Hastings & St Leonards, East Sussex, UK
HASTINGS & ST LEONARDS
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Miscellaneous History

World War 2

On 26th July 1940 a lone fighter-bomber circled Hastings and dropped eleven high explosive bombs. Several properties where destroyed. Attacks on a much larger scale followed and the following day a formation of fifty planes flew up the channel and attacked St Leonards. Numerous attacks on Hastings and St Leonards followed and many lives where lost as homes, hotels and boarding houses where destroyed.

The area had little in the way of aerial defence and enemy planes often circled round machine gunning and droppping bombs as they pleased. There were anti-aircraft guns situated around the town and heavy guns on the West Hill as a defence against flying bombs (V1’s) but the scale of the attacks often made defence impossible.

By the end of the war the Nazis had dropped a total of 550 high explosive bombs and 750 incendiaries on Hastings and an additional sixteen flying bombs or ‘doodlebugs’ crashed into the town. A total of 463 properties were destroyed, 14,818 properties were damaged and 154 people were killed. In 1921 the population of the town was 67,494, it had dropped to 48,820 by 1945 as a result of the war.

German Submarine U118

An empty German submarine was washed ashore on the beach in front of Denmark Place in 1919. The submarine U118 had broken its towrope on the way from Cherbourg to Scapa Flow. It was welcomed as an unusual Easter attraction until a build-up of chlorine gas poisoned a group of coastguards, one of whom died on 21 February 1920. U118 was an extremely large submarine for its time and having surrendered to France on 23rd February 1919, it was eventually broken up at Brest during July 1921.




Coldest Winter


The winter of 1962/3 was very severe and absolutely everything froze including the sea. Snow was cleared from the town centre with bulldozers and trucks and taken to Rock-a-Nore were it was left in a huge pile which didn’t melt until June that summer.

 


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