Clydebank — the raids of 13–15 March 1941
13–15 March 1941 · Clydebank, Dunbartonshire
View this record on the map →- Date
- 13–15 March 1941
- Record type
- Historic bombing area
- Bomb type
- mixed
- Location
- Clydebank, Dunbartonshire
- Position accuracy
- Confirmed event, area-level point only (exact site not verified)
What happened
Two nights of bombing aimed at the shipyards and the munitions works destroyed the town around them instead. On 13 March 236 aircraft dropped 272 tons of high explosive and over 1,650 incendiary canisters; the following night 203 aircraft dropped 231 tons more. Of roughly 12,000 houses in Clydebank, seven were left undamaged.
Casualty note
528 killed and 617 seriously injured in Clydebank itself, the official count made in 1942. Beware the figure of 1,200 dead that appears in many accounts including Wikipedia's: that is the CLYDESIDE total, taking in Glasgow's roughly 647, and is not a Clydebank figure. Second Avenue (80 dead from direct hits on houses) and 78 Jellicoe Street, Dalmuir (31 dead, fifteen of them members of the Rocks family) are now separately plotted below. Both remain area/street figures, not building-specific tolls except where a record below gives one.
Also worth knowing
Proportionally the most completely destroyed town in the United Kingdom. Some 35,000 people out of a population of about 47,000 were made homeless, and most of them left — the town's own fire service and rescue crews went on working through it.