Hull suffered 82 major air raids in World War 11 during which 93 per cent of the housing - a total of 86,715 homes - was damaged or destroyed, as was the city's shopping centre and two million square feet of factory space.

More than 130 vehicles were used on full-time service to take the wounded of Hull to hospital or the city's dead to the mortuary. Many of their crews were young girls who had most probably worked at their real jobs all day before going on ambulance duty at night. Eleven members of the casualty service were killed on duty.

About 1,200 Hull people died in the raids and another 3,000 were injured.

There were 815 air raid alerts lasting over 1,000 hours in total in Hull during World War 11. In all 250 domestic shelters were destroyed and 120 communal shelters from which more than 800 people were rescued alive.

A total of 152,000 people were rendered homeless in the conflict.

May 1941 saw sustained bombing on the city. Upwards of 300 high explosive bombs were dropped, about 40 of which failed to explode. Four fifths of the telephone system was put of of action in the east of the city leaving only five official phones working. One hundred and thirty rescue parties attended more than 100 incidents.

Fire brigades dealt with over 800 fires during the bombing of May 7-9.

In those three days 3,000 houses were wrecked or seriously damaged, 9,000 had doors and windows torn out of their frames and 50,000 suffered minor damage.

During those raids more than 40,000 people received help. Many of the dead were unidentifiable.On May 12 there was a communal funeral service for 200 people.

The biggest bomb to be dropped on Hull exploded on May 19, 1942. It descended on Scarborough Street off Hessle Road, killing 50.

On one occasion telephone operators in Hull were blown from their switchboards by an explosion.

Despite its efforts the Luftwaffe never held up the working of Hull either as a port or a city for a single day