Supposedly the first bomb to hit South Bank

The first bomb on an industrial target in England is said to have fallen on South Bank in 1940 and I was sent this pic of the event. However we aren't sure of the street. Can you help?

I had a suspicion that it was Dick Walkington's house in Aire Street and received conformation from Dick's son Len. See next story and pic.

I received an email from Local War Historian Bill Norman (via Teesships website) who catalogued all the events of the World War II as affecting our area in his books "Luftwaffe over the North" and "Broken Eagles (Yorkshire)" which can be obtained direct from the author (click on his website at the bottom) or from your local library.

In the early hours of Saturday, May 25th 1940 a Heinkel 111 flew over Teesside on a bombing raid.
The bomb which fell to the rear of the Walkington household at 29 Aire Street was the eighth of a line of fourteen bombs stretching from Cargo Fleet to Dorman Long's at Grangetown. (The ninth landed on the South Bank football pitch!)

The crash site in 2002

It's all changed! I took this shot off the wooden bridge and found I'd forgotten that the railway station had been moved! Instead of at the end of Station Road it's now at the end of Clay Lane and is only a simple wooden platform - but this is where the Dornier crashed and burst into flames in 1942.
I'll put another couple of pics from this location on the 21st Century page.

If you read Eddie Healy's tribute to his brother John you'll know about the German aircraft which crashed near The Junction but for the well researched story you need to read Bill Norman's book Luftwaffe Over The North obtainable from your local library or bought from the author via his website. Mind you, I thiught Bill had made a mistake when he mentioned South Bank railway station but now realise he had the newer location in mind. Also, some of you may recall that there was another bridge which you would have seen in the above photo if it hadn't been demolished. It was part of the black path and "tarmac"ed and took the path over the line that turned into the works and back to the path.

At 5.30pm on 15th January 1942 a Dornier 217E-4 dropped two high explosive bombs on Skinningrove Steelworks then flew along the coast and swung into Teesmouth to drop a bomb on Eston Jetty causing slight damage. Within minutes the Dornier struck the cable of a barrage balloon flying at 4000 feet above the North Tees jetties which took a wing clean off causing the stricken craft to swing back round in a wide spiral over South Bank and back towards thr river which it didn't reach.

It narrowly missed the Junction pub and crashed on the railway lines in a ball of flames. Ammunition in the aircraft started exploding in the flames and the noise could be heard as far away as the Hippodrome. The charred remains of three airmen were found nearby. They were removed and later buried in Thornaby Cemetery.

The wreckage was hurriedly pushed to one side to reopen the railway lines - after all there was a war on! Gradually the wreckage was covered with slag and forgotten.

The event hit the headlines fifty odd years later when clearing away the slag revealed the wreck of the plane and the remains of a fourth airman and he joined his comrades in Thornaby cemetery with military honours, enmities forgotten and forgiven. However a name tag in the remnants of his uniform ensured a macabre ending to the story as it was discovered that one of the crew had been buried under the wrong identity.

Coincidentally, Jimmy Keir Adams (ex York Street and ex Albion Street) recalled the incident and said that he was one of the sightseers the next day. He was with Peter Pepper when Peter picked something up out of the dirt, thinking to get a souvenir. As he cleaned off the dirt he suddenly realised it was the palm of a hand with four fingers on it and dropped it in shock!
Jimmy also remembered an Ack-ack gun placement being on top of the slag tip and during one hectic night (the same one?) they fired a shot which put a hole clean through a Cleveland Works chimney stack! It was repaired later but Jimmy said you could see the new brickwork patches (on both sides) for years after!!

The event was also recalled in another e-mail from Richard Sharples (not Richie!) who had other memories:

re wartime story of the Jerry plane brought down by barrage balloon.....it had its humourous memory for me as a 12 year old. My father was waiting at the bus stop down from Bennetts Corner when it started its dive down, and people in the queue ran off to the nearest shelter, but a lady in front of him fainted into his arms. Unable to move and not knowing how to revive her he had to look after her till two wardens rescued the two them.

Living in Grangetown, I used that bus-stop many times but I would succumb to spending my penny fare in a small shop over the road hoping to win a prize by punching one of many blank holes. I never ever won and I then had to walk home. Does anyone remember that shop? It was next to a clairvoyant place which put the wind up me! All my dads relatives lived in upper Albion Street, so I was a frequent visitor to South Bank.
Richard Sharples.

This story began with a photo taken from "the wooden bridge" to Smiths Docks near where the Junction pub used to be - but it has grown...
Scroll down to stories 12 and 67 for more.

Left: Carl Eldon, right: Heinrich Richter

Evening Gazette Story
The uncanny case of Carl Eden. Jan 15 2002
by Mike Blackburn, Evening Gazette

For years before he was brutally murdered Carl Edon tried to convince his family that he was reincarnated. Today his astonished parents believe they have been given extraordinary photographic evidence.

Young Middlesbrough dad Carl had spoken since he was just three years old of vivid flashbacks to a former life as a Nazi airman killed when his plane was shot down in 1942.

Now startling new photos, unearthed after dogged detective work by a local historian, reveal a chilling resemblance between Carl and a German airman, Heinrich Richter, buried in a Thornaby cemetery.

Richter, a turret gunner, perished when his Dornier bomber crashed onto a South Bank railway during a raid exactly 60 years ago today... January 15, 1942.

The wreckage of the Dornier, damaged by anti-aircraft fire before hitting a barrage balloon, was discovered in 1997 buried off Tilbury Road - only a few hundred yards from the spot where Carl was stabbed to death two years earlier.

When the bomber was dug up with Richter's remains inside, Carl's parents, Jim and Val, shuddered as they recalled their son's eerie tales of reincarnation.

But only now - as the Gazette reveals for the first time what the airman looked like - are the Coulby Newham couple looking at their son's claims in a new light.

"It's got to be him," said a stunned Val, when shown a photo of the German in full uniform shortly before the crash over Teesside.

"The resemblance across the eyes and the nose is uncanny.

"Maybe this is the final piece of the jigsaw," she said.

The striking picture was obtained after Guisborough historian and author Bill Norman tracked down Richter's relatives in Germany for a new book.

An uncanny likeness between the two young men and the fact that they share the same scene of death more than 50 years apart are just two of the strange coincidences which have spooked Carl's parents.

During the excavation of the German bomber it was discovered that Richter's leg, still inside a flying boot, had been severed in the wreckage, explained Val.

"Carl used to say he lost his right leg in the crash," she said. "And he had a birth mark at the top of that leg."

On the day her rail worker son was murdered - by Gary Vinter, later jailed for life - he had been to Skinningrove to collect train carriages.

"The day the Dornier crashed it had bombed Skinningrove first and flew on to Middlesbrough following the railway line," said Val.

Carl and Richter had made the same journey the day they died.

"There are just too many strange coincidences, and I think if Carl was here he'd be saying 'Do you believe me now'?"

One of the country's leading researchers into psychic phenomena admitted he was amazed at the details surrounding the two deaths.

"We research a lot of reincarnation cases, but not many as remarkable as this one sounds," said David Christie-Murray, member of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882 and now based in London.

"It seems to me to be a fascinating case, and one I'm sure the SPR would certainly be interested in investigating if the family wanted to."

Carl's experiences are already detailed in a book called The Children That Time Forgot by Peter and Mary Harrison, and on a US TV show. They've also been well documented in British and German newspapers, including the Gazette when Carl was just nine years old.

But his parents said he suffered taunts at school as a result of his 'past life' claims.

"When that started happening Carl didn't like talking about it any more," said his mum.

"But he always believed it."

His dad told the Gazette he was cynical at first. "I was sick of Carl going on about it," he said. "But I probably believe more in reincarnation now."

The Dornier's three other crew were buried in Thornaby after the crash in 1942, but Richter was not laid to rest alongside his colleagues until the plane was 'rediscovered' 55 years later by water board workers.

Val and Jim joined nearly 300 mourners at a moving funeral service for the fourth German airman.

Standing at Richter's grave afterwards felt "eerie", said Jim. "It was like we were re-burying Carl again. Maybe now this will be the end of it."

Richter, who won the Iron Cross medal twice and had been wounded in action, was 24 when he was shot down and killed. Carl was just 22 when he was murdered, leaving behind heartbroken fiancee Michelle, and their two young daughters Carla and Sophie.

As you have seen, the date on the Evening Gazette story is January 2002 - now fast forward to May 2008...

I received an email from Sheri Friedman (nee Whitehead) telling me of the death on the 21st of her uncle Jack Whitehead, an old South Banker, and she intended to do a eulogy on him at his funeral.

This was followed on the first of June by another email - as follows...
"Hi Dick,
Just reading through the site again and something caught my eye.....

In the section, '1940's, I was reading about the 'Junction Dornier' which crashed in January 1942 and came to the bit about Jimmy Keir Adams who went with Peter Pepper and found the palm of a hand with four fingers on it.... Well, funnily enough, I just wrote about this incident in a Eulogy which I'll be giving next week!

At that same crash-site and on the same day my Uncle Jack Whitehead (who passed away last week) took his 1 and a half year old brother Ernest (my father) in his pram, up to the crash site. A few days later my grandmother Molly Whitehead (nee Williams) noticed a funny smell coming from Jack's wardrobe. On further investigation she found a single finger with a gold ring on it in his sock drawer! Jack admitted he'd found it at the crash site and was keeping it 'safe'! She rushed off to the police with it, so that it could be returned to the pilot's widow!

Now that's a story I often heard from my grandparents, while growing up in South Africa. I used to wonder what happened to the rest of the hand. Well, I suppose I now know. I wish I could have seen this sooner and told Uncle Jack before he passed away.

Are Jimmy Adams and Peter Pepper still alive?
Kind regards,
Sheri."

Well, to answer Sheri's question, Jimmy is very much alive and living in Redcar and is the brother in law of the well known Joe Shackleton. However, I don't know about Peter Pepper.

Another twist to the story is the fact that author Bill Norman had contacted me at the same time that Sheri did, sending me a copy of his new book called "South Bank Dornier" which can be obtained direct from him at 23a Thames Avenue, Guisborough, Cleveland, TS14 8AE. Price is just £4.50 including UK postage.
Bill's email address is william.norman13@ntlworld.com

And there's more! Today (2nd) Sheri wrote again, shocked at coincidences! She hadn't known about the Evening Gazette story but had stumbled across a website she urged me to look at...
hppt://www.freewebs.com/mOhok/aspookystory..htm
See also the PLUGS page!

My thanks to the Evening Gazette and to Bill Norman.