The second raid on Exeter

Many lists record under 5 May 1942 that Exeter was bombed by the Luftwaffe in another “Baedeker raid”. The raid in question, however, came earlier: on the night of 3/4 May, when the first bombs fell on the city a few minutes before two in the morning of 4 May. The date of 5 May corresponds rather to the day on which the British press described the effects of the attack and firemen were still fighting the fires in the city centre. It was the second attack on the county town of Devon, after the one in April, and it proved the heaviest the city suffered in the whole war.

Back over Exeter

In April 1942 Adolf Hitler demanded retaliation for the destruction of Lübeck by British bombers. An order of 14 April called for “terror attacks of a retaliatory nature” on towns other than London. They were carried out by IX Air Corps of Luftflotte 3, based in France. The series, which the British called the Baedeker raids, began with Exeter: on the night of 23/24 April the bombers mostly missed the target, but the following night they killed 73 people. Then came the turn of Bath, Norwich and York. In those same days Bomber Command burned Rostock for four nights in a row, which Berlin took as a further insult demanding an answer.

The Luftwaffe had few forces in the west. The core of IX Air Corps was the bomber wing KG 2, flying Dornier Do 217s, and units converted from naval aviation flying Junkers Ju 88s, while the target was marked by the experienced I./KG 100. A single raid could usually muster between twenty and forty-odd aircraft, which where possible flew two sorties a night. Exeter suited as a target for the same reasons as in April: it lay close to the coast, above the broad estuary of the Exe, which on a moonlit night led the airmen straight to the city, and its anti-aircraft defences were very weak. It was also exactly what Hitler’s order sought: an old cathedral city of no military importance, with a densely built centre.

The night of 3/4 May

The alert sounded in Exeter at 1.36 a.m. on 4 May. The bombers came in from the sea along the Exe estuary, and the first bombs fell at about 1.51 a.m. on the Newtown district. The attack lasted about 70 minutes, and the all-clear was sounded before three. Accounts differ on the number of aircraft: local researchers speak of about twenty bombers over the city, German studies of forty, which in an hour and a half dropped some 75 tonnes of high explosive and about 10,000 small incendiaries. The difference arises partly because some tallies count aircraft and others sorties. The crews came in low and, according to residents, machine-gunned the streets.

The incendiaries started fires that the city’s fire brigade quickly lost control of. High Street, Sidwell Street and Fore Street were ablaze, as were the buildings around the Georgian Bedford Circus, South Street and Paris Street. The fire leapt from house to house, and the firemen were hampered by unexploded bombs and broken water mains. Crews came to help from Torquay, Plymouth and other towns. According to local records, 195 pumps and 1,080 firemen were eventually at work. The fires were essentially under control on 5 May, but isolated outbreaks continued until noon on 7 May.

Damage and casualties

Some 30 acres, roughly 12 hectares of the city centre, were burnt out. About two-thirds of High Street was destroyed, together with St Lawrence’s church, the Lower Market, the Globe Hotel, the cathedral’s medieval College of the Vicars Choral and the city library, which also housed the civil defence control centre. More than a million books and documents burned in the library. Of some 20,000 houses in Exeter, 1,500 were completely destroyed and 2,700 seriously damaged. About 400 shops, nearly 150 offices, more than 50 warehouses and 36 pubs and clubs went up in flames.

The cathedral survived, but only in part. A single heavy high-explosive bomb struck its south side, destroying St James’s Chapel and two buttresses and damaging the south choir aisle.

Casualty figures vary with the source. Local studies and most British accounts give 156 dead and 563 or 583 injured; some lists speak of 161 or 164 dead. It was the heaviest raid in the city’s history. Counting all nineteen attacks on Exeter since August 1940, British figures give 265 killed and 687 injured.

The defence

British radar-equipped night fighters operated over Exeter, among them the Polish No. 307 Night Fighter Squadron, the “Lwów Eagle Owls”, stationed at the airfield outside the city since April 1941. The squadron flew twin-engined Beaufighters. That night its crews scored their greatest success yet: according to Polish studies they shot down four German bombers, according to local researchers five. This was no salvation for the city, because the fighters caught the bombers mainly on their routes, while over Exeter itself there was almost no anti-aircraft artillery.

The next targets

The following night, 4/5 May, the Luftwaffe attacked Cowes on the Isle of Wight, home of the J. Samuel White shipyard. It was a target of both historical and military significance. Lying in the yard under repair was the Polish destroyer ORP Błyskawica, built there before the war. Her crew, under Commander Wojciech Francki (PL), fired at the bombers all night, laid smokescreens and fought the fires in the town. According to Polish studies some 160 aircraft came over Cowes in two waves, though British records speak of smaller forces. The people of Cowes still mark the anniversary of that night, and one of the town’s squares bears Francki’s name.

Later in May bombs fell on Hull, Poole and Grimsby, and on the night of 8/9 May the Luftwaffe again sent more than 70 aircraft over Norwich, this time to little effect. After the attack on Exeter German radio announced: “Exeter was the jewel of the West. We have destroyed that jewel, and the Luftwaffe will return to finish the job.” It did not. The raid of 3/4 May was the last the city suffered during the war.

Place in the war

The raid on Exeter was one of the most effective attacks of the whole Baedeker series, but it changed nothing in Britain’s position. The Luftwaffe, whose main forces were fighting on the Eastern Front and over the Mediterranean, could answer British bombing only with raids by a few dozen aircraft on small, undefended towns. It paid for every night with experienced crews: according to British studies, by the autumn of 1942 KG 2 had lost 65 of its 88 crews. In scale the raid could not compare with the Blitz of 1940–1941, still less with what Bomber Command was preparing for German cities. Less than four weeks later, on the night of 30/31 May, the British sent more than a thousand bombers over Cologne, and the Luftwaffe replied the following night with an attack on Canterbury, opening the second phase of the retaliatory raids. By the end of 1942 they had killed more than 3,200 people in Britain.

Exeter took about twenty years to rebuild. Following the plan of the town planner Thomas Sharp, published just after the war under the title Exeter Phoenix, a new city centre with wider streets and modern buildings rose in place of the burnt-out blocks. The cathedral was repaired and St James’s Chapel reconstructed. Ruined churches, the rubble of the library and the scars of the bombs reminded the inhabitants of that night long after the war.