Sheffield Blitz | Capturing 'shock' and 'horror' of the blitz as survivors share memories - video Dailymotion

Sheffield Blitz | Capturing 'shock' and 'horror' of the blitz as survivors share memories

Transcript

00:00 So Sheffield was assumed it was on Hitler's target list,

00:05 one of the biggest armament producers in the world.

00:09 And Hitler switched his kind of plans,

00:12 summer, autumn of 1940s,

00:13 started bombing UK cities, ports and stuff.

00:18 It was December 12th,

00:20 that was a Thursday night in Sheffield,

00:21 and it was a kind of big going out night.

00:23 People had decided they were gonna start,

00:25 put thoughts of the war back in their minds

00:27 and go out and try and enjoy themselves.

00:30 By half six, seven o'clock, the bars were very busy,

00:33 the hotels, the theaters,

00:35 it was really kind of, really buzzing time.

00:38 And at seven o'clock, the sirens rang out.

00:42 Sheffielders generally didn't bat an eyelid

00:44 because it had happened so, so many times,

00:47 there'd been so many false alarms.

00:49 Within a few minutes, they heard a sound

00:51 they'd not heard so many times,

00:52 the sound of the British AK-47 guns firing.

00:55 They realized this might be, you know,

00:57 something, something serious.

00:59 Within minutes, people were ordered

01:00 to kind of out of the cinemas,

01:02 into the kind of public shelters.

01:04 The bombs started dropping over Sheffield.

01:07 300 German planes arrived in Sheffield,

01:11 wave after wave after wave of bombing.

01:14 Nine, I think nine solid hours of bombing over Sheffield.

01:19 Great sways of the city center

01:21 were totally and utterly flattened.

01:24 The library, Central Library is one of the few,

01:26 you know, that was, it was very lucky,

01:28 a big landmine landed outside.

01:31 People were sheltering underneath the Lyceum Cinema.

01:35 The Moor, High Street, Castle Market area,

01:39 Devonshire Green, totally flattened.

01:41 Over 2,000 people killed and wounded over two nights.

01:46 Over a tenth of the city's population

01:49 were made homeless over those two nights, December, 1940.

01:52 That was the Sheffield Blitz.