One of the most devastating moments of World War II in Britain took place 80 years ago this month when, at 12:26pm on 25th November, 1944, a German V2 rocket bomb hit a Woolworths store in New Cross, south-east London.

There were some 30 staff and 100 customers in Woolworths when the rocket struck (a queue had formed at the store after word had spread that tin saucepans had arrived).

The massive blast flattened the shop and spread into nearby streets, bringing down neighbouring houses and shops, overturning an army lorry and causing cars to burst into flames.

Some 168 people, including Woolworths customers and store workers as well as 33 children (some just babies in prams), were killed in the blast. Some of those who died were in the neighbouring Royal Arsenal Co-operative Socierty store, others were sitting at their desks in nearby offices and some were killed while sitting on a passing bus. Some 123 passersby were injured in the blast.

It took three days to clear the debris. Twenty four of those killed were never identified.

It is believed that the nearby New Cross Station was the intended target.

The V2, the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile, travelled at some 3,000 mph and, as such, few too high and fast to be tracked by radar, put down by anti-aircraft fire or intercepted by fighter aircraft.

V2s had only started to be used in September, 1944, following an order from Adolf Hitler for their manufacture in December, 1942. The first V2 rocket had hit Chiswick on 8th September, 1944, and over the next few months about half of the 3,000 rockets fired at Allied targets were aimed at London.

Such was the fear over the rocket attacks that it had only been on 10th November 1944, that Winston Churchill had publicly admitted the country was facing rocket attacks.

The New Cross attack is commemorated by two memorial plaques at the site, one erected by the Deptford History Group in 1994 and the other by the London Borough of Lewisham in 2009.