Lectures

7th February 2024: Ashford’s Worst Day

Our February talk was 'Ashford’s Worst Day: The Great Raid of 24th March 1943', given by Ed Adams, author of Ashford at War.

On 24th March 1943 in just 3 minutes Ashford experienced the worst single air-raid, in terms of death and injury, to occur in Kent during the Second World War. Fifty-two people died as a direct result of the day’s events, with three times as many injured. Ashford was a key target for the Luftwaffe on account of the Newtown railway works, which on this bright sunny spring morning with people out and about, and at school and work, was targeted by fifteen Focke Wulf 190s, each loaded with a 500 kg bomb, using the new tactic of ‘tip and run’.

At 9:58 and 30 seconds Ashford’s Civil Defence Control received an alert that enemy aircraft were heading towards Ashford and the air-raid siren was sounded. One and a half minutes later at 10 am the bombers had reached Ashford railway works, fanning out to the northwest and northeast and increasing to a speed of around 350 miles per hour – twice the speed of Eurostar.

Ed presented the subsequent events by the number each bomb was assigned in the home office investigation, which was Bomb 1 to Bomb15, although this does not necessarily reflect the order in which the bombs were dropped. In this short article there is not enough space to describe all fifteeen bombing, and detailed accounts can be read in Chapter 15 of Ashford at War. However, it is worth describing at least two of them to illustrate how indiscriminate the action turned out to be.

The bombs appear to have been fitted with delayed-action fuses, thus detonation was a few seconds after initial impact, with some bombs bouncing away from the intended target, only to explode elsewhere. Bomb 6 was meant for the railway station but it bounced south across Beaver Road, went through the walls of the Victoria Inn, and was then deflected north across Victoria Road where it caused complete destruction of Beaver Road Girls’ School and partial destruction of the boys’ school. Miraculously, all the students and their teachers survived as they had taken shelter at the sound of the warning. The incident made the national newspapers with the headline in the Daily Sketch ‘The school was flattened but all the children were safe.’

The plane carrying Bomb 15 was piloted by squadron leader and tip and run expert Paul Keller. He flew alongside Elwick road towards Stanhay’s Agricultural Works, which he may have mistaken for Ashford West railway station. Keller and his plane took a direct hit from an anti-aircraft gun and were blown to pieces directly over Stanhay’s, resulting in the worst death toll of the day.

Margaret Bray