Between May the 3rd and May the 9th 1941 Hull was systematically blitzed by the German Luftwaffe. It had strategic importance as a port and they attempted to take it out of commission. In that week there were 400 civilian deaths and huge amount of damage to housing.

During the war my mother-in-law told me she was bombed out of three houses. They used to hide under a big metal table for protection. I used to joke with her that the Luftwaffe were after her. She told me that Hull was the most bombed city in Britain. She was right.

Extract from Wikipaedia –

Hull was the most severely damaged British city or town during the Second World War, with 95 percent of houses damaged.^[1] Hull had more than 1,000 hours spent under air raid alerts.^[2] Hull was the target of the first daylight raid of the war and the last piloted air raid on Britain.^[1]

Of a population of approximately 320,000 at the beginning of the war, approximately 152,000 were made homeless as a result of bomb destruction or damage.^[3] Overall almost 1,200 people were killed and 3,000 injured by the air raids.^[4]

More than 5,000 houses were destroyed and half of the city centre destroyed. The cost of bomb damage was estimated at £20 million (1952, £518,985,637 as a consumer price equivalent), with 3,000,000 square feet (280,000 m²) of factory space, several oil and flour mills, the Riverside Quay and 27 churches, 14 schools or hospitals, 42 pubs and 8 cinemas ruined; only 6,000 out of the 91,000 houses were undamaged at the end of the war.^[5][6] The extent of the damage was similar to that of the Plymouth Blitz.^[5]

Despite the damage the port continued to function throughout the war.

Let us hope that we’ll never have a war like that again!