The smoking ruins of factories and shops in the heart of Norwich, hours after one of the worst air raids to hit the city during the second world war.

This unique aerial photograph, published today for the first time, was taken by a young airman from RAF Coltishall at seven o’clock on the morning of Thursday April 30th, 1942.

It will inevitably bring back mixed memories for those people alive today who survived the two “Baedeker” raids on Norwich in the nights of April 27th-28th and 29th-30th, 39 years ago. Saxone

These attacks, the most savage suffered by the city, left 231 people dead, nearly 700 injured, and reduced large parts of the business and residential areas of Norwich to little more than piles of smouldering rubble.

The largest pall of smoke in the photograph hangs over the shell of the A.J. Caley Ltd chocolate factory. Most of the other damaged buildings are situated in the wedge of land lying between St. Stephen’s Street (seen in this narrow form here) and Rampant Horse Street (bounded by St. Stephen’s church).

The shop situated at the corner of these two streets (now the site of Marks & Spencer) was Bunting, the draper. An “EDP” staff photographer pictured firemen at work in the aftermath of the raids. They are standing outside Buntings at the top of rampant Horst Street (St. Stephens Church tower can be seen in the distance) and are directing their hose towards what was probably the ruins of Saxone shoe shop on the corner of Red Lion Street.

The smoke nearest the camera in the aerial picture obscures what is left of Curls department store, behind Saxone.

The young airman who took the photograph was Pat Atkinson in charge of signals and gunnery with 278 Squadron at Coltishall in 1942. The squadron’s Lynsander aircraft was used for air sea rescue and cameras were introduced to record the work they did. “It was a nice, clear morning and the CO wanted me to take one or two shots of the scene,” he told the EDP. “It was a one off operation. We were not an official photographic unit and this was not an official photograph”.

“I think the CO probably wanted some pictures because it had been such a bad raid on Norwich.”

Affection

The photograph was sent to the “EDP” by Mr Gilbert Wild, a former night fighter pilot with 68 Squadron who was also stationed at Coltishall. He met Mr Atkinson recently and obtained the print from him.

Mr Atkinson, who left the RAF after the war with the rank of Flight Lieutenant, looks back with great affection to his days in Norfolk, Coltishall, he says was “a tremendous station.”

The Baedeker raids which left their scars on the city for many years, where so called because Norwich was mentioned in the Baedeker guide to the British Isles as a place of historic interest and appears to have been singled out and deliberately bombed for that reason.