Croydon 15th August 1940: Redwing and Rollason's

 What happened at Redwing?

Redwing was located in the most easterly hangar of C block (so closest to Purely Way), according to Cluett.  While several accounts describe it as a factory, Redwings only ever manufactured 12 planes and this seems to have been in the 1930s; by 1940 their business was aircraft maintenance and repair/

A bomb “burst through the roof of Redwing’s main hangar … causing a fire which was quickly extinguished.  The seven [strong] first-aid team of the firm who were at practice when the raid began were first on the scene and were able to render good service to the many injured in the raid.  Employees went back into the hangar to help dismantle the Vickers aileron assembly jigs.  Care had to be taken not to make too much noise in case the vibrations brought down more of the reinforced glass from the shattered roof.” (quoted on pages 76-77).

Doreen Bull said:
“I was working at Redwings Munition Factory at Purley Way, Croydon. Because we had been working long hours (with very little pay) the foreman said we could go home at 5.30 on the Friday, which was the day before my 18th birthday. It was a beautiful August evening. I was looking out of the window waiting for my mother to come home from shopping when I saw lots of aircraft bobbing and whizzing about. I thought they were Canadians or Americans fooling about. At about 6.50pm there were almighty bangs which shot me right across the room into the garden. They were German planes bombing Croydon Airport which I lived near (and still do). My mother came in all flustered and pushed me into the shelter, but all I thought about was my father who was on duty as Police Security at the airport. I ran out but couldn't get very far as there were huge boulders down the road. An RAF fellow told me my father was OK and was helping to get the injured out of Rollason's factory. He came home about 3.30am, covered in dust and blood and his boots had big grooves in the heel where the German bombers had machine-gunned them. There were lots of people killed during this raid as there had been no warning at all.”

(http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=154656506)

It is strange she describes Redwing as a munitions factory when this does not match with any other source.

 

What happened at Rollason’s?

Rollason’s business was located in C hangar; like Redwing its main business was the maintenance and repair of aircraft.

Roy Farquharson was an apprentice engineer at Rollason’s and remembers the silence after a bomb exploded. “All around was devastation – walls down; the glass hangar roof in shreds. There was a man standing on the edge of a piece of glass high up on the roof calling to be taken down.  I managed to get myself up to my feet and saw for the first time the sight of the ruins and the dark bodies that were laying all around me.  Before I knew what was happening there was the sound of another aircraft swooping low, and a man pushed me into a depression in the ground to take shelter. As I did, two rows of dust puffs erupted from the ground like lines of little volcanoes.  I had no idea what they were at the time, but I was later told they were bullets being fired from the Stukka as it swept back overhead. …

More than 80 of the men I worked with died that day.  It was very traumatic. It changed the way I thought about the war. I didn't blame the Germans for bombing us, because, after all, we were bombing them too. I just felt the whole thing was stupid and unnecessary.  At least, that's how I felt about the whole thing as I lay in the hospital, watching the surgeon walking along the ward with the blood of the victims all up his arms."

(taken from the website of the Bath Chronicle, but the page has now been take down: http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/War-hit-home-Luftwaffe-paid-visit/story-11354166-detail/story.html)

Note while I have followed the story that this took place at Rollason’s, some details are better suited to it having happened at the near-by British NSF factory.

Rollason’s was certainly on fire – one account, quoting a relative, says incendiaries were the cause (another webpage that is no longer accessible http://www.janestevens.co.uk/rollason/index.htm).

Geoffrey Doorman said it was “burning for a long time after the raid and seemed to be spreading” (quoted in Cluett, page 79) and “The shed, 400 yards long, housing Rollason’s repair factory was gutted …”