Picture and quotation below courtesy of Gerald Wasley's book - Devon at War 1939 - 1945.

"In the vicinity of RAF Mountbatten, one of the service's oil storage tanks was hit by a bomb on 27 November 1940 and instantly burst into flames. The heat from the fire was so intense that water from the firemen's hoses evaporated before it reached the flames.

Two days later, the intense heat caused the other storage tanks to burn.. One of these tanks exploded. The burning oil came pouring out over the wall of Hooe Lake catching two fireboats alight and killing two firemen*. Other firemen swam ashore before the blazing oil completely covered the water - a few minutes later the two fireboats exploded.

The oil fires lasted five days and high billowing clouds of smoke hung over the city. At night the fires illuminated Plymouth and people were fearful that this would encourage enemy bombers to return."

*The firemen were Robert Widger and Thomas J Callicott who are remembered in these pages..

But in the 1940s, Plympton St Mary RDC was responsible for listing all bombing casualties in the 19 parishes under its control from Turnchapel, Hooe, Plymstock, Elburton and Oreston to Brixton and Lee Mill, all the way up to Sparkwell and even out to sea in Plymouth Sound. 

There is no single cemetery which contains the buried remains of all casualties listed by this Rural District Council. The place of burial was left to surviving family members to decide on and graves are spread over a very wide area. It may be that you searched in vain for family members in the Plymouth listing - most of the events recorded here can be associated with  raids which took place on  Plymouth  but were what might be termed "random" bombings - the dropping of left-over bombs as the raiders turned for home, or the creation of fire trails to mark the way to more important targets.

Not all the raids were at night. Causing panic and fear among civilians was a stated aim of the Luftwaffe who initially believed that our citizens could be pressured into forcing the British Government to capitulate by bold daylight raids which, here, were known as "tip and run" raids . So a number of the casualties listed were caught out in the open, and indeed may have had visual contact with their attackers who approached at low levels - like the man out in his fishing boat in Plymouth Sound or Gertrude Cleverton who died in the street coming up Hayes Road.

It may help to appreciate the vast area covered by Plympton St Mary RDC by going to this map: