The Tyne Bridge was almost blown up during World War II.
The bridge was a prize target for Nazi bombers, and was also primed for detonation by Tyneside's defence volunteers.
Read on for a short thread 🧵
On 2 July 1940, a bomber's payload narrowly missed the Tyne Bridge and sailed over the Swing and High Level bridges.
13 people were killed in this raid, including several children, and 123 were injured.
In August 1940, an off-course Luftwaffe bomber that was supposed to target the Tyne Bridge accidentally flew ten miles upriver and tried to blow up the visually similar (but much smaller) Wylam Railway Bridge.
(It missed.)
Fears of an invasion along the North-East coast meant vital structures were primed for demolition to slow the Nazi advance.
One of those structures was the Tyne Bridge.
The code word to alert defence volunteers to blow up the bridge was: "Humbug."
Early one morning in 1940, a message was received: "Humbug to you. I repeat: Humbug to you."
Volunteers hurried to detonate the Tyne Bridge... but were advised to stand down.
It was a false alarm, "a test dreamed up by Churchill to make sure everyone was on their toes".
There were 31 deadly bombing raids on Tyneside between 1940 and 1943.
"And throughout all of this, the Tyne Bridge stood firm," said the Newcastle @ChronicleLive, "a symbol of the determination of the people of Tyneside to withstand all that the Nazis could throw at them."
There's lots more about the forgotten history of the Tyne Bridge in my brand new book, which is out now (just in time for Christmas).
More details here:
tynebridgebook.com/
You can read a longer version of this story in my Substack newsletter. Why not sign up? It's free:
singulardiscoveries.substack.com/p/the-plot-to-blow-up-the-tyne-bridge
Paul Brown
@paulbrownUK
Writes about stuff: history, football, true crime, rocketbelts. New book: The Tyne Bridge: tynebridgebook.com Newsletter: singulardiscoveries.com
