As we saw in the British Pathe film (https://blitzincidents.blogspot.com/2023/10/british-pathe-bombed-factory-croydon.html) the British NSF factory was wrecked in the attack. The entrance fronting Queens Way looked like this:
The company British NSF was so-called
because it had split off from the original German company Neurenberger
Schraubenfabrik (NSF) under two German-Jewish brothers, Hans and Justin
Saemann. For more details see:
https://nsfcontrols.co.uk/a-short-history-of-nsf-controls/
or http://www.nonstopsystems.com/radio/hellschreiber-components.htm (scroll down to halfway down)
The company made components for electrical
equipment and many of the Croydon staff described their job as involving parts
for radios or wirelesses.
The fullest eyewitness statement was by Joseph Cotton:
I was feeling a bit
tired so I went round by the time office to look at the clock. It was five
minutes to seven and I decided I would knock off at seven. I took off my
overalls and hung them on a nail, opened my drawer to get my soap to have a
wash. Somebody had nabbed mine so I borrowed Ron’s and went down the end of the
shop to the washroom.
It was quieter here
than out in the shop and the splashing and water was the only sound. I was
hypnotised by the way in which the lather dropped from my hands in big dirty
blobs and went swirling round and round before vanishing down the plughole. I’d go to the pictures tonight I decided.
There was a
crash. Like thunder it was: like the
sheet-metal thunder you hear in amateur theatricals, a thousand times
magnified. The floor, concrete, was
shaking. Air blasted in through the door
hit me like a whip-lash. I went down on
the floor close to the wall.
Paddy burst in and
flopped down beside me. “It’s all right
mate,” he was shouting, “it’s all right.”
A big sheet of plywood fell from above and landed beside us, we pulled
it up over us and glass and brick beat down upon it. Crash followed crash. We could hear the whine of each bomb – every one
was coming straight at us and we clung close together like a couple of kids. We were afraid – those bombs were close.
Paddy’s face was close
to mine, his nose was bleeding, blood running down and dripping off his chin.
“The bastards,” he
yelled in my ear. “The dirty German bastards.”
Explosions were coming
from underneath us. I was waiting for
the floor to open up and hurl us skywards.
There came a lapse and we lifted our heads.
Plaster dust filled
the air and I could not see across to the other wall. Paddy saw the dust and yelled, “It’s gas. The bastards are dropping gas.” He struggled up, remained for a moment as a
blurred silhouette in the doorway, then vanished from view.
The dust was down my
throat, I could not breathe and wanted a drink.
I crawled out from under the plywood and went over to the sinks. Falling brick had knocked the bottom out of
most of them. I put my mouth under the
tap and drank. I noticed a poem
pencilled on the whitewashed wall – it concerned the foreman. A piece of chewing gum was stuck there too.
I could hear the
rising note of an aircraft engine and dived under the plywood once more. More explosions and whining. Crashes that made the whole scene shake like
the picture thrown on a sheet by a cheap cine projector.
How lonely I
felt. I wished Paddy had not gone. The dust cleared a little and I could see out
through the door. I got an impression of
a great crack racing diagonally across the face of a wall. It sagged, bulged, then fell like a man
struck behind the knees. I could see
deep blue sky and clouds where the roof had been.
Then it was
quiet. I kicked the protective plywood
away and sat leaning against the wall for some moments. I thought: “How many are dead? Quite a few, I bet.” The door was hanging on one hinge.
“How am I – all there? Not a scratch.” A procession of people was passing the door,
feet crunching on the glass-strewn floor.
They nearly had cut heads from the fallen glass.
Two men went by
carrying a third between them. One of
his shoes had come off, there was a hole in the heel of his sock.
“Poor devil. How bloody his face is. Wonder if Ron and
Moggie and the other blokes are O.K.?”
Small pieces of glass
were still dropping, tinkling, to the floor, like the rain drips from trees
when the storm has passed.
“Better get out.”
I got up, passed out
into the shop and picked my way between benches, over the floor strewn with
brick and glass to where my coat hung. I
slung it over my arm and walked to the other end of the shop. A bomb had landed close here. Figures were stretched out between the
benches. First aid-men were passing
among them. They lay where they had fell
and the falling dust settling upon them had transformed them into so many
statues and made them a part of the debris in which they lay.
There were pieces of
men, too.
I went into the
street. A Ford V8 was lying upside down
on the roof of the building opposite.
Falling telegraph poles had festooned the roofs with wire.
The road was covered
with glass and brick and steel girder-work from roofs. One building was on fire and a column of
black smoke rose into the blue evening sky.
Firemen were on the scene and their heavy rubber boots made a clumping
noise as they moved backwards and forwards getting the hoses unrolled.
People were still coming
out of the stricken buildings. A group
of girls came out, some of them with faces stained a shocking crimson with
blood from head cuts. Some were
hysterical.
Two men in shrapnel helmets
carried a figure out on a stretcher and placed it near to where I was
standing. It was a woman and her clothes
had been blasted off. She lay very
still. I wondered if she was dead. The row of silent helpless figures grew
longer and cars were commandeered to get them to hospital.
I knew some of those
silent figures. It could not be
reality. Things like this never happen
to people you know – only to persons you read of in the newspapers or see in
the newsreels.
At this point the
air-raid sirens blared out, tearing on nerves that had already been taxed to
the utmost. I went down a ditch by the
side of a factory wall. People were running
in every direction. Ambulance men were
trying to get a stretcher through the narrow entrance to a shelter.
Spitfires and
Hurricanes roared by overhead, forming a protective circle around the stricken
area. Some people saw them and just
flung themselves flat, hands covering their ears. “They’re our boys. It’s O.K. They’re ours,” someone shouted.
A man walked slowly
across the road and sat down on a pile of bricks, his right coat sleeve had
gone and his arm was severely lacerated.
A friend put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it for him. He looked up at him, smiled quietly, then
drew on his cigarette and started at the ground as he drew patters in the dust
with the toe of his shoe.
The planes had gone
and it was very quiet, save for the crackling of flames. Beside me in the ditch was a heap of big
cardboard boxes. Some had burst open –
they contained radio sets.
There were no more
bombs and the “All clear” soon sounded.
I caught sight of Ron across the road, pulling his bike out from under a
pile of bricks.
“Bloody awful, wasn’t
it?” he said.
“Yes,” I replied, “I
lost your soap.” We laughed – we could
afford to laugh, for we had been very lucky.
The factory seen from the roof of the neighbouring Bourjois building (from Cluett et al)
Joss Spiller was in the toolroom:
“As we had steam and impregnating boilers, my first reasoning was that they had exploded, but almost immediately I realised the terrible truth, for I heard the screaming of a bomb, if not bombs. Mr Parker of the machine shop was shouting ‘Bloody Nazis!’ and everything was so black. Then there was a gush of fire and I realised that the gas main had been struck. After the second explosion I must have blacked out for I came to under the bed of a lathe – covered with debris – which was at least 12 yards from where I had been working … You can imagine the scenes were pretty horrific to behold.” (quoted in Cluett et al "Croydon Airport and the Battle for Britain", page 76)
Vic Woods in the drawing office only realised something was wrong as “the building was falling down around me. Then people began running from the works past my office door and I was urging them to hurry. The next thing I remember was being outside the main entrance among several parked cars when another bomb was on its way. I dived under the nearest car, when there was an almighty explosion, and rubble began to rain down on the car, which began to squash me. I said to myself, ‘Hold out, hold out, there won’t be much more, then I blacked out.” (Cluett et al, page 75)
In the photo Vic Woods is on the left, Bob Hutchings on the right (from Cluett et al)
Ernest Jones came out of the CEGB stores across the junction of Queens Way and Princes Way from NSF: “Black smoke and fire were coming up from the NSF factory. I don’t know how many men were in there, but I’m sure they never found many of the bodies; they couldn’t have done with such a direct hit.” (Cluett et al, page 77)
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