Wartime Hamble Interpretation Board
Wartime Hamble
ATA Women and Spitfires
Early in the war Hamble Aerodrome owner, Air Service Training (AST), was appointed to repair Spitfires and it became the largest Spitfire repair base in the country. No 15 Ferry Pool, part of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), was based at Hamble to fly the aircraft to and from the airfield and it soon became an all women Ferry Pool under the command of Margot Gore.
1940 German Aerial Bombing
Enemy Attacks
Hamble's location made it a target for air raids. One night in 1942, three parachute mines intended for Southampton Water blew ashore. The first exploded, demolishing Grantham Cottage; the second was found unexploded, swinging between two tanks at the ShellMex and BP depot. The third lay unexploded on the mud flats near Luke's Yard.
In 1943, a J.U.88 flew low up the Hamble River spraying machine gun fire and killing a man on the Aerodrome. The village also suffered a daylight raid when a Heinkel dropped a stick of H.E. bombs over the village centre.
Early 1944
To support the D-Day invasion of France in 1944, the U.S. Army Transportation Corps Water Division set up a maintenance base on Hamble foreshore. For seven days a week they brought in lorry loads of rubble from the Blitz on Southampton to form two slipways with a large hangar/workshop on the shore. Its vessels were repaired here, though the unpiled slipways were prone to subsidence.
PLUTO Lines
Just after D-Day, PLUTO Lines (Pipe Lines Under The Ocean) were laid from Hamble-Le-Rice's BP terminal to Cherbourg, via Lepe and the Isle of Wight, to supply fuel to the Allied forces. The pipelines were laid using giant drums on converted barges — visible from the shore at Hamble.
An anchor and plaque on the foreshore commemorates the US naval forces in Hamble-Le-Rice.
Shipyard Support
The shipyards along the Hamble River from Hamble-Le-Rice to Warsash and upriver to Bursledon gave magnificent support during the war years through construction and repair facilities. Unusually one LCI(S) 506 (Landing Craft Infantry Small) managed to return to the river but with a tree trunk through her bilges — a souvenir of the beach obstructions on the Normandy beaches.
AST Spitfire Repair Base
US Boats on Foreshore, End of WW2
Larger US craft were maintained afloat in the River, including tankers carrying fuel, along with British coastal tankers, from the Hamble ShellMex and BP jetty to Port-en-Bessin, France, following its liberation. One, the 600-ton Y-17, is believed to have hit a mine soon after its repair and sunk off the coast of France.
© Hamble-le-Rice Parish Council and pictures Ian Underdown
