The night of the 7th May 1941 was the first of two consecutive nights of German bombing raids on the city and port of Hull.

"It is known that upwards of 300 high explosive bombs were dropped,these included parachute mines and 'G' bombs. Some 40 of them failed to explode, though each one was a menace for a considerable time. The incendiaries, from flares to oil bombs, numbered thousands. There were 6,000 wardens on duty each evening, many of them becoming casualties, six, unfortunately, fatal.
...
"During the two nights hundreds of fires were put out by members of the various services and the general public as soon as the incendiary bombs began their fell work. Even so, the fire brigades had to deal with approximately 800 conflagrations. The city centre, King Edward Street, Jameson Street, Prospect Street became a mass of flames ... Industrial plants in all parts of the city suffered damage, as did the Guildhall, the City Hall, and the Prudential Buildings at the corner of King Edward Street.. The high tower of the Prudential Buildings had to be demolished the next day for the public safety."


"... 3,000 dwellings were either wrecked or seriously damaged, 9,000 had doors and windows torn out of their frames, and 50,000 suffered minor damage from blast , bomb or shrapnel.
"... The casualties on those two nights totalled 1,200 - 400 being fatal. In 36 cases identity could not be established.
"So many were unidentified that on May 12th there was a communal funeral for 200."
(T. Geraghty, "A North-East Coast Town" 1951)

"The crowning tragedy of that single night [8th May] was the destruction of the Prudential Tower ... At least eighty people, many of them girls from the 'Women's Royal Naval Service', or 'Wrens' as they were affectionately known, were immolated in the firestorm unleashed upon those buildings. (Their indecipherable remains still rest irrecoverable to this day, under the charred and compressed rubble of the basement.)
(Clive Ashman, "Mosaic", 2008)

I, being a couple of months short of my third birthday, probably slept through most of that living hell, or sat whining to my mother that I wanted to leave the cold air-raid shelter and go back to bed.
I saw an old schoolmate being interviewed on the local telly yesterday. He was asked if he was scared. No, he said, it was an adventure. Doubtless we were shielded from the worst. My mother-in-law spoke of going to work at the local fire station one morning, and stepping over body parts strewn about the road.
1,258 citizens of Hull were killed in the wartime bombings, several times as many injured. 152,000 were were made homeless. The last bomb to fall on Britain, in 1945, fell on Hull, and took lives.
The site of the Prudential Tower is marked by a plaque set in the ground. There is a movement afoot to commemorate our dead more fittingly with a memorial listing those whose names are known, as was done elsewhere. One mooted site for this is the old "National" picture house, or cinema, which sustained a hit during the showing of a film, resulting in casualties among the patrons. The shell of the building still stands, and has been described as the last remaining wartime bombsite in Britain.