War Comes Home

One midnight last week three German planes were spotted skimming low off England's southeast coast. Soon antiaircraft guns began to bark up & down the shore. A heavy Heinkel bomber, her belly freighted with mines, was squarely hit.

Afire, one of her twin 1,150-h.p. motors out of action, her altitude ebbing, the crippled raider wobbled in over the waterfront at Clacton-on-Sea, an Essex shore resort (pop. 17,000) about 50 miles from London. When they heard her circling for a flat spot to alight, excited Clactonians forgot blackout rules, turned out to watch. Clacton firemen, ambulance drivers, air-raid workers, long rehearsed, were soon ready. Above, four Nazi airmen passed indescribable minutes as the flares they dropped showed no landing place. The plane came lower and lower.

Her weight and speed took the big (74-ft. wingspan) Heinkel through the top of an apartment house, well into a group of seaside villas beyond. There followed a shattering roar of gas tanks and bombs. Firemen, ambulancemen, air-raid wardens hurried to the flaming wreck. Behind them an eager, half-dressed crowd collected. Windows went up.

Nobody knew that an unexploded mine's fuse, jarred by the impact, was at work. Four and a half minutes after the Nazi airmen died, it set off its charge. Next instant there was a crater where the wrecked Heinkel had been. Surrounding houses were smashed flat. A baby carriage hung from a treetop.

After eight months the war had come home to England with a smash-bang. Some $400,000 damage had been done to English property. Casualties were a middle-aged Clacton couple, killed in their sleep when the bomber fell, and 162 curious townsfolk injured when she exploded. None was hurt who obeyed the rules, took cover in cellars, lay doggo until the all clear signal. A raid shelter a few yards from the crater was unharmed. While firemen and volunteers were clearing away the ruins, three babies were born in a half-smashed Clacton maternity home. They will have company. Despite the crash, Britain's Home Office is continuing to evacuate children from London to Clacton-on-Sea. And the Clacton hotel operators' offer to allow one-third off on any day a bomb falls or mine bursts near by, made day before the disaster, presumably still stands.

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