Light Horse Court were smashed as well as most in Figure Court. The explosion badly damaged the framework in the Chapel and Great Hall windows and broke up the Chapel’s doors.

Captain Geoffrey Bailey who had been Captain of Invalids from 1911 and had even survived the German bombing of the Royal Hospital in 1918 was killed along with Mrs Camilla May, the wife of Captain Geoffrey May.

Major William Napier RAMC, a physician and surgeon at the Royal Hospital since 1941, was killed along with his 17 year old daughter Deirdre.

Martin Cawthorne and the Royal Hospital War diary reveal that Captain May’s young son ‘was standing in the kitchen, almost directly opposite where the rocket fell. The wall of this room was demolished, the floor gave way and he fell through into the basement on top of a big pile of rubble.’

He was pulled out alive and survived although suffering from a fractured pelvis.

A colleague of Captain May met him at the railway station as he was returning from a funeral outside London and stayed with him overnight and as Cawthorne observed: ‘The compassion displayed by Officers of the Royal Hospital was not only reserved for In-Pensioners.’

As revealed in the biography of his wife Camilla set out below, this was the second devastating family bereavement for Captain May during the Second World War for they had lost their eldest son Oswald in a train fire in Lincolnshire in 1941.

Casualties Wednesday 3rd January 1945

War artists such as Randolph Schwabe captured war-time destruction in ways photographs could not. This is his drawing of the aftermath of the last V2 attack on Chelsea.

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63 year old Geoffrey Bailey, was a ‘Captain of Invalids’, of The Royal Hospital with service in the Manchester Regiment. He was the son of Colonel Christopher Bailey, of Bushe, Timaru, New Zealand and the husband of Frances May Bailey, of The Royal Hospital.

He died at The Royal Hospital from multiple injuries including a fractured skull at 9.50 a.m. on 3rd January, the morning of the V2 strike and he was identified by H.M Fitzgerald, the Assistant Secretary of the Royal Hospital.

He was born in Simla, British India on 3rd August 1881 and married Frances May née Geldard in Chelsea in 1912. Public records show they had a daughter, Mary, born in 1918. He left £1,869 14s. 10d. in probate to his widow which had the value in February 2025 of £68,476.69.

He is buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery, Surrey in the Old Plot for the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

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70 year old Edward Joseph Gummer an ‘In Pensioner’ died at the Royal Hospital at 9.30 a.m. on the morning of the V2 attack from crushing injuries in the Hospital’s Chapel as a result of falling debris. He was identifed by a fellow Chapel Orderly.

Edward Gummer had a longstanding and distinguished service in the British Army with campaign medals from the South African (Boer) War and the Great War of 1914-18.

He was born in the St Paul’s Parish of Dublin on 14th November 1874 and had known military life from the age of 9 when joining the Royal Hibernian Military School in Phoenix Park Dublin where he was educated for four and a quarter years.

He was sent there when he was a child because his father, Henry Francis Gummer, was a sergeant in the 14th Hussars and the school, like the Duke of York’s in Chelsea, was created to provide education and support for the children of soldiers who had died, were killed or were in service.

They measured the 9 year old Edward on his arrival at the school with a height of 4 feet and 2 inches, weight of 3 stone and 11 pounds and chest size of 24 and a half inches.

He was 14 years old when he enlisted in the York and Lancaster Regiment in Dublin on 23rd March 1888. His mother Margaret Gummer was recorded as next of kin residing in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham Dublin along with a brother Philip who was a serving soldier in the Royal Engineers.

The military attestation form in longhand in 1888 described Edward as 4 feet 9 and a quarter inches tall, weighing 73 lbs, light brown hair, fresh complexion, blue eyes, chest measurement of 27 inches, two scars on the back of his head along with a cross tattoo on his left forearm and religious denominaton: Roman Catholic. He was exactly 14 years and three months old.

He would have a thirteen year career in the York and Lancasters Regiment and served throughout the South African conflict between 1899 and 1901.

He was the recipient of Queen Victoria’s South African Medal with clasps for Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, Tugela Heights, the Relief of Ladysmith and the Battle of Laing’s Nek in 1900.

He saw active service in practically every major battle and campaign of what was then known as the Boer War.

He also received King Edward the VII’s South African medal for service in the last year of the conflict in 1901.

On 15th May 1901 he married Hannah Hall at St Anne Cathedral in Leeds and was also appointed as a civil service postmaster in the Post Office in Leeds on the 24th June of that year.

Edward and Hannah moved to Liverpool where Edward became a police constable in the Liverpool City Police force. They had two daughters while living in West Derby, Liverpool- Ellen Margaret on 24th May 1903 and Cecilia on 6th November 1906.

They also had a son, named after Edward’s father, Henry Francis, whose birth was registered in West Derby in early 1905, but who passed away at the age of three in 1908.

At the time of the 1911 Census, Edward was 37, Hannah 33 and they were living at 51 Leven Street, Kirkdale with their two young daughters. But Hannah who had also been born into a military family in Lucknow, British India, died that year.

Two years later Edward married 29 year old widow Mary Ellen Moor in West Derby, Liverpool on 17th December 1913. Mary Ellen was also from a British military family having been born in Gwalior in British India.

On the 22nd of June 1915 Edward re-enlisted in the British Army at the age of 41. He had been living with Mary Ellen and his daughters at 63 Makin Street, Walton, Liverpool.

Edward served in the military foot police with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force during the years 1915-16 and the British Expeditionary Force in the period 1917-18.

He reached the rank of Corporal and Acting Sergeant.

He also received three World War One campaign medals: The British War and Victory medals and 1914-15 Star.

He was demobilized from the Army on 14th February 1919 to return to his family now living at 17 Orwell Road, Liverpool. By the time of the 1921 Census he was 47 years old and an unemployed house painter.

Like many former servicemen, he was finding that he had not returned to a ‘Home Fit For Heroes.’

On 18th August 1922 his second wife Mary, now in her fortieth year, gave birth to their son Edward Leo.

At the time of the late September 1939 National Register, Edward Joseph Gummer became an In Pensioner at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, and Mary Ellen and son Edward Leo, then working as a clerk, were living at 1 Pilot Street, Accrington in Lancashire.

Edward Leo enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve flying with 431 (R.C.A.F.) Squadron in Bomber Command. He died on a bombing mission to Duisberg on 13th May 1943 at the age of 20.

He was a Sergeant navigator when his Vickers Wellington bomber, flying from his base in Burn, Yorkshire, was shot down by a night fighter at Huppel two miles North East of Winterswijk during the raid on Duisberg.

He lies buried and commemorated in grave 26 of the Winterswijk Cemetery in the Netherlands and his CWGC headstone has the personal inscription: ‘Sweet Jesus Grant Him Eternal Rest, Rest In Peace Now And For Evermore.’

His mother Mary Ellen would survive her son by 14 years and her husband by 12 years as she passed away in Clitheroe Hospital on 17th June 1957.

She left her modest estate of effects totalling £180 11s. 7d. (valued at £3,722.14 in February 2025) to her friend Robert Bridge, a retired motor driver/chauffer with whom she continued to live at 1 Pilot Street, Accrington after the deaths of her son and husband.

Edward Joseph Gummer was buried in the Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey in the ‘Old Plot’ for the Royal Hospital, Chelsea on 9th January 1945.

His daughters from his first marriage, Ellen Margaret and Cecilia Winifred had long lives, both marrying and having children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Ellen Margeret was 93 when she passed away in 1996 in Skelmersdale and Cecilia Winifred was 88 when she died in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk in 1994.

In 1921 Ellen Margaret was 18 and working as a kitchen maid in the household of engineer Richard Edward Hattersley at Asmall House, Asmall Lane, Scarisbrick in Lancashire. In 1925 she married butler and houseman James Culshaw in Ormskirk with a daughter born the following year.

By September 1939 the couple were employed as cook and butler/houseman for medical practitioner Dr Robert Jackson in Victoria Square, St Helens. When Ellen Margaret passed away in 1997 her family paid her tribute with this In Memoriam notice in the Skelmersdale Advertiser:

‘Culshaw- Peacefully at her daughter’s home in Skelmersdale on Tuesday, August 20, Ellen Margaret Culshaw, aged 93 years, the dearly loved wife of the late James Wilfred, loving mum of May and Charlie, dear mother-in-law of Harry and Brenda and devoted nan of all her grand and great grandchildren.’

Like her sister, Cecilia Winifred Gummer was educated at St John’s Roman Catholic Secondary School for Girls in Liverpool. She married railway clerk Thomas F Drake in Lambeth, London in 1929, and they had two children, Denis (1930) and Delia (1934) and by the beginning of the Second World War they were living in Downing Road, Dagenham in Essex.

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47 year old Camilla Margery May of the Women’s Voluntary Service (W.V.S). Wife of another ‘Captain of Invalids’- Geoffrey Cruden May, of the Border Regiment.

She died from bomb blast and crushing injuries at The Royal Hospital and it took most of the day for rescuers to recover her body from the wreckage by 6.22 p.m.

Camilla was born on 15th October 1897 in Calcutta, British India and she was baptised in the Roman Catholic Chapel of Barrackpore on 18th November. Her father Alfred was then a Surgeon-Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Camilla’s mother, also called Camilla, was Alfred’s second marriage.

During the Great War between 1914-18 Camilla volunteered for the Catholic Women’s League and received their War Medal. At the time of the 1921 Census she was 23 years old and living with her father in The Bungalow, Coombe Hill in East Grinstead.

Shortly afterwards she would marry Army officer Major Geoffrey Cruden May in a consular ceremony in Bayonne in France. They would have two sons Oswald P.J. on 29th February 1924 and Ralph Keogh on 13th August 1927 in Knaresborough, Yorkshire.

Geoffrey May had been a substantive Captain and Acting Major in the Border Regiment serving in the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915.

Between April and June 1916 he was treated for a gunshot wound and amputation of one of his fingers at Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital in Millbank and was the recipient of the Military Cross for his service during the Great War.

In 1918 he was promoted to Brigade Major by the Air Ministry and seconded to command of anti-aircraft defences in the South West.

After retirement from the regular army he was appointed a Captain of Invalids at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea.

Geoffrey and Camilla had to come to terms with the tragedy of losing their eldest son Oswald in a terrible train fire near Claypole Lincolnshire on 28th April 1941. He was in a party of boys returning to Ampleforth College. The Westminster and Pimlico News for 6th June 1941 reported:

‘SCHOOLBOY’S FUN AND MISCHIEF- Lead To Fatal Train Fire

A verdict of “Accidental Death” was recorded at the resumed inquest at Grantham on Wednesday week upon six boys who lost their lives while a railway coach in which they were travelling to Ampleforth College, Yorks, caught fire near Claypole, Lincs, on April 28.

One of the boys was Oswald P.J. May, the 17 years old son of Captain and Mrs. Geoffrey C. May of East Court, Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

The boys with a number of others were travelling back to Ampleforth College. One of the coaches of the train caught fire. Some of the boys jumped from the train. Others were trapped in a blazing coach.

The coroner (Mr. Theodore Norton), said there was no doubt that a good many of the boys were smoking cigarettes. Some lighted matches were thrown about in fun and mischief. “I have come to the conclusion that the fire started as a result of matches used by the boys,” he said, “and also as a result of cigarette ends lying burning and possibly thrown about.” The coroner said that the boys were all properly looked after by the master in charge, Father Pozzi. He was not prepared to find anything of a criminal nature that could be alleged or supported against any of the boys in the train, and they were all exonerated. A chemical set found in the coach was not being used when the fire broke out, although it would intensify the blaze locally. It struck him that the fire had started to smoulder before the train reached Grantham station but nothing could be seen at Grantham station to indicate the possibility of a fire taking place, and there was no neglect on the part of the guard or other railway employees.

The senior boy at the school, Norman John Roll (16), Woodbury Close, Croydon, who said he pushed several younger boys out of the carriage door when the smoke was becoming intense, was complimented by the coroner, who said, “But for your help the loss of life would probably have been greater.”

Guard George Dear, of Enfield, said that the communicating door leading from the two coaches reserved for the schoolboys to his van was locked in accordance with the company’s instructions to prevent third-class passengers going through into first-class compartments, or other passengers going into the reserved coaches.

The coroner: “You see the effect of this. The two coaches in which these boys were had no communication with anybody as far as you were concerned, and in fact some of them were trapped.”

Mr F.C. Scott of the L.N.E.R., said the evidence would be very carefully considered by the company and every attention would be paid to any possible method of avoiding a similar accident in the future.’

Mrs Camilla Margery May was buried in the Old Plot for the Royal Hospital at Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey.

Camilla and Geoffrey May’s younger son Ralph Keogh was also at Ampleforth College when his older brother Oswald was killed in the Lincolnshire train fire in 1941. It is not known whether he was also on the train.

He was 18 years old when he miraculously survived the V2 bombing of the East Wing of the Royal Hospital which claimed his mother’s life. He would go on to have a distinguished career in the British Army though he had to deal with the death of his father in Chelsea in 1956, and the death of his first wife Jennifer in Hanover, Germany in 1957 whom he had married in Westminster in 1954.

He married for a second time- Bridget H M Rutherford in Carlisle in 1957 and the public records indicate they would have a family as he travelled the world in the course of his military duties. Ralph Keogh May would pass away in September 2012 at the age of 85.

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17 year old Deirdre Margaret Napier. Daughter of Major William Napier. She died at The Royal Hospital.

Deirdre’s body was recovered from the Surgeon’s House at 12 noon on 3rd January 1945 and she was identified by a nursing sister resident at the Royal Hospital. She had died from crushing injuries.

She was born in Epsom Surrey in 1927 and was also resident at 112a Cheyne Walk at the time of her death. Although only 17 years old she left probate of £620 in personal effects to her mother Katherine Margaret Napier which in February 2025 had the value of £22,715.65.

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50 year old William Napier. Physician, surgeon and Major in the RAMC. Son of Alexander and Hester Napier and the husband of Katherine Margaret Napier.

He was Mentioned in Despatches in the 1914-18 War and held the qualifications: M.B., B.Ch., F.R.C.S., and B.A.O. As an experienced front line RAMC officer Major Napier was seconded to the D-Day landings and the following Battle of Normandy during June and July 1944.

Martn Cawthorne writes in The Royal Hospital Chelsea At War that he was convalescing from these duties when the V2 struck.

Major Napier’s body was recovered from the wreckage of the Surgeon’s House at five minutes past two on the 3rd of January 1945 and he was also identified by one of the Royal Hospital’s nursing sisters. Like his daughter he was killed by crushing injuries.

Major Napier was born in Down, County Down, Ireland in 1894 and had a distinguished career in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Great War.

On the day after his death the Belfast Newsletter published the following In Memoriam notice:

‘Napier- January 3, 1945, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London, Major William Napier, R.A.M.C., son of the late Alexander Napier, Ballybanna House, Downpatrick.’

The newspaper also published an obituary on its front page:

‘MAJ. W. NAPIER, R.A.M.C.

Maj. William Napier, R.A.M.C., whose death occured yesterday at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, was a son of the late Alexander Napier, Ballybranna House, Downpatrick. He was educated at Campbell College and Queen’s University, Belfast. While a medical student he joined the Army and for a time served with the Ulster Division in France in the 1914-18 war. He resumed his medical studies in 1917, and qualified. In 1921 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and settled at Epsom, where he had an extensive private practice.

When war broke out in 1939, he rejoined the Army and for a time served in France. He returned to England and eventually was posted to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

Surviving Maj. Napier are his wife (a daughter of the late Sir Samual Keightley), one son, who is serving in the Royal Navy, and a daughter.’

Major Napier’s son William would pass away in 1984. His other daughter Maureen, born in 1923, would marry Raymond H Rosenfield in 1958.

Major Napier and his wife had one other daughter, Barbara, born in 1928, but who died in infancy.

Mrs Katherine Napier passed away in the USA on 27th May 1985.

Major Napier and his daughter Deirdre are buried and commemorated in a family monument in Ballee Church of Ireland Churchyard, Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland.

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The entrance to the Chapel of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea has a monument tablet commemorating all the victims of the V2 attack on 3rd of January 1945.

The inscription bears the names BAILEY, Geoffrey, Capt.; GUMMER, Edward; MAY, Margery; NAPIER, Dierdre; and NAPIER, William, Maj.

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Rescue workers and dogs search in the ruins of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea after it had been hit by a V2 “Flying Bomb” (Photo by Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images)

Embed from Getty Images

The scene at the Royal Chelsea Hospital, London, home of the Chelsea pensioners, as an old soldier walks past the rubble after a German raid.

The building had been hit by a German V-bomb, “Flying Bomb” which caused great loss of life in Southern England and the capital. (Photo by Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images)

Embed from Getty Images

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The beginning of the newsreel report shows footage of the weckage caused by the V2 strike on the Royal Hospital. The lone figure of a Chelsea Pensioner taking in what has happened is certainly evocative.

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This Pathé newsreel film is the silent footage recorded in the aftermath of the V2 rocket explosion on the morning of January 3rd 1945 and the damage caused to Chelsea Hospital Buildings.

It looks like the filming took place in the immediate hours following the attack as it captures in great detail many aspects of the rescue operation.

Chelsea pensioners are looking on as ARP Wardens, rescue squads and soldiers work in the wreckage.

There are also shots of the Alsatian rescue dogs used by heavy and light rescue squads who were trained to find people trapped in the wreckage. (The film is/was wrongly labelled 1941.)

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The V2 Menace

The Royal Hospital V2 rocket arrived without warning, travelling perhaps between one thousand to three thousand miles an hour through the air so that the explosion and detonation took place much faster than the speed of sound. The blast would therefore be heard after the physical impact and devastation.

If the Nazi regime had developed this weapon for use in the first years of the conflict before September 1944, there is a strong argument that Britain would have had great difficulties staying in the War.

By April 1945 the British War Government prepared a report on how much damage and human death the V2 rocket attacks had caused in London and South East England.

The shortness of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s observations in the House of Commons betrayed the fear and apprehension these ballistic missile weapons caused British military intelligence and the War Cabinet.

The Allies were years behind the Germans in rocket weapon development and they had no defence against the V2 apart from invading occupied North West Europe as quickly as possible to overun the launch sites, units and bases.

Gaumont newsreel report in 1945 on German V2 rockets

The Conservative MP for Ilford asked the PM whether he was now able to make any statement with regard to the enemy rocket attacks. Winston Churchill replied: ‘Yes, sir. They have ceased.’ He then sat down.

He was asked the follow-up question whether he could give an assurance that there was no prospect that they were likely to be resumed. Winston replied: ‘It is my duty to record facts than indulge in prophecy, but I have recorded certain facts with a very considerable air of optimism which, I trust will not be brought into mockery by events.’

The Labour MP for Plaistow asked ‘Could he not thank the R.A.F. for stopping the rocket bombs?’ Winston replied: ‘You must thank the R.A.F. for all they did, and the attack gunners, too, but you must not forget it was the British Army which did it.’ There were cheers in the chamber.

In April 1945, the Home Office reported that 1,050 V2 rockets killed 2,754 people. The highest number falling in any 24-hour period was 17.

6,523 people were seriously injured. The first V2 attack was on the night of 8th September 1944 at Epping Upland in Essex. In the early days the government was reluctant to reveal their worst fears of the cause of the explosions suggesting they might be gas mains blowing up. This quickly prompted an everyday joke that London and South East England were being attackd by ‘flying gas mains.’

The last V2 attack was in Orpington, Kent on the afternoon of 27th March 1945.

The worst period was in the month of February 1945 when 71 rockets hit Southern England in just one week.

50 to 60 V2 rockets a week were common throughout January, February and March and landed in London, Essex, Kent and Hertfordshire. The first attack on London was at Brentford when eight houses were destroyed, 50 damaged, two people killed and ten seriously injured.

The worst incident previously mentioned was in the New Cross Road on Saturday afternoon 25th November with a direct hit on Woolworths. 168 people died. The store and adjacent pavements had been crowded with shoppers who were mainly women and children.

In March 1945 a V2 strike on a block of flats in Stepney killed 134 and seriously injured 49.

Farringdon market in the City of London was also struck in March when the stalls were packed with shoppers and the blast killed 110 people with 123 seriously injured.

The prominent Whitfield’s Tabernackle in the Tottenham Court Road was destroyed by a V2 strike in March and was among 45 churches and chapels destroyed with 35 hospitals also being hit.

29 people were killed and 22 seriously injured when a hotel in Greenwich was hit by a V2 rocket.

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Special thanks to Karen White and Chris Pain whose families lived in Chelsea during World War Two, and Malachy John McCauley, also brought up in Chelsea, who have very kindly encouraged and assisted my research. Special thanks to Marja Giejgo for editorial assistance. Research and archive facilities from Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council library services, The Imperial War Museum and National Archives at Kew.

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