Islands Around
On 16 October 1939, a train on the Forth Bridge was almost hit in the first German air raid on Britain. Newspapers on both sides then told the story their own way.
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It was a normal afternoon on the Forth Bridge in Scotland, with a train making its way across the Firth of Forth. Then German bombers appeared in the sky.
About a dozen aircraft flew over the estuary and dropped bombs close to the bridge. The train was very nearly hit. It was the first time the Luftwaffe had attacked Britain, and one of the country’s best-known landmarks was suddenly at the centre of the war.
ighter planes were sent up to meet the raiders. Two German aircraft were shot down, and a third crashed on its way home. The surviving crews became the first German airmen to be captured on British soil. For a country at the start of a long war, it felt like a real victory.
The newspapers made the most of it. A propaganda film later made the bridge look like the target, and that is how the attack became known as the Forth Bridge Raid.
But the name was misleading. The bridge was never the real target. The German pilots had come looking for the warship HMS Hood. When they could not find it, and with orders not to attack civilian targets, they went after other naval ships in the area instead.
The reports at home also painted a rosier picture than the facts allowed. Newspapers said the damage was small and claimed that as many as six German planes had been brought down.
In reality, only two had been shot down, and one British ship had been badly hit. At least sixteen sailors were killed and forty-four were wounded, but the public was told very little about it.
German newspapers were no more honest. They boasted of serious damage to British cruisers and of British fighters shot down, although not a single British plane had been lost.
Both sides told the story they wanted people to hear. The train crossed the bridge safely; the full facts of that day took longer to emerge.
