Bournemouth At War / FIRST BOMB RAID Traditional Cache

Bournemouth has a great history. I have documented many famous people, major events and occurrences in previous geocaching series highlighting the history of Bournemouth. This series focuses on many of the key incidents and stories in the town when Bournemouth was at war. A complete list of all the caches in this series are bookmarked.

1940 was the first full year of WWII. Whilst much of the start of the war was about getting ready for what was to come, and to keep the community of Bournemouth safe, 1940 started coming under attack half way through the year.



The first real air raid warning sounded at 12:20am on 20th June when German aircraft bombed Southampton, the All Clear signalling “Raiders Departed” was at 3am. Bournemouth had its first bombing raid during the night of 2/3rd July, the siren sounding at 11:50pm, when a high explosive bomb fell at 00:17 between two houses in Cellars Farm Road, Southbourne. One of the houses caught fire and was completely destroyed, the other was severely damaged, as were seventeen others. Luckily no one was hurt.