#1944

3 incidents tagged

The Doodlebug at Lord's — RAF v Army, 29 July 1944

Army XI v Royal Air Force XI

1944-07-29

On 29 July 1944, before more than 3,000 spectators at Lord's, an Army XI played the Royal Air Force in a wartime charity match featuring Wally Hammond. About an hour into play, a German V-1 'doodlebug' flying bomb cut its motor directly overhead. Players and crowd flattened themselves on the turf; the bomb dived to earth roughly 200 yards short of the ground. Bob Wyatt picked himself up, completed his interrupted run-up, and Jack Robertson lofted the very next ball into the Grand Stand for six. Plum Warner later said the moment summarised what cricket meant to wartime London.

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⭐Explosive

Maurice Turnbull Killed by Sniper at Montchamp — August 1944

Glamorgan / England (cricket); 1st Battalion Welsh Guards (military)

1944-08-05

Major Maurice Turnbull of the Welsh Guards, the Glamorgan and England all-round sportsman who had played nine Tests, captained Glamorgan for ten years and represented Wales at rugby and squash, was shot through the head by a sniper near the Normandy village of Montchamp on 5 August 1944. He was 38. His was the second Test cricketer death of the Normandy campaign and ended the most polished all-round sporting career produced by inter-war Welsh cricket.

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😂Moderate

Father Time Falls — A Barrage-Balloon Cable at Lord's, 1944

n/a (ground incident)

1944-09-01

Late in the 1944 wartime season at Lord's, a steel cable from a barrage balloon moored on the Nursery Ground broke loose in a wind and snagged the iconic Father Time weather-vane on top of the Grand Stand. The cable wrapped around the figure, brought it down and deposited Father Time among the front-row seats below. The most high-profile damage to Lord's during the Second World War, MCC's curators noted, came not from the Luftwaffe but from one of London's own air-defence balloons.

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