On the nights of 13th and 14th March 1941, Luftwaffe crews in Heinkels of the elite KGr 100 Bomber Group wreaked havoc and devastation on the Clydeside town of Clydebank. The events are forever etched on the memories of the many survivors, including those of Erskine veterans who have shared their memories over the years. 

Why was Clydebank bombed?

The attack on Clydebank wasn’t random. By 1941, the small Clydeside town had become one of the most strategically important industrial centres in Britain. 

John Brown & Company's shipyard had launched some of the most famous vessels in the world, including the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, and was producing warships for the Royal Navy. The Singer Sewing Machine factory had been converted to munitions production; the Admiralty Oil Storage depot had a storage capacity of over half a million tons of oil; and Beardmore's Engine Works was manufacturing armaments and engineering components.

The German command knew that slowing down or stopping production could seriously disrupt the war effort. 

What made the raids so devastating was the town’s layout. Thousands of houses and tenement blocks were in proximity to the industrial sites. 

The nights of the 13th and 14th March, 1941

When the sirens sounded at 9pm on Thursday, 13th March 1941, most people in Clydebank paid little attention. Many were at the cinema, out for the evening, or at home with their families. The sirens had sounded around forty times in the previous eighteen months, each one a false alarm, and most people assumed this would be no different.

It wasn't.

Within minutes, the elite Luftwaffe pathfinder group KGr 100 appeared in the sky above the Clyde Valley. The night was clear and lit by a full moon; conditions that unfortunately made Clydebank plainly visible from the air despite the blackout. 

For nine hours, wave after wave of aircraft pounded the town. Over the two nights, 439 Luftwaffe bombers dropped over 272 tonnes of bombs and 1,650 incendiary containers. 

A bomb, leaving a crater 30 feet wide by 20 feet deep, had severed the town’s water main in the early hours of the raid and cut fire-fighting supplies. Immediate assistance from neighbouring services was made impossible by the craters and collapsed buildings that blocked the roads. Into the night, the deaths and destruction mounted.

Fires raged through the Yoker and Auchentoshan Distilleries, Singer's wood yard, John Brown's shipyard and Beardmore's engine works. The engine works of Aitchison Blair were destroyed entirely. On nearly every street, something was burning.

John lived in a house at the top end of Kilbowie Road. He vividly remembers his front living room window frame, complete with glass, being blown into the room and narrowly missing his father. And when an incendiary bomb went through the roof and landed in the attic, he went with a bucket full of sand to extinguish it.

Jim sheltered in the ground floor hallway of his tenement on Bannerman Street with his family and neighbours, there all night. When a neighbour ran back upstairs to fetch something, he spotted a flickering light through the glass above the Barclay family's front door:

"My father got a sand bag and kicked the incendiary bomb down onto the landing so it couldn't burn on solid concrete, and that saved our building. The building across the street was on fire. This bomb came right down on the gable end and it sheared its way right down and you could still see the pots and pans in the kitchen on the cooker."

For Jean, the night’s vivid memory was when a bomb exploded in the backyard of her tenement and blew her up the stairwell. When Jean and her friend ventured out the next day, they found the gas mains in Kilbowie Road were on fire and the water mains were burst. Sadly, Jean’s friend's home had been bombed and her family bussed to the refuge of Helensburgh further down the Clyde.

On the 14th, the evacuation started. 48,000 refugees were spread afar, with many never to return to Clydebank. The town was still burning that evening when the bombers returned to a nearly deserted town to complete their task. When the drone of the last bomber had faded, 528 lay dead and over 617 had been seriously injured. Shards of exploded glass wounded many hundreds more.

Clydebank had been razed to the ground. Of approximately 12,000 houses, only eight remained undamaged. 4,000 had been completely destroyed; 4,500 severely damaged. Fires still burned. 

Margaret was 19 at the time, living with her family in Dennistoun, Glasgow. Her father worked at an engineering firm in Clydebank and didn't make it home until the second night:

"When the siren went off, my mum, brother and me all ran down to the air raid shelter which was in the abattoir in the Glasgow Meat Market. When we got home the next morning, my dad wasn't home. When he eventually got home on the second night, he said that the Germans had dropped bombs on the hills at Mountblow, the hills were on fire and a lot of the area had been flattened. It was dreadful."

Charles, visiting cousins in Glasgow, remembered a tenement near Partick railway station split clean in two; one side reduced to rubble, the other left standing with rooms fully exposed:

"There was a bath dangling precariously with the tap still running. The scene vividly showed the horrors of war, and it left a lasting memory."

Sydney's father was just fifteen years old when the Blitz hit, working as a messenger boy for Partick Fire Station. It was a role that carried a terrible weight:

"Dad got the job as the previous messenger boy died from his injuries during the Clydebank Blitz. Our dad always remembered him and spoke of him often. He told us that on the night of the bombings, a young messenger boy, Neil Leitch, aged 15, accompanied a Senior Fire Officer out of the area but was sent back to Partick Fire Station with a request for assistance during an air raid. He was injured on his return to the station but continued on route. He was further injured but again insisted that he continue with his message. Sadly, he later died from his injuries. What a brave young boy he was."

Historian Les Taylor described the Clydebank Blitz as "the most cataclysmic event" in wartime Scotland. The second night of bombing, he argued, had been a deliberate terror attack intended to break morale and force the population to call for an end to the war. It had the opposite effect.

Erskine remembers

The memories of the Blitz live on and should never be forgotten. The Clydebank children in the years that followed listened to stories passed down from great grandparents and grandparents who survived those horrific nights, a fact to which Erskine Social Media Officer Luisaidh Davidson can attest.

“Growing up in Clydebank, the Blitz was something we were always aware of. We learned about it in primary school, but most people’s grandparents had lived through it, so we heard the stories first-hand. My gran would often talk about the war, and the Blitz in particular. The bombing started 2 nights after her 13th birthday. Her and her family were at home at the time, and her dad happened to glance out of a window upstairs, and whether he saw something or just had a bit of a sixth sense, he told the family he felt there might be bombing coming, so they started to leave just as the sirens started and bombs begin to fall. Within minutes, much of Clydebank was an inferno, with buildings reduced to rubble and many already dead. My gran told me that as her family were running to the shelter, she could hear a family of her neighbours screaming as they were trapped in their house as it burned. I can only imagine the trauma of the Blitz on anyone who experienced it, let alone a child having to hear that. I know those nights stayed with her for the rest of her life, and the vivid memories never faded.”