Bomb Book 1941/2011.

© Plymouth City Council 2007. Image courtesy of Plymouth City Library Services.

It felt pertinent, not least 70 years on but the fact Plymouth has been historically associated with the military, to produce a body of work referencing the Bomb Book held at the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office.

The Bomb Book, or its full title; ‘City Of Plymouth; Position Of Bombs Dropped In Air Raids 1939-1945’, records – using a small red dot upon a map of the city centre – each individual bomb and its position of detonation.
This is accompanied by a text document ‘Plymouth Air Raid Incidents 1941-1943’, which includes data relevant to each bomb such as the date, the serial number of the occurrence, type of bomb and the position of occurrence.

It was of interest that the Bomb Book, the text document and the bomb map supplied by the city library all in their own way had inconsistencies.
I obtained a contemporary Ordinance Survey map of the city and through rather painful and careful comparison and layering, was able to locate the positions that bombs fell during two specific raids, some of the heaviest in fact, during the spring of March and April 1941.
Given that the city was all but destroyed during the bombardments, the challenge proved even more demanding as the entire centre of the city had been re-modelled and sculpted based on the modernist Abercrombie plan of 1943.

Utilising my exiting knowledge of the city, I chose locations that I knew would be of interest as direct comparison to the data I obtained.
Italian photographer Giorgio Barrera conducted a similar study of battlefields using archive material, maps and documents chronicling three great Italian wars from 1848-1867; re-photographing locations where conflict took place, with points of view that say a soldier may have in the long grass awaiting to advance. Or the high vantage point of a hill, one a general may seek to gain an insight into the landscape and the strategies that could be initiated.

Although there are benefits in allowing projects to organically present themselves over a period of time and through careful and diligent progression, I felt it important to have at the very least some foundations with which to work. So the choices of location were subjective and orchestrated from the very beginning, the opposite perhaps of Mark Power’s series ’26 Different Endings’, whereby Power rigidly patrolled the very far reaches of the A-Z map of London and photographed exactly where the line and perimeter ended.

What I was also extremely conscious of was that I did not want this to be simply a ‘now and then’ survey. The images themselves, I felt, had to have something more than just ‘this is what this place looks like now’, and although they do have this on the surface (this is unavoidable) I have made considerable attempts, sometimes to my frustration, to make direct and indirect references to conflict in its immediate sense and resulting consequences.
In many ways, I sought to question, challenge and address some of the codes and conventions associated with conflict, conflict photography and its consequences away from military engagement, seeking alternative ways to represent war.
Ashley Gilbertson for example has focused his attentions on a American wide study called ‘Bedrooms of the Fallen’ producing black and white panoramic images of the hometown bedrooms of deceased young United States Army Personnel.
Or Benjamin Lowy, who, while embedded with U.S. soldiers, photographed not only though a night vision telescope in ‘Iraq Perspectives II’ but also made pictures from the windows of armoured Humvees in ‘Iraq Perfectives I’ documenting street scenes in Baghdad seeking to explore the view, literally, of a journalist in modern day warfare.

Through thoughtful contemplation, discussion with others and the re-visiting of locations, repeatedly in some cases, I began to photograph smaller areas of space, details that could have been the exact location of where a bomb had been dropped.
For example, quite blatantly, a missile stands in a cluttered and somewhat disorganised forecourt of an Army surplus store.
In an uncanny coincidence, a children’s fairground ride loaded with various ‘RAF planes’ positions itself right next to a bombsite. Or more subtly, a car park, scattered with broken chairs, shows the painted image of a wheelchair user with in a disabled car-parking bay.
There are floral references and the connections that come as a result, or a series of portraits of ‘Plymouth Greats’ evokes images of the deceased at a Catholic Cemetery.
The presence of people exist in the footprint cast in concrete, or an arrangement of shoes upon a tarpaulin and a cluster of tents that suggest persons displaced.
The only people to be seen are from the media and the military, gathered together around a series of live broadcast vehicles, alluding to the idea of 24-hour news coverage and how conflict is portrayed and represented in a contemporary sense.

Date: 21&22/03/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 371.
Type of bomb: (Unknown).
Position of occurrence: East of old bathing pool. (East of Promenade Pier).
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 21&22/03/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 55.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Barbican, near Mayflower Pier.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 23/04/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 89.
Type of bomb: High Explosive (UNX).
Position of occurrence: Mutton Cove.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 22&23/04/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 45.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Victoria Park viaduct, east end.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 21&22/03/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 52.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Cobourg Lane, junction with York Street.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 21&22/03/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 365.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Corner of Ebrington Street and Drakes Circus.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 21&22/03/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 16.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Stonehouse Bridge.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 23/04/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 58.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Rear of Portland Place.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 21&22/03/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 184.
Type of bomb: UNX.
Position of occurrence: Parade, Barbican, near surface shelter.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 22&23/04/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 12.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Barbican Fish Market.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 22&23/04/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 227.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Richmond Walk junction, Mutton Cove, Devonport.
© Tim Mills. 2011.

Date: 20/03/1941.
Serial number of occurrence: 10.
Type of bomb: High Explosive.
Position of occurrence: Bull Ring on Hoe Promenade.
© Tim Mills. 2011.