The Black Country Blitz - how the Luftwaffe devastated the West Midlands in the 1940s

After calling time at The Three Swans pub on September 5, 1940, landlady Nellie Curtis told her 16-year-old twins Frank and Dorothy to bed down in the smokeroom at the back.

It was a fortuitous decision. That very night, a bomb landed right on top of the pub, and Frank’s bed ended up on the opposite side of the road.

Following the bombing of Buckingham Palace in the Blitz, the Queen Consort – later the Queen Mother – famously joked she could now ‘look the East End in the eye’. Britain and France had declared war on Germany in September 1939, but it was Germany’s invasion of France in May 1940 which brought the conflict to Britain’s doorstep. On 16 July, Hitler ordered the preparation of Operation Sea Lion as a potential amphibious and airborne assault on Britain, to follow once the Luftwaffe had air superiority over the English Channel.

Despite the Luftwaffe outnumbering the RAF by two-to-one, Germany failed to achieve air superiority, and Hitler was forced to abandon Operation Sea Lion. It would prove to be a crucial turning point in the war. And while London certainly bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe’s attentions, the Black Country hardly escaped scot-free.

The Three Swans, in High Street, Dudley, was destroyed in the raid, and the family was taken in by the manager of the Regent cinema next door. To this day, St Thomas & St Luke’s Church on the opposite side of the road bears the scars from the blast, with holes in its historic masonry. But this was only a precursor to what would happen on the night of November 19. At 6.53pm, the air-raid sirens began to sound in West Bromwich, marking the start of the Black Country Blitz.

In West Bromwich's Oak Road alone, 28 lives were lost, with a further 24 fatalities elsewhere in the town. The Tantany and Stone Cross areas of the town suffered acute devastation. Haig Street in Tantany was reduced to little more than a huge crater and the junction of Law Street and Shaftesbury Street had become a pool. A house in Clive Street was reduced to a tile-less roof.

The bombers were probably aiming for the gasworks at Swan Village, at the time the biggest in the country, but didn’t hit the target. The gas showroom, on the other hand, was razed to the ground.

John Brookes was 11 when his home in Lombard Street was flattened by the German bombs.

He was in the cellar with his mother, sister, and the family from next door while his father was out fighting fires caused by other bombs in the town.

Mr Brookes later told the Express & Star: “I never heard a bang but I remember the wall fell in around us. It killed my neighbour and his daughter and my five-year-old sister Vera suffocated in my motherπs arms.”

He was rescued from the rubble with his mother, the dog and his next-door neighbour. “It was very distressing for us but I can't imagine how my father got through it,” he said. “He came home to change his clothes and there was nothing left.”

The same night, Dudley came under renewed attack, with 10 casualties in the Oakham area after a row of houses was hit. There were also an unspecified number of deaths in Tipton. Friar Park also suffered from bombs presumably aimed at the railway lines and marshalling yards at Bescot. Four days later, West Bromwich was hit again, although there were only two deaths on that occasion. In Smethwick, one German bomber, a Heinkel 111, crashed into houses after being shot down by the RAF. The town was also heavily hit.

The devastation was far worse in Birmingham and Coventry, which had much of its centre – including its cathedral – wiped out by the raids. Wolverhampton, which had also been on Hitler’s hit-list, largely escaped the Blitz, possibly because the air defences had been improved by the Luftwaffe got round to targeting the town.

Having failed to bomb Britain into submission, Hitler turned his attentions eastwards, and launched an invasion on the Soviet Union – less than two years after forming an unlikely pact with Joseph Stalin.

It would prove to be a catastrophic mistake, and Germany’s defeat on May 8, 1945, was greeted with huge celebrations across the West Midlands.

Paper played a crucial role in the war years, and the end of an era

The declaration of war in September 1939 presented the Express & Star with challenges unlike anything it had seen before.

After the rapid expansion during the 1930s, the newspaper entered the 1940s facing a seemingly impossible conundrum.

The challenge was clear – how could it meet the soaring demand for news and newspapers, with a depleted staff and paper-rationing – not to mention the small matter of the Luftwaffe’s best efforts to bring the country to its knees? During the course of the war, 72 members of staff were lost to the armed forces, and a further 28 took on civil defence or munitions work. Anxious to avoid compulsory redundancies in the constrained times, staff were advised to take war work if they could find it. Among those called up to war duty was Wilfred Byford-Jones, who served as a captain with the military intelligence department, but not before he had set up the Express & Star Comforts Fund. The initiative raised a spectacular £160,000 – about £7 million at today’s prices – to provide support for forces personnel during the course of the war.

When the war spread to Norway, paper was rationed to 30 per cent of its pre-war supply. Faced with the prospect of having to cut the paper down to just four pages, the Express & Star management took the bold decision to convert the paper to a tabloid format.

It offered eight pages packed with condensed news stories and features. The readers loved it, and within months the paper added 6,000 extra copies to its sales.

The Express & Star’s Spitfire fund raised enough money to pay for an aircraft in its first week, but the joy of this landmark was cut short by the capitulation of France to Nazi forces.

As the war progressed, the paper supplies increased. But instead of going back to the old broadsheet format, the company used the extra rations to print extra copies. By 1944, the Express & Star had seen its circulation rise to 137,780. The figure represented  an increase in readership of 37 per cent since the start of the war.

The company’s expansion northwards was consolidated by the opening of an office in Cannock on May 4, 1945. 

Four days later came news of Germany’s unconditional surrender, and a special victory edition of the newspaper was produced to celebrate the special day, with no advertising. The only problem was, VE Day – or V-Day as it was known at the time – was declared a bank holiday, and 367 newsagents where sales would have been brisk simply refused to open. Sadly, Norrie Graham would not live to see the end of the war, dying on February 11, 1944, at the age of 71. His brother J Douglas, died on May 5, 1948, severing the paper’s final link with the Victorian era.