Figure 1.--The entire Blue Coat Liverpool School was evacuated to the small Welsh seaside town of Beaumasris. One Blue Coat evacuee there had a lucky escape when a RAF Spitfire fighter shot down crashed onto the home where one of the boys was staying.

The fact that the children were evacuated to the country and small towns did not mean the children were entirely safe. There were many close calls and some children were even killed in their evacuation locations. While the Luftwffe after the first weeks primarily targeted London and Britain's industrial cities, with so many planes in the sky and anti-aircraft batteries, there were bound to be incidents in small towns and subburbs. Planes were shot down, Luftwaffe bombers missing or driven off targets sometimes jettisoned their bombs. The British in the Battle of the Beams managed to divert Luftwaffe bombers from city targets which meant that the bombs were dropped elsehere--sometimes fields but in some cases towns and villages. Later in the War, the British tryed to fool the Germans about the targetting which meant again that some V-1 buzz bombs and V-2 missles hit small towns and suburbs.

Created: June 16, 2003
Last updated: June 16, 2003