Woolwich Arsenal WW1

[April Wood Ashton]

Are there  any details available about the direct hits that the Woolwich Arsenal received during WW1 . My grandmother and her sister worked there and my grandmother carried the memories of the screams from young women who had been trapped, all her life. Might there possibly be reports in local newspapers of the time?  Thank you 

[Coldstreamer]

welcome to the forum

quite possibly in local papers - have you tried online paper resources ?  You can look at some for free on a trial basis

[PRC]

Hi @April Wood Ashton and welcome to the forum 

Forum member @Aspern has written on the Zeppelin Raids over Britain in the Great War, so may be able to advise if any of those hit the Woolwich Arsenal.

And forum member @Jim Strawbridge has an ongoing project to document the female casualties of the Great War which includes munitions workers and civilian victims of air raids, so may have identified if any lost their lives in such raids at the Arsenal or in the nearby area and whether there are any related newspaper reports.

You may also be interested in this piece and some of the associated pictures https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/i-thought-it-was-another-air-raid

There are a number of pictures available of woman workers in the various departments at Woolwich  - the Imperial War Museum have a collection, some of which are online. There is also this one,

courtesy http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/items/show/2635

Cheers,
Peter

[Aspern]

On 21/04/2023 at 11:10, April Wood Ashton said:

Are there  any details available about the direct hits that the Woolwich Arsenal received during WW1 . My grandmother and her sister worked there and my grandmother carried the memories of the screams from young women who had been trapped, all her life. Might there possibly be reports in local newspapers of the time?  Thank you 

Hi April - as mentioned, Zeppelin raids are my thing. I think the most likely incident that your grandmother and her sister remembered was the raid on 13 October 1915. A number of bombs, dropped by Zeppelin L 13, fell in Woolwich town, but also a number on the Arsenal. At the time there was a general Press embargo on reporting exactly where raids had taken place, and on giving too much detail - to prevent it getting to the Germans.

When researching my book, 'Zeppelin Onslaught - The Forgotten Blitz 1914-1915', I did come across a letter about the raid, written in 1935. It was written by a teenage girl called Maude who was working at the Arsenal in the Cartridge Shed. She admitted she was 'trembling in fear and horror'. 

Crashes outside told us bombs were dropping very near, though so far none had exploded actually in the Arsenal. We began to breathe more freely. But … Crash! … Crash! They had found their mark. Bombs were falling in the Arsenal now.

God! The horror, the terror! We poor creatures were only human beings after all, and little more than kids at that: I don’t think there was a girl of more than seventeen. 

We started to scream. Some fainted, others became hysterical, others again moaned and groaned in sheer, but pardonable funk…

It seemed to me that the whole earth blew up… and a rain of debris fell around us.

            Though it was only a few moments it seemed ages before lights were turned on again. By a miracle none of us in that shed was killed…

One man at the Arsenal was killed.

I sounds like Maude had a similar experience to your grandmother

Kind regards

Ian