First Term At School A Wartime Puzzler

A Memory of Palmers Green.

We lived in Ulleswater Road, which was the first road in N14 Southgate, but was really much closer to Palmers Green N13. At age 5 and a few weeks I started at Hazlewood Lane Infants School in September 1944 and during my first term an incident occurred which I have never been able to identify for certain. One day during class our teacher suddenly told us to get under our desks as quickly as possible and take cover. As soon as we had done this there came the sound of a most enormous explosion not very far away. I'm sure it happened in that order, with the teacher's warning before the explosion and not the other way round. Now I can remember my parents telling me about a German V2 rocket which landed on the railway line near Palmers Green station. I don't actually remember that rocket but it definitely happened and I know the date and time of its landing. However I'm certain that rocket was not what led to the incident at school. Firstly the V2 at PG station is reported in the official records as landing at about 6.45 p.m. which was well after school hours. I know that time is about right because a fragment of the railway track came though the roof of the house where one of my classmates lived, and she remembers it was in the evening before bedtime. The second reason why it could not have been a V2 is because no-one could hear or see a rocket coming and it would have been impossible for our teacher to warn us. Even the Germans when they fired off the rockets didn't know exactly where they would land. One possible explanation which fits with my recollection of what happened is that the explosion during school hours was caused by a V1 flying bomb landing somewhere near Palmers Green. The V1s were known as ' buzz-bombs' because of the noise made by their jet motors, and when that noise stopped you knew the bomb was going to land close by within a few seconds. If what our teacher heard was the sound of a V1 engine cutting out then a warning to take cover could have been given. The problem is that, not for the want of trying, I have so far been unable to track down a date or time for V1s which landed in or near Palmers Green. There were several V1s within the Borough of Southgate which in 1944 also included Palmers Green. This information must exist somewhere. The date would probably have been fairly close to that of the known V2, which was 26 October 1944, otherwise it is unlikely that I would have remembered my parents telling me about that incident. If anyone reading this has the details, please post them here. Many thanks.

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