Friday, 29 August 2014

Ed Thompson has kindly furnished me with this picture (taken by John Sharp) of the site of a V1 explosion just off Childsbridge Lane,  Kemsing.

I remember it well:-
The bomb went off during the night (on a date not known), and even though we lived some distance away in (upper) Childsbridge Lane (Above the West End) our plaster ceilings were brought down, and our house incurred other damage.   Damage to houses in lower park of the lane, and along Dynes Road was extensive.    

Ed Thomson asked me where the crater was, well I think you can make out a shallow dip in the middle of the picture, and that is all there was.    The V1 may have hit trees and exploded a split -second before it hit the ground thereby allowing the blast to spread out widely and doing a lot of damage.  A V2 rocket on the other hand, made a deep crater, and much of the blast was lost to excavating out the hole, and a lot was deflected upwards.   So the spread of blast may not have been less.

The lane was so covered in debris that it was hidden.  I remember someone picking up part of the telephone pole cross-bar with an insulator on it.   That was probably the ple one can see in the picture, which would have been at the edge of the lane.

Interesting to me is also the two houses (one white) on the distant Pilgrims Way, there had been three; one received a direct hit, and was demolished.  It was rebuilt (slightly bigger) after the war.
Some planks of wood from the explosion remained  wedged in an adjacent large Beech Tree until the Hurricane.

I thank Ed Thomson for suplying the picture.

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