Catch up TV

Series 1: Episode 3

During the blitz, over 450,000 bombs were dropped on Britain and every bomb has its own story. This series examines the specific effect of four bombs, from their initial impact on individual lives, right through to their wider consequences for the Second World War, and all the way to the present day. Across the series incredible personal testimony, gut-wrenching memoirs and the meticulous records kept at the time provide a visceral and terrifying account of the Blitz that directly connects with the human experience of the bombs. As survivors and relatives attest, these bombs touched the lives of everyone and created a legacy we all still live with today.\n\nEpisode three follows a bomb that fell on Jellicoe Street in the Scottish town of Clydebank. It was a tightly knit community of ship builders and factory workers who worked hard in difficult conditions. For the children though, life in the tenements was like being part of one big family as Patrick Docherty and Jack Tasker remember.\n\nBut on the 13th March 1941 that would change forever. When the bomb fell on Jellicoe Street, it destroyed number 78, killing 15 members of the Rocks family. Marion McDermid's grandmother was a Rocks - she survived and left a harrowing account of how her family had been wiped out by this one bomb. Amongst them was 13-year-old Tommy Rocks, Brendan Kelly's best friend. Over 70 years later Brendan is still deeply affected by the events of that night, as he says 'I went to bed a boy and wakened a man.'\n\nAs the community reeled from the chaos, confusion and grief wrought by the bombs, there was another war being waged in Clydebank. One young ship yard worker, John Moore, was battling to secure better pay and working conditions for his fellow apprentices. Linden Moore, his daughter, describes her father's communist politics and his role in negotiating better terms for striking apprentices on the same day the Jellicoe Street bomb fell.

Source: BBC 2