There's no words. "It was the most devastating aerial attack to hit Scotland during the Second World War, taking the lives of more than 500 people. The horrors of the Clydebank Blitz cast a shadow over the town for decades, with hundreds of German bombers laying waste to the crowded tenements and shipbuilding industry which sustained many who lived there. Now newly released registers on ScotlandsPeople, the family history website run by the National Records of Scotland, shed light upon many of the individuals whose lives were irreparably damaged by the raid, which took just two days in March 1941 to turn a thriving industrial centre to rubble. Details of the marriage and death registers in the town give clues to one particularly sad story. Margaret O'Donnell was 29 when she married Alexander Clarkson in the district of Old Kilpatrick, just three miles from Clydebank. For her husband, it was a second marriage after his first wife of 13 years died in childbirth in 1932. The pair were wed on February 12, 1941, and settled in Dalmuir, living at the Benbow Hotel which opened years earlier to serve the accommodation needs of the workers at the nearby William Beardmore & Company Limited engineering works. "The hotel had 386 bedrooms, a public saloon, a restaurant for 1000 diners, as well as billiard, recreation, reading and writing rooms", says Dee Williams, head of genealogy resource ScotlandsPeople. Just one month after their ceremony, the blitz hit Clydebank and many surrounding villages. The area was targeted due to its thriving shipbuilding industry which had been put to use in the war effort, as well as a number of factories used to manufacture munitions and other wartime essentials. The 55,000 residents of the town were alerted to the impending carnage by the sound of sirens at 9pm on March 13. Among the first buildings targeted were the Yoker distillery, where whisky fuelled the flames, the Singer munitions factory and the Admiralty oil depot, which had been the main aim of the German bombers. Hundreds of high-explosive bombs, incendiary bombs and land mines razed much of Clydebank to the ground in a nine-hour overnight raid. Emergency services were quickly overwhelmed by fires and the mounting civilian death toll. More than 200 bombers returned on March 14 for a further seven-hour barrage. "The town of Clydebank was largely destroyed by Luftwaffe air raids aimed at shipyards, munitions and engineering works", Ms Williams recounts. "Four hundred and thirty-nine bombers dropped over 1000 bombs, resulting in the deaths of 528 people. "Hundreds more were seriously injured and thousands of buildings were destroyed in the attack." Among the buildings which felt the full force of the raid was the Benbow Hotel, where Alexander and Margaret lived. It was struck directly by a bomb dropped from a German aircraft, leaving only its shell. "There was barely one street that hadn't suffered a loss of life or a damaged building," Ms Williams says. "And news spread quickly of the destruction the area had sustained." A rumour spread across the town, still reeling from the carnage which had unfolded during the night, that over 100 residents of the hotel had been killed in the blast. In reality, just five suffered fatal injuries - one of them being the 29-year-old newlywed Margaret O'Donnell. Her body was discovered during a search of the wreckage a day after the blitz." https://stv.tv/news/features/1377258-clydebank-blitz-tragic-tale-of-newlywed-s-death-revealed/
