Wartime voices

The final phase of bombing began on 8 September 1944 when the first V-2 rocket exploded in Chiswick. The rockets travelled faster than the speed of sound and reached their target in 4 minutes. There could be no advance warning and the first anyone knew about them was a huge double bang. They were enormously destructive causing craters up to fifty feet across and flattening whole rows of houses. Reactions to this new terror were mixed.

"And then, worse than that was the V-2s, the rockets, because they, you didn't know they'd gone till they exploded because they came over silently."
Winifred Salisbury

"The most frightening part of the war from a civilian point of view was the very last part when they started sending over the V-2s, which was a rocket that travelled faster than the speed of sound so you had no warning of its approach. Every other weapon they tried against us, you obviously had some warning - bombers, aircraft and V-1s - but the V-2 it was impossible to give a warning because it travelled so fast. So for 24 hours of the day you were under this threat that possibly within the next split second you might be blown to kingdom come. That was most disturbing of all. In fact it was amazing how easily you got used to all the other things."
Patrick Child

"There was nothing to worry about because nobody knew they were coming. It got to the stage you never got the siren - air raid warning - even. I don't know whether other people are the same, but even now when I hear a siren like an air raid warning siren, my stomach still churns up."
Margaret Clark 
 

"All of a sudden a bomb dropped in Nutwell Street. I thought it was the school and Eileen was at school. I went dashing home. It was right in the road.

"Three flats at the end of the road - they were demolished. Our house got all the roof in. The chimney stack right inside the living room. I couldn't believe it."
Minnie Perry