We have recently acquired an original German reconnaissance aerial photograph from 1941. It focused on the Westinghouse site in Chippenham and detailed their plans to bomb it. Read on to find out more......

German Aerial Photograph of Chippenham, 1941, Showing Westinghouse as the Target

Before the World War II began Westinghouse was one of the pioneer plants for signals; there was nowhere else like it outside Great Britain.

During 1939 the Engineering, Sales and Publicity Departments moved from York Way in London to the Hathaway site in Chippenham, as a wartime precaution.

The photograph shows that the Germans did intend to bomb the site, but it never happened. Chippenham residents remember bombs being dropped up at the Folly crossroads. Someone was in the bath and the ceiling came down on them! German planes also bombed the harvest fields surrounding the town in summer. Other memories include the noise of the bombers as they passed over on their way to Coventry, the silver paper they dropped to fool the radar and the glow in the sky when Bath was hit.

The Westinghouse Sales Department returned to London in 1947. I’m sure a lot of you remember the national publicity in February 1998 when a 780kg bomb was detonated and 100 people had to be evacuated from their homes…

Do you have any stories about Chippenham or any other Wiltshire place during the war? We’d love to hear them. For the latest updates on this article, please click on the links below:

German Text Transcript

German Translation