Photographs taken in April 1941 show the blast damage from bombs at Head Wrightson, Thornaby. The bombs originally intended for the industrial firm of Head Wrightsons fell short and landed near Crosthwaites Foundry.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Discovered on the www, some interesting wartime information: At the start of World War Two, the Germans planned an invasion of Britain and took aerial photographs of places that were bombing targets for the Luftwaffe. There are large files of these images which the US captured and placed on public record in the Library of Congress. Photographs relating to our own region can be seen. The captions read “The Iron & Steel Co Ltd factory, Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, England, photograph shows the Blast furnace and steelworks with coking ovens.” On the second photograph the text reads “A detailed view of Hartlepool harbour, in the background the shipyard.” More information on these images and others can be found by searching the US Library of Congress website. Thanks to a Ernie Brown, Hartlepool? for bringing these to Teessiders www-attention.
I worked at Daveys just past the top house as a crane driver then went to Oven opps with a lad called Chris Green, his dad was a blaster – good times
This damage was caused by parachute mines on the night of 15/16 April hitting Crosthwaites Foundry injuring some of the workers, one a woman died later.
The Head Wrightson’s shop was the mine shop which was damaged quite badly, it was an Easter Holiday so most of the shift workers were at home.
This was the usual German way of getting rid of the bombs or mines after flying over Teesside to inland targets then dropping anything left on us on the way back home. Over 300 planes (est) crossed our coast line that night for an inland target and attacked Thornaby early morning as they flew home.
This was a tactic we got used to and often spent all night in the air raid shelter and still up for work and school next morning, you never missed school even when we had to walk from the school bus which had stopped in Town after the Bombing of St Peters Road.
To us at the time it was a normal consequence of war and as I could sleep on the edge of a shovel, or so my Dad said, it did not bother me too much.
When this bomb dropped it also blew all the windows in the Stockton High Street out, at Head Wrightsons the roofs had recently been erected prior to this bomb dropping, there was glass everywhere, the funny thing was they sent all the labourers home & kept the tradesmen there to clean up & get the work started again.