>From the start of the war in 1939 there was a lot of enemy aircraft activity off the essex coast laying mines including the revolutionary new magnetic mine that was to cause such devastation to our inshore merchant fleet. Given the nature of the Essex Coast where marsh merges with the sea and the large number of small quays used by coastal shipping some of the mines were dropped on land rather than the sea/estuary . Although mines were quite different to bombs in construction and use they were both dropped by planes and both achieved a large explosion destroying buildings and killing people. Whilst the messages stating that bombs were not dropped on essex until later in 1940 is technically correct mines certainly were dropped and casualties listed in early 1940 along the Essex Coastline. In his book - Battle over Essex written in 1946 specifically about the air war - RF Thompson details a mining raid in November 1939 where a magnetic mine was recovered on the sandy coast at Shoeburyness which is part of the Southend conurbation. The Times newspaper archive records instances of mine damage but probably more specifically - Jan 30 1940 A mine struck the promenade at Southend on Sea yesterday and did a good deal of damage. The explosion shook the whole of the town. Over an area of about 1/4 mile a number of windows were broken. In a number of houses ceilings were cracked and a number of them fell, ornaments and other articles were broken, furniture was lifted bodily across rooms and doors were blown open. A resident said " I knew nothing about it until I woke up lying on the floor among the splintered glass from the windows. My bed had been flung across the floor and every article of furniture had been thrown over. The front door which had been securely locked was blown open and the panels broken" Significantly there is no mention in the article of casualties - Given the scale of the damage there were likely to be casualties or even fatalities if ceilings collapsed. Whether this omission was due to the War Censor or the Times we don't know. It could be the incident that Ros is looking for but there may well have been other incidents at Southend that were not reported. Peter www.essex-family-history.co.uk OPC for Burnham on Crouch and the Dengie 100