The BSA is bombed

Mary McGowan  remembers…..NextBack

"One afternoon we heard the sound of gun fire and we ran out of the office to see a German plane circling overhead being fired at by our guns which were then stationed at Brockhill Lane. I climbed up a heap of something (I think it was coal) to get a better view and the men in the offices shouted at me to go back inside. One of the Managers was sitting under the desk, we laughed about that afterwards. The German bomber circled round for much of the afternoon, then as I watched I saw a bomb falling from it. From my angle the bomb seemed to be falling straight into the middle of Redditch and I thought about my poor mother who lived not far from the centre. However, it was aiming for the BSA factory and missed. I remember thinking how stupid the pilot must have been, because he had had all afternoon to set his sights. I heard later that the bomb had fallen in the BSA grounds, uprooting a tree, and blowing out some of the BSA windows. The plane was eventually shot down over the East coast."

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