Noss Marina

THE BOMBING OF NOSS.

During the war the shipyard was bombed and many lives were lost and severe injuries sustained. Alister Harbord looks at the events of that day:

It is some minutes before 11 o’clock on Friday the 18th of September, 1942 and it is a fine and clear day with the bright sun nearing its zenith.  13 year old Dennis Thyer has rowed from Kingswear to Dartmouth to collect a forty gallon drum of diesel from the South Embankment and is now heading back to Kingswear, his dinghy now made sluggish with the load. He is near the depot ship ‘Belfort’ and her attendant fleet of Motor Torpedo Boats and Motor Launches.  At Britannia Naval College the Headmaster, J.W.Stork is discussing potential evacuation plans for the college with the Commander, Lt.Commander Agnew and the Second Master, E.A.Hughes.  At the Noss Shipyard the men and women employed there by Philip and Son Limited are engaged in working on some of the 236 war vessels that the yard builds between 1939 and 1945. At Exeter twelve spitfires of the 310th (Czech) Squadron are preparing to take off for squadron formation practice. The radar station at Coleton in Kingswear faces the Channel and listens for enemy aircraft whilst the anti aircraft defences around the Dart watch the skies.
It is now about 11:15. To the south east a formation of six Focke- Wulf 190 fighter bombers are swiftly closing the coast somewhere near Teignmouth. Flying just above the waves they are below the threshold of the British radar stations. They cross the coastline at an oblique angle and fly toward the west using the topography to mask their approach until they come screaming down Kingswear Combe from Hillhead and with no warning burst out low over Noss and over the river which is crowded with the stuff of war. The formation, with cannons blazing, attacks the shipyard at Noss, the Naval College and the coaling vessels moored off Coronation Park. Noss is strafed and bombed first and almost simultaneously Britannia is machine gunned and bombed. In the river the coaling installations are the target with the collier ‘Fernwood’ suffering a direct hit from a bomb and sinking where she lies. A lighter and a mechanised loading grab are also destroyed. Swiftly the gun crews on shore and on the river react and open fire. Lewis guns, Oerlikon cannons, pom-poms and other ordinance join together to open a stream of fire which, together with the explosions from the bombs reverberate around the valley and deafen a terrified Dennis Thyer as he sits in mid-river and watches a 109 fighter tear toward him at mast height as the streams of fire from the ships below quest toward it. The plane is flying so low that Dennis can see the pilot’s face framed by his flying helmet looking toward Dartmouth as he passes by.  Seemingly charmed, the fighter bomber escapes seawards appearing to lose only a small part of its undercarriage to the combined fire.  Another two 190s return from the direction of Townstall and, close to the ground over the Market and St.Saviour’s church, break for the river mouth. The aircraft are so low that many defensive guns do not fire for fear of hitting houses on the opposite sides of the river.  Alerted to the presence of the Germans who were finally detected near Teignmouth the Spitfires of 310 squadron have been racing toward Dartmouth to engage the enemy fighters.  All six German aircraft escape seaward and are pursued by the Spitfires who, out engined, eventually have to break off the chase 30 miles out toward France without managing to shoot down a single enemy aircraft.
The air raid siren starts up just as the aircraft are disappearing out to sea. Soon it stops and there is silence. Even the gulls are quiet and palls of smoke and dust hang over The Royal Naval College and the Noss Shipyard. The air above the river is tainted with smoke and the smell of cordite.
It is now sometime between 11:25 and 11:35. The air raid has taken only a moment but on the river John Northmore, George Saunders, John Horne and George Pedwell, civilians, are dead. At the Naval college Wren Ellen Whittall is also dead but the survivors there are counting their blessings that the start of the term had been delayed a week. Had the college been full of student officers then the death toll would have been vast.
The Noss yard is a scene of carnage.  The Mould Loft and the Machinery and Plating shops had been totally destroyed by a landmine and other bombs. The yard has been raked by machine gun fire. Fifteen people lie dead and another five have sustained such massive trauma that they too will die within the space of twenty four hours. Forty others are injured and have sustained horrific injuries that vary from blindness to loss of limbs. The telephone line has been rendered useless in the attack and so help cannot be summoned from the town. Luckily a group of Wrens manning a picket boat on the river realise what is happening and ferry the wounded to Dartmouth Hospital.
Within forty-eight hours the remaining workforce, working like Trojans, will return the yard to partial production and then later back into full production.
In early 1943 the Radar station at Coleton became one of the first in the country to receive special radars to detect low flying aircraft.

Seventeen men and three women ranging in age from seventeen to seventy died at Noss. The majority were in their twenties. They are commemorated by a plaque in Kingswear Church.
Note: There seems to be no single definitive account of the raid of 18th September 1942.  Many surviving accounts and commentaries contradict themselves in details. This is understandable given that the events in the River occurred during a brief instant in time and that witnesses had literally different perspectives due to their physical locations. The foregoing attempts to give an overview and distillation of these different memories and accounts of this tragic event.

(The bombing of Noss is covered in the DVD ‘Philip & Son – A Living Memory’. The DVD is available to buy from the Marina office with all proceeds going  to Dartmouth Caring and Dartmouth Museum.)