Two nights when hell came to Clydebank

Published on Monday 10 April 2006 10:40

GERMAN reconnaissance photographs taken as early as 1939 showed that Clydebank was a perfect target for attack in the Second World War, and for the residents of the town north-west of Glasgow it must have seemed a question of when rather than if.

For John Docherty, a 10-year-old boy living there with his family in a first-floor tenement at the time of the attack, the threat was one he was aware of even at such a young age. However the sudden nature of the bombing raids on the evening of Thursday 13 March 1941 – now known as the Clydebank Blitz - took everyone by surprise.

"We all knew that the Singer sewing machine factory was making ammunition - with 24,000 people working there - and that John Brown's shipyard was doing war work on the ships and even that the oil drums in Old Kilpatrick would be another target," says Docherty.

"That night though, everything was so quiet and nice. It was 9pm and we were in the house listening to BBC news on the wireless, then suddenly we heard the sirens over the wireless and my mother said to the rest of the family, 'Oh, that's poor London getting an air raid', and then suddenly the sirens go off in Clydebank."

Together the town of Clydebank and the river after which it is named acted as the lifeblood of Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, from its heyday as the merchant capital of the British Empire right through to the industrial era and its eventual demise. The ready supply of labour and easy access granted by the river as it flows to the Atlantic saw the area become an ideal location for traders, merchants … and, sadly, for bombing raids.

The town council never exactly shared this view, as records show preparations for an attack were not made until the last minute. Clydebank officials believed it was not a high priority.

Much of the housing in the town were tenement blocks, three or four stories high with a communal stair or close on the ground floor. This was where people would take refuge.

Docherty, now in his mid-70s, is eager to set the record straight as to exactly what happened - both as someone who was living in Clydebank at the time and one who spent virtually his whole life in the area.

"As soon as the sirens went, the bombs started," recalls Docherty. "There was no way we could go anywhere, so we just stayed in the ground floor of the close all night. All the whistlers were coming down and getting louder and louder, and people in the close were saying 'This is ours this time' and then the place would shake. We were all praying. Every one of us was praying. Any atheist would have prayed that night too."

By all accounts, the German Luftwaffe had ideal conditions on the first night of the attack. That Thursday was a beautifully clear evening. A full "bombers moon" hung high in the sky, both illuminating the target below and reflecting in the still waters of the Clyde estuary.

Just a few minutes after a long moan of the air-raid sirens sounded at 9pm, the dull drone of 250 planes could be heard. They approached Clydebank from the hills by Loch Lomond in an effort to avoid radar detection. Ultimately, this attempt at stealth made little difference, as the small amount of anti-aircraft fire that met the Germans provided little hindrance and the ground attack was out of ammunition by midnight. The planes - mainly Heinkel 111s and Junker 88s - dropped an incredible 1,650 incendiary containers and 272 tonnes of bombs.

The remit given to the first wave of attacking planes – start fires to mark the targets for the second wave – met with success when the 40-acre Singer timber yard was set ablaze, as was the Admiralty oil storage depot to the west of Clydebank where hundreds of barrels of oil burned for days. Also, in an act that would make any whisky lover weep, the Auchentoshan distillery was hit, with the equivalent of a million bottles of the golden nectar flowing into a nearby burn that produced a flaming river of whisky stretching to the Clyde.

Soon bombs began to explode all around, blowing in tenement windows and setting buildings afire. Several tenements had the faces ripped right off them and many went on to completely collapse, killing all who sheltered inside. John Docherty's tenement was lucky.

"At 12 o'clock a landmine dropped just by our close which would have destroyed the building and killed us all, but another bomb dropped nearby and blew it away. It also blew in the flight of stairs which then landed on top of me and my brother. We all should have been killed."

Finally at 6am, the "all-clear" sounded and those left alive were instructed to make their way to the Town Hall to arrange for evacuation, as a further night of bombing was to follow - two nights of hell for anyone unfortunate to be in the area. Accurate casualty figures – some 1,200 dead and 1,100 seriously injured – only emerged years later amid secrecy and concern over public morale. (Also in 1941 German air raids on nearby Greenock and Gourock killed 280 people.)

Surprisingly, the strategic targets escaped heavy damage. Both the shipyard and ammunition factory were back in production within months. The domestic housing of the town did not get off as lightly, with the majority of the population homeless and much of the area uninhabitable for a lack of water, gas and electricity. Of 12,000 houses, some 4,300 were destroyed. Only eight escaped damage. And of the 50,000 people who lived in Clydebank, approximately 40,000 were evacuated within two days of the blitz.

Docherty and his family eventually returned to Clydebank many years later, but most of the evacuees were never to return. Many tight-knit communities and families were wrenched apart in the aftermath.

Clydebank itself fell upon hard times following the demise of the shipbuilding industry in the 1970s. Few of the cinemas and dance halls were rebuilt after the war, and young people began to move to Glasgow for both work and entertainment. A large number emigrated to Canada and Australia as well.

Clydebank is now best known for its former industrial heritage and the critical role it played in making Glasgow a prosperous industrial titan. Tragically the town is also remembered for the role it played in the war effort and the terrible price its people paid on two nights in March 1941.

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