Hedon Road & the eastern docks — the May Blitz
7-9 May 1941 · Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire
View this record on the map →- Date
- 7-9 May 1941
- Record type
- Historic bombing area
- Bomb type
- incendiary
- Location
- Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire
- Position accuracy
- Rough area
What happened
The nights of 7-8 and 8-9 May 1941 were Hull's heaviest, concentrated on the docks and city centre, with major fires among the timber storage along Hedon Road.
Casualty note
Just under 400 killed — a city-wide total for the two nights, not a figure for the docks. Across the whole campaign Hull lost around 1,200 people with 3,000 injured.
Also worth knowing
Wartime censorship never named the city, reporting the raids only on 'a north-east coast town'. Hull was, by proportion, the most severely damaged British city after London — 95 per cent of its houses damaged, and only about 6,000 of 91,000 left untouched by the end of the war — yet its suffering stayed largely invisible nationally.