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Sunderland in world war 2

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Sure this has been answered elsewhere in this thread but because of the shipyards and the docks Sunderland was hammered quite badly during the second world war.
This is the reason the architecture of Sunderland City Centre is mainly mid-20th Century with the odd surviving older building here and there.

Including places like the magnificent Victoria Hall theatre, Sunderland Train Station, the Winter Gardens.

The train station and winter gardens have been rebuilt since - the train station to a fecking awful design and the Winter Gardens to a pleasing design but nowhere near the size of the original.
 
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Here's a pic of the page. Not being part of the Luftwaffe's flight planning and Airspace Capacity Management team, I am not sure why Sunderland was chosen, but the theory seems logical.

it sounds like one of those 'sounds good, but most probably is'nt true'..

If we were 7th most bombed city then its because Sunderland was a viable target, not because some German in a plane did a sharp left (define sharp left in navigation terms over a few hundred miles at 200 mph) at Blackpool Tower. What did the luftwaffe do if they were bombing Liverpool or the Scottish ports and could'nt find them?, fly around looking for Blackpool?
 
I was always told that they used the chimney ar Ryhope hospital and the chimney at the paper mill in Grangetown as markers on their bombing run.
 
My grandmother moved house 3 times during the war and shortly after each move the houses were flattened.
 
Wasn't the most devastating bomb dropped somewhere around Tatham Street? A direct hit on an air raid shelter? Probably the same time my old man's house in nearby Mordey Street was flattened (although he obviously wasn't in it at the time )
 
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