The Germans chose cities like York, Exeter and places like that to bomb during the Second World War and gave them a big hammer with 500-600 planes. Lincoln suffered less, but there were some raids. This bomb came from my grandfather. I don't know which street it fell in but he had three examples. He gave one to me after the war when I was about 20 years old. The fin is genuine and you can see where it burned, but I've had the rest of it restored. Each plane would have dropped the bombs in canisters and the canisters broke up as they fell, dropping the bombs everywhere. In the big fire raid on Lincoln they dropped a lot of these along the river. One of them would set fire to a house quite easily. (Fred Hurt)
Part of German incendiary bomb
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Germany
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1941
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Comments
At the end of 1940 I was 9, evacuated to north Warwickshire with my mother and sister. My father and elder brother stayed in London due to their jobs, but visited us from time to time. Dad was an Air Raid Warden during the Blitz. Incendiary bombs were put out with dry sand,though well alight magnesium will even attack sand and burn in the liberated oxygen. Water is worse than useless as magnesium will decompose it and burn in the oxygen, and also liberate combustible hydrogen. I well remember my brother bringing to show me part of an incendiary bomb, a cylinder of magnesium well sawn, filed and drilled to get the swarf and metal dust. I sawed it more for the same purpose and used the result to make home-made fireworks. As I later qualified in Chemistry, I learned that huge deposits of carnallite, a double chloride of potassium and magnesium, are available to Germany at Stassfürt.