Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request 2nd World War Bomb Craters Across Wirral

Anyone done any research into these? I was scanning across the Wirral using Google Maps and it seems like they're are everywhere. I believe the Germans used to drop any unused bombs they hadnt dropped on Liverpool over the Wirral and wonder if they where ever recorded at the time??

I heard from my folks that the light used to be left on on Hibre to divert the germans. Given WW2 bombing was s hit and miss, I am not surprised Wirral bought it too.

Thats interesting so that would mean that they would of been directed towards that light probably dropping bombs indiscriminately. Heres some links to the google maps I have found:


1. Near Greasby

2. Near Brimstage

3. Near Chester High Road

I think some of them might be over grown with trees or are natural but the shapes look slightly unnatural.

The ones near Greasby are close to where RAF West kirby used to be. A possible target

There were a lot of decoy sites set up across the Wirral to divert bombers from major targets such as docks,shipbuilders,rail depots and even clothing factories and like Ghostly1 rightly says,they did drop thier payload indiscriminately after a raid as they could not carry thier payload back as to conserve fuel.

There are a few threads on decoy sites,but here is 1 from W10694.

https://www.wikiwirral.co.uk/forums...urstatston_Heswall_Bombi.html#Post330435

Thats a good point that!

I remembered some ponds we used to go fishing at near caldy golf club. Which from the air look suspiciously like craters??


Near Caldy

You may well be right,but to look for possible bomb craters I would advise researching bombing patterns first.I feel this may help to distinguish between a bomb crater and a man made fish pond.Most air raids were dropped in a staggered fashion (if this helps).

Forgot to add.They were staggered if dropped over a wide or long target area.Such as Runways or large towns and cities.If the target was small such as a shipyard then this will be called saturation bombing were the whole of the target needs to be destroyed.

Theres loads out on the Welsh road, either side, if you go around spme of them with metal detectors you can pick up shrapnell.

In the 1970's I worked at BurtonWood air base [on the MOD side , not the Yanks base].
While i was there, i done some fishing in the Pits in my lunch hours, and spoke to a few people who told me that the pits were from ww2 bombing raids, the story goes on to say that someone dumped some goldfish in them , and they were over a foot long, Indeed at one pit on the left of the main road i did see these very large gold fish, the pond itself was about 50 ft across.

[I know its not the Wirral, but is not that far from it];-)

One of the problems with identifying bomb craters in fields is that some of them may be marl pits,they were dug to get marl to use as a fertilizer,I do remember when they found two bombs which were on the beach at Leasowe, these had been uncoverd by the tide and one of the army trucks got stuck in the sand and the tide covered it,they removed it after the tide went out.

forget the blackouts in war time britain , the germans basically turned right at ireland which was ablaze with undimmed lights and found liverpool easily, they then flew back dropping their bombs over the midlands

The usual route was over the channel, over the Severn estuary, picking up the Mid-Wales railway (known as "Adolf Hitlers Railway" as it was so easy to follow), over Chester, to the Dee Estuary, where there were a number of bombing decoys for specific parts of Liverpool, and then turned right. they also passed near / over the decoys at Llandegla. My great uncle used to drive the diesel up to the decoy at Llandegla in a tanker.

It's all fairly well covered in : Aviation across the Borders