Sheffield Blitz Secrets Unearthed: 15 Years of Research Reveals the Truth
Neil Anderson
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"I started this journey with one question: What really happened to my family during the Sheffield Blitz?"
It has taken over 15 years for Sheffield author Neil Anderson to uncover the truth—"dispelling over eight decades of myths and half-truths”.
His research sheds new light on Sheffield’s darkest nights, revealing war secrets that thousands of families took to the grave.
The Sheffield Blitz wasn’t just two nights of bombing. It was the focus of years of fear, resilience, and survival. Now, with never-before-seen documents and hundreds of first-hand survivor accounts, his new “Sheffield Blitz – The Definitive Collection” tells, he believes, the full story.
Released in the year that marks 85 years since the Sheffield Blitz he said: “So many people from the Sheffield Blitz generation never spoke about their experiences. But I’ve conducting scores of interviews over the past 15 years with people late in life that finally wanted to explain what they went through.”
Neil Anderson’s exhaustive research — uncovering hundreds of rare and never-seen-before pictures, spending weeks in UK and German archives, and unearthing scores of unpublished documents — has led to many breakthroughs.
Three newly unearthed German bombing maps of Sheffield provide a chilling insight into Hitler’s precise targets across the city. Contrary to the long-held belief that the Luftwaffe’s primary aim was to destroy the city's armament factories, these maps tell a different story.
Neil Anderson explains: "I was always baffled by the bombing pattern — why were areas like Totley, Dore, and Millhouses hit, miles away from the East End factories? Schools, hospitals, and railways were heavily bombed. These maps prove the Luftwaffe wasn't just targeting industry — it was a full-scale terror raid designed to break Sheffield’s spirit."
Sheffield had one of the lowest evacuation rates in the country with thousands of kids living within yards of the city’s armament factories for the duration of the war – Neil Anderson’s own father was one of them.
The city endured hundreds of false alarms and many additional raids throughout World War Two.
The very last air attack was a V1 rocket — Hitler’s ‘vengeance weapon’ — which landed on Christmas Eve 1944, a full four years after the Blitz.
More information on ‘Sheffield Blitz – The Definitive Collection’ here:
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