The Battle of Cowes - May 1942

On the night of the 4/5th May sixty-five years ago the stillness of the night over the blacked out town of Cowes was shattered by the most merciless onslaught on the Island in 400 years. Through the night hundreds of German bombers directed a hail of bombs onto the burning town. Thankfully one warship stood at the centre of the spirited defence, and saved the town along with the sheer courage of the rest of the defence forces.

During the Second World War (1939-45) the Island was on the front line from the Fall of France in June 1940 to the Normandy Landings of July 1944. The Island was a frequent target of aerial bombing attacks, and particularly Cowes, the Island’s industrial town, producing warships and military aircraft at the greatest speed possible.

After the daytime Battle of Britain in 1940 the German Luftwaffe and British Royal Air Force adopted the tactic of intensive night bombing of towns and cities. Air raid alerts were a frequent occurrence in Cowes.

On March 28th 1942 234 RAF bombers attacked the wooden built medieval city of Lubeck with incendiaries. The annihilation of the pretty town infuriated the German High Command and intensive raids were ordered on secondary British targets, including Cowes.

The devastation in Cowes could have been significantly worse was it not for the fortuitous presence of the Polish Destroyer, ORP Blyskawica (“Lightning”). This particularly heavily armed 372 foot destroyer had been built in the J. Samuel White’s shipyard and launched in 1936. In 1939 she escaped from the German invasion of Poland to serve in the Royal Navy. In early 1942 she was sent to her home port to have new bofors guns fitted.

The Blyskawica docked at J. Samuel White’s on April 11th near to the chain ferry as yet another air raid siren began to wail. She came under repeated aerial attacks. Her captain Commander Wojciech Roman Francki asked the Admiralty if he could keep the ship armed while in dock. The Admiralty refused. As Francki later recalled, “Taking matters into my own hands I ordered more ammunition aboard”. The ship with her guns at the ready manned by her battle-hardened crew proved to be a decisive factor in the ensuring battle.

Early in the night of May 4th the townsfolk of Cowes would hear the familiar warning siren that so often foretold the sight and rumbling sound of passing aircraft en route to inland targets. However, unbeknown to them it would be their turn to be the focal point of the attack.

Cowes Under Attack

Michael Zawada had been ordered to join the crew of No. 6 Bofors gun on the Blyskawica. At approximately 10.40pm he noticed searchlights and the sound of aircraft approaching. The first waves of 160 low flying fighter-bombers began the onslaught on Cowes.

Although the town was blacked out it was easy to make out the target because if the shape of the coast and the Medina estuary. The first planes dropped a string of parachute flares from west to east over the Saunders Roe factory. Others followed dropping a mixture of high explosives and incendiaries and strafing with their machine-guns. “Fires started everywhere and in a few minutes Cowes became an inferno and the fire brigade had a horrible job in front of them” recalled Zawada. “The sky which had been clear began to cloud over as the fires started to burn and more bombs fell… it was bright as daylight although it was night”. Zawada was impressed by “the sheer courage and guts these firemen exhibited in pulling people from burning buildings and putting out fires while bombs rained down upon them”

From its position at the shipyard the Blyskawica was the mainstay in the town’s defence, providing a central focus for the local anti-aircraft artillery, incessantly using its heavy calibre guns to keep the Luftwaffe aircraft high and in doing so denying them greater accuracy with their bombs. “The bombers could not withstand the intensity of our fire” recalls Commander Francki, “and were forced to divert to either side”. Further south, Free French naval units stationed on the Medina opened fire with smaller calibre weapons, illustrating the truly multinational nature of the defence.

For two hours the German bombs rocked the town with heart stopping explosions. The night filled with the scream of falling bombs and diving aircraft, the smell of explosives mixed with vaporised brickdust, the thud of anti-aircraft guns firing, the rattle of machine-gun fire. In the communal bomb shelters people muttered prayers and sang hymns. The gun barrels of the anti-aircraft guns glowed red in the night as they blasted into the sky.

The crew of the Blyskawica raised buckets of water from the river to cool them.
Yet it was clear that the defence was working, the bombs were falling to the south of the main target, south of the blazing destroyer and the pall of smoke over the dockyards. Many of the incendiaries had fallen into Parkhurst Forest confusing the later waves of bombers with great fires far to the south of the town and some thousands of incendiaries fell harmlessly into the marshes of the estuary where they failed to explode.

The attack was nonetheless a devastating one, and by the time the bombers returned to their bases to refuel and rearm, the town was stricken. As the battle abated attention turned to the emergency services which had been in action since the start of the bombing, fighting the fires, searching for people buried in the rubble, identifying unexploded bombs, passing messages. The Womens Voluntary Service (WVS) opened eight centres for the homeless while the wounded were carried to Northwood House. In East Cowes the wounded were taken to the Frank James Hospital. By the end of the night the corridors were full of stretchers and new casualties were taken to Osborne House Convalescent Home.

The Second Wave

Feelings of relief at having survived the initial attack were quickly dissipated as the sound of the returning bombers could be heard at around 2am. The German aircraft repeated the attack with flares, high explosive and incendiary bombs, laying siege to the town for another frightful two hour stretch. Missiles rained down on the town, with one huge bomb creating an enormous crater which held the remains of two air raid shelters at the at the corner of Yarborough and King’s Roads in East Cowes.

“Suddenly we were aware of yet another screaming bomb” recalls Maisie Frampton, then ten years old “but this one was different – the noise was deafening as it appeared to get closer and then for a second ‘dead silence’… My father leaned across and took my hand and my mother leaned across me.” Of the 23 people cowering in that shelter “only three survived, my mother, my cousin and I”.

Nearby Mrs Hann a butchers wife serving with the WVS refused to abandon her post providing refreshments for the firemen at Minerva Boat Yard. Her van was found blown to pieces. With her died two Shanklin firemen.

Although no aircraft were shot down by the intense anti-aircraft gunfire, the defences on that harrowing night did the town proud. Later RAF night fighters shot down four of the bombers as they returned to their airfields.

The Aftermath

When daybreak arrived on the 5th May, a beautiful spring day, help continued to pour into Cowes from emergency volunteer services from all over the Island. The crew of the Blyskawica now turned into teams of firemen and diggers supporting the tireless efforts of the local emergency teams. The wounded were carried away to Newport and Ryde.

For the dazed people of the port towns the full extent of the devastation was now revealed. 200 tons of explosives had been dropped on the two towns. The East Cowes ship yards along the river and the SARO aircraft works in West Cowes were completely demolished. Some streets were covered with steep heaps of rubble. In both towns of Cowes streets were sealed off to deal with delayed time tombs. Many homes had been destroyed or were uninhabitable. It is said that a thousand people were made homeless in a single street.

All worked tirelessly searching for bodies, unexploded bombs, cleaning up and taking care of the mass of refugees and workers. It is estimated that the WVS provided 25,000 meals in the next few days. In total – and in spite of the countless efforts of bravery from defence workers – more than 70 people lost their lives in the attacks.

Nevertheless much of the two towns of Cowes had been saved. On that same night the Devonshire city of Exeter experienced a simultaneous attack, in which 1,400 houses were destroyed. A memorial to the dead was built in Kingston Cemetery in E.Cowes. In Cowes the shattered Great War Memorial was rebuilt in Northwood Park.

The Fate of the Blyskawica

When the Blyskawica was finally decommissioned in 1976, she was preserved as a museum ship in Gdynia in Poland. In 2002, the courage of the ship’s crew was formally recognised and commemorated by the people of Cowes, marking the 60th anniversary of the attacks. Two years later, an area of Cowes was named “Francki Place” in honour of the ship’s commander. At the ceremony on May 3rd, 2004, Commander Francki's daughter, Nina Doroszkowska, unveiled a special plaque which named the area outside the Painter's Arms Francki Place and commemorated both the foresight of the Captain and the bravery of his crew.
This weekend there will be a series of events to mark the sixty-fifth anniversary May 4th - 6th and there are exhibitions at Cowes Library and East Cowes Heritage Centre.

Today, vivid memories of the attack fade with the tides, with fewer and fewer locals who experienced the attacks still living in Cowes. However, the terror of the 4/5th May and the astounding bravery of the defence workers should never be forgotten. So, next time you bask in sunlight on the shores of Cowes or take the chain ferry across the Medina, spare a thought for the heroes of yesteryear and how their actions played a huge role in making the town the peaceful haven it remains today.