Hitler’s Christmas V1 attack on Manchester and Commemoration of Civilian War Dead

On Christmas Eve 1944, Greater Manchester was treated to an unwelcome Christmas present: a spate of V-1 rocket attacks. 

Discover the story of Manchester’s fateful Christmas Eve, and how we commemorate civilian war dead.

Manchester V-1 Attacks on Christmas Eve 1944

The Manchester Blitz

Image: Firefighters tackle burning buildings as Manchester burns (Wikimedia Commons)

At the time of the Second World War, Manchester was a major inland port and industrial city. In short, it was a choice target for the Luftwaffe, as German bomber crews sought to damage or disable Manchester’s factories and docks, as well as sow discord, confusion and intimidation amongst the city’s inhabitants.

From 1940-1942, Manchester, the neighbouring towns of Salford and Stretford, and the wider Greater Manchester region were subject to repeated heavy bombing raids.

Manchester endured its heaviest punishment on the nights of 22/23 and 23/34 December 1940. Luftwaffe bombers poured deadly rain on the city, dropping over 460 tons of high explosives and 2,000 incendiary bombs on Manchester.

Over 680 people were killed over the two nights with a further 2,000 wounded. Manchester Cathedral, the Royal Exchange, Free Trade Hall, and Assize Courts were all damaged, in addition to the homes, shops, and factories flattened by the bombing.

Famous Salford resident, painter, war artist, and recorder of working-class northern life L.S. Lowry served on fire watch during the Manchester Blitz. 

Image: Blitzed Site, 1942, L.S. Lowry (Google Art Project)

His panting “Blitzed Site” shows the damage done to a row of terraced houses, complete with debris, dust, smoke, ruins, and confused folk trying to pick up the pieces of their smashed homes.

By the end of the Second World War, 1,400 Mancunians had been killed in bombing raids. One in ten was under the age of 13.

V-Weapons: Hitler’s terrifying missiles

Image: German technicians handling V-1 Flying Bombs at a European launch site. The background has been obliterated by German censors for secrecy (© IWM (CL 3430))

As the war progressed, Britain’s cities would not have to endure the predations of just Luftwaffe air raids. Soon a new menace emerged: the fearsome Vengeance Weapons.

The V-Weapons were some of the world’s first ballistic missiles. The German military had been developing cruise and ballistic missiles since the 1930s and by 1940 a strategic bombing initiative using these new weapons was being planned.

The Allies ramped up their German area bombing campaign, targeting cities, factories, and military installations, in 1942.

The effects were devastating but, like the Germans, area bombing failed to break German morale. Moreover, it steeled German hearts as their homeland was smashed by Allied bombing.

Reich Minister of Production and Armaments Albert Speer promised retribution for the Allied mass bombing of German Cities by “secret weapons”.

With Nazi Germany’s failure to bomb the UK into submission using conventional methods, especially after the failure of the Baedeker Raids in 1942, the Vengeance Weapons programme accelerated. 

Vengeance Weapon launch sites began cropping up along northern France in October 1943. By June 1944, they were ready for action.

The first V-Weapons to be fired in anger by Nazi Germany were the Vergeltungswaffe-1, i.e. the V-1.

The V-1 was a self-propelled missile boasting an 850 kg warhead and a range of 150 miles.

The short range necessitated the construction of sites as close as possible to the UK, with most V-1 launch sites located in northern France and the Low Countries.

Image: Cross section of a V-1 flying bomb (Wikimedia Commons)

They could be fired via huge launch ramps but could also be launched from specially modified aircraft. 

The V-1 was controlled by a rudimentary autopilot system which allowed them to be fired and find targets overseas, travelling at a speed of over 400 mph.

Its distinctive engine note, likened to a “motorcycle engine running in poor order” gave the V-1 a unique buzzing sound, leading to their nickname “doodlebugs”.

However, British civilians quickly grew to dread the doodlebugs’ jaunty sound. As the V-1 reached its targets, its propulsion unit would cut out with a distinct spluttering sound before silence. 

A terrific explosion would follow as the V-1 warhead detonated.

The V-1 was followed by the more sophisticated V-2.

Image: A replica of the fearsome V-2 rocket (Wikimedia Commons)

Boasting longer range, a higher payload, and silent supersonic propulsion, the V-2s were true terror weapons.

With V-1s, you had a warning as it spluttered its way through the sky before falling. The V-2s simply fell in silence.

Ultimately, the Vengeance Weapons were more retaliatory devices than war-ending super weapons. Britain was not bombed into submission or forced to surrender. It was too late in the war for that.

But the V-Weapons certainly had a major psychological effect. Military planners on the ground in London were thrown into panic once the V-Weapon attacks began.

This affected military planning. With their cities now under aerial attack once more, British commanders certainly wanted the attacks put pressure on Allied war leaders to end the war quickly.

For example, historians like James Holland and Al Murray suggest the V-1 and V-2 attacks may have influenced the decision to gamble on Operation Market Garden, the logic being Market Garden offered an opportunity to end the war before Christmas 1944, thus stopping attacks on UK civilian centres (in addition to all the other massive benefits of ending the conflict).

To combat the V-Weapons, the Allies had been identifying and bombing Vengeance Weapon launch sites using aerial photography in Operation Crossbow, albeit with limited success. 

With the invasion of France in June 1944, sites were soon captured without being used, overrun, abandoned, or moved. The final V-Weapon attack 

Victims of the Vengeance Weapons

Over 9,250 V-1s were fired at the UK, the majority of which were aimed at London. The National Archives reports over 5,000 people were killed by V-1 attacks

Around 1,100 V-2 rockets were fired at the UK until the final missile fell in March 1945. V-2s mainly targeted London, where over 2,750 civilians died in their attacks. 

As well as those killed by the bombing campaign, it’s important to recognise the other victims of the Vengeance Weapons: their builders.

V-1s and V-2s were built in secret facilities using slave labour. Prisoners toiled in horrendous conditions to build these weapons of mass destruction. It’s estimated that 10,000 slave labourers died building V-2s alone, almost all concentration camp inmates.

These men and women are not commemorated by Commonwealth War Graves, but we must never forget that the victims of the Nazis weren’t just killed on the battlefield. 

Manchester, Christmas Eve, 1944: A deadly evening

Image: The bombed-out wreckage of a car and houses in Garners Lane, Adswood following the Christmas Eve V-1 attack on Greater Manchester (STE)

The people of Greater Manchester had endured conventional bombing raids from 1940 to August 1942. 

Come December 1944, the men, women, and children of Manchester and its surrounding towns and villages were going about their business as usual. 

A bitter cold had set in, but Mancunians of all ages were no doubt preparing for their Christmases, going last-minute shopping, visiting friends and family, and enjoying all the fruits of the festive season. 

Indeed, there had not been a major German air raid on Manchester for two years.

Little did the Mancunians know that, over the North Sea, a formation of specially configured Heinkel HE-111 bombers was cruising in the direction of the United Kingdom. Attached the Luftwaffe crews’ modified aircraft were a deadly gift for the people of North West England: 45 V-1 rockets.

Launching their payloads in the early hours of Christmas Eve, the German airmen turned for home. The doodlebugs continued their journey, buzzing menacingly across northern England, on their way to sew terror and destruction on Manchester.

At 5.30 am in Abbey Hills Road, Oldham, the quiet stillness of the chilly Christmas Eve morning was shattered by the unmistakable keening wail of an air raid siren. Something was up. 

As residents reacted in surprise, the tell-tale buzz of a V-1 throbbed overhead. Soon, the coughing and spluttering that had become all familiar to Londoners was heard over Oldham as the V-1’s propulsion system cut out.

A deafening silence fell, punctured by a mighty explosion. A doodlebug had smashed into a row of terraced houses, flattening them and their occupants. 

Many of Abbey Hills’ residents were hosting loved ones for the holidays. With some still slumbering, their domains were sadly devastated by the V-1 blast.

27 residents of Abbey Hills were killed in the initial explosion. A further 49 were injured.

This was not the only missile to hit Greater Manchester on Christmas Eve 1944. Another VI-1 hit Tottington near Bury, killing six residents. 

A further V-1 attack on Worsley claimed another life. Davenport Golf Club in Stockport was struck by a doodlebug too, the blast creating an 18ft crater, destroying two homes, and taking the life of one resident.

Of the original salvo of 45, 15 bombs landed across Greater Manchester, hitting Oldham, Bury, Salford, Didsbury, Stockport, and Hyde. Luckily, the city centre had been spared, but this was little consolation to the families whose loved ones were sadly killed that Christmas Eve.

They didn’t know it at the time, but the people of Greater Manchester had endured their last air raid of the war. Sadly, 37 people would not live to celebrate Christmas Day 1944.

The attack on Manchester can be seen as one of desperation by German High Command in response to the increasingly destructive Allied bombing campaign and the turning tide of the war.

More psychological impact may have occurred if there had been successive attacks, but no more V-Weapons would hit Manchester and the surrounding areas during the Second World War.

Commemorating the Christmas Victims: The Civilian Roll of Honour 1939-1945

Did you know that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission also commemorates civilian war dead?

More than 69,000 Commonwealth civilians are commemorated by the Civilian War Dead Roll of Honour 1939-1945.

So, what is the Civilian War Dead Roll of Honour 1939-1945? 

From victims of the fearsome Vengeance weapons and conventional bombing to getting caught in the crossfire, sunk on ships, strafed by aircraft, or killed in accidents, a sadly large number of Commonwealth civilians were killed due to hostile activity in World War Two.

Early into the Blitz in September 1940, the bombing of major UK cities by the Luftwaffe, CWGC founder Sir Fabian Ware wrote to Prime Minister Winston Churchill to “consider the commemoration of civilians, men, women and children, by the deliberate slaughter of whom the enemy is creating a new category of normal war casualties.”

Churchill acquiesced and so the Commission entered a new phase of work. With Churchill’s approval, the then Imperial War Graves Commission was empowered by the government to collect and record the names of civilians who died due to enemy action in the Second World War.

Reaching out to cities, metropolitan boroughs, councils, and rural districts, as well as appealing directly to ordinary citizens, the Commission asked to submit forms advising details of those victims of hostile activity.

Our records indicate that 44 civilians were killed due to hostile activity on Christmas Eve 1944. Among their number are the 35 Mancunians killed on Christmas Eve 1944 when V-1 rockets fell on the city and its satellite towns.

The youngest was Malcolm Graham Hutton, a babe of no more than 18 months old. The eldest, Lucy Thornton, died aged 79. V-Weapons were indiscriminate in who they killed, as was their intention.

While they may not be commemorated by war graves and CWGC headstones, the victims of the Christmas Blitz are commemorated forever by the Civilian Roll of Honour 1939-1945.

Discover the civilian war dead commemorated by Commonwealth War Graves

The Civilian War Dead commemorated by the Roll of Honour can be found using our Find War Dead tool.

Simply select the “Civilian War Dead 1939-1945” option from the “Served in (army, etc.) option on the drop-down menu. You can also filter by name, date of death, and commemoration location, though this will be the UK.

What will your search uncover?