[ A photograph of Willi Schludecker as a bomber pilot taken from the YouTube documentary]
I have mentioned the fact before that bathnewseum.com has quite a few international followers, so it was not too unusual to receive an email from someone in Germany.
However, the contents of that message came as a total surprise. An emotional event in Bath that happened some time before my husband and I moved here.
Writing from Cologne, Heinz Kautz told me: ” I live in Cologne/Germany and also part-time in England, because my wife and I own a house in Wiltshire.
I am a friend of Heinz Beckers. Heinz owns the military estate of Willi Schludecker, the German bomber pilot who bombed Bath in 1942 and returned later in his life to Bath to apologise for what he did.
This was highly appreciated by the local authorities and the people of Bath.
The Military estate of Willi Schludecker will be sold at an auction in Munich in late autumn this year.
Maybe you are interested in this fact, and the people of Bath would like to purchase some pieces of history? “
More about Willi’s connections with our city through war and peace in a moment, but first l must tell you that amongst his effects was correspondence with Bath-based Chris Kilminster, whom he obviously met when he came here in 2008.
It was to Chris that l turned to find out more about this story. He’s been mentioned many times over the years in my blog as the man who has done a lifetime of research into the infamous Bath Blitz of April 1942.
According to Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Blitz – during three terrible raids, “417 people were killed, another 1,000 injured. Over 19,000 buildings were affected, of which 1,100 were seriously damaged or destroyed, including 218 of architectural or historic interest.[1][2 “
Among those killed were five members of Chris Kilmnster’s family – his uncle, great-grandmother, sister and mother’s first husband were wiped out by a 1,000lb Luftwaffe bomb which landed on an air-raid shelter at Roseberry Road.
A few years ago, he witnessed the unveiling of a memorial on the spot – something he had achieved after raising more than £15,000 to pay for it. Marking, he said – not just what happened there – but acknowledging all who had been killed during those terrible raids. Ensuring that future generations and our visitors are made aware of the fact that this now twice-inscribed World Heritage city did not escape its own wartime tragedies.
In talking to him, I know he’s keen to have a more central memorial to mark the losses of that war – and I am hoping to meet him soon for a proper podcast on the subject.
I have spoken to quite a few local people now, and you can find them all at Wyatt’s Place on Spotify.
I will also talk to him about the late Willi Schludecker – one of those wartime bomber pilots who took part in the raids over Bath – and the man who came back here to say sorry for what he’d done.
Chris pointed me towards a YouTube documentary on the subject – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLxElclSCyU&t=2s – from which l have captured a couple of still frames.
It’s had nearly two thousand views since it was downloaded onto YouTube 14 years ago.
Underneath the film is the following: “ During WW2, Willi Schludecker was infamous in Luftwaffe circles for surviving 123 missions and 9 crashes. In 2008, he became world famous for returning to Bath, the British city he bombed on 3 consecutive nights in 1942, to apologize. This ten-minute trailer is cut from over 100 hours of footage filmed over five years. “
I have certainly been given to think about here and look forward to my chat with Chris.
With my family of eight we lived in 4A Kingsmead Street. On the first raid my Father was home and was in the yard having a smoke when he spotted bombs dropping before the sirens sounded. He took us into our cottage and we sheltered in the coalhouse. After the second raid we caught the bus to Willsbridge to stay with Grandparents. Therefore we became Survivor’s and Trekkers of the Blitz. I was one month old.
I managed an interview (via an interpreter) when he visited Bath in 2008. You can read my report at http://www.bathheritagewatchdog.org/bathblitz/pilot.htm