menu Home chevron_right
SCIENCE

The Village That The Luftwaffe Bombed By Mistake

Tom Scott | September 8, 2025



Linby is a small village in Nottinghamshire, England. It wouldn’t have much strategic value… unless some commander didn’t read their map properly. Here’s a local legend, with a few questions about it.

Edited by Michelle Martin https://www.youtube.com/@OnTheCrux
Story research by David Fletcher

Thanks to historian Maureen Newton, to this transcription of the HO 203 National Archives database: http://www.warstateandsociety.com/Bombing-Britain – and to the British Newspaper Archive: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

Filmed safely: see https://www.tomscott.com/safe/ for details

🟥 MORE FROM TOM: https://www.tomscott.com/
(you can find contact details and social links there too)

📰 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER with good stuff from the rest of the internet: https://www.tomscott.com/newsletter/
❓ LATERAL, free weekly podcast: https://lateralcast.com/ https://youtube.com/lateralcast/
➕ TOM SCOTT PLUS: https://youtube.com/tomscottplus
👥 THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: https://youtube.com/techdif

Written by Tom Scott

Comments

This post currently has 36 comments.

  1. @TomScottGo

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    What I've learned from this video, and the one on the Icknield Way, is that YouTube compression really does not like having close, in-focus greenery moving quickly behind me. Apologies. In future, I'll try to pick different angles and backgrounds, or else use a camera with a shallower depth of field!

  2. @morefiction3264

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    My guess is some bombers dumped some unused bombs over the English countryside and they fell a mile or 2 from the town as they say. Someone commented that they were probably trying to hit the 'docks' and the story stuck.

  4. @trevormillar1576

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    The Nazis relied on Lord Haw-Haw for intelligence? Definitely looking in the wrong place! Likr the tome they sent paratroopers to a village in Norfolk to kill Churchill when he was in Tehran. Wait, that was only a movie?……..

  5. @michaelchallen

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    my father working in timber cutting during the war and they would leave their fires burning at night when they were on the South Downs and away from houses.(If they were near housing they would damp the fires with soil). In the night the Luftwaffe would see the lights and drop their bombs harmlessly into woodland. It's uncertain as to the value of timber full of shrapnel though but at least bombs meant for infrastructure fell harmlessly……

  11. @connoroleary591

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    But …….. maybe.. in 1940 the Germans bombed in daylight hours, a creamery in a small village in southern Ireland, Campile, Co Wexford.

    A weird place to attack especially when the Republic was neutral and much of the population supported Germany.

    Though you'd be skinned alive for pointing it out today.

  12. @JohnDavies-cn3ro

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    There was of course, also a small matter of wartime censorship, which covered up, or 'revised' a number of things.
    A similar story applies to the mountains above Llangollen; during the Liverpool blitz a German plane either crashed on the moors or unloaded its bombs while evading a night-fighter and set them alight. The next wave of planes thought a major oil refinery had been hit, and so successive waves of attackers added to the damage – or so they thought…..

    Not everybody liked Lard Haw-Haw, by the way. He wasn't funny if you had family serving on the ships (like Ark Royal) that were the subject of his phony claims. Even so, its debatable whether he (William Joyce) was fairly treated after we tried him for treason and hung him – but that's another story.

  14. @Olleetheowl

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    Haw-Haw did however, crow about the town of Random in the South East of England, being attacked successfully by the glorious Luftwaffe.
    This followed an announcement that a German Raid had Bombed at random in the South east of England 😊. … … Allegedly 😊

  16. @dobby27uk

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    This video just randomly appeared on my feed, or maybe not so random as i live in Nottinghamshire. Linby isn't that far from the WW2 airfield at hucknall, is it possible that if bombs did drop in that area they were aiming for that and missed, so it wasn't considered news worthy?

  21. @hebneh

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    Since the town is not located on a significant river, much less the coastline, I really doubt the Nazis really were clueless enough to bomb this place that clearly could not have any docks.

  22. @ryandavies6609

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    I live in a small town called Pontardawe in Wales. During the war, a bomb ended up in the bog at the end of my grandmother's street – of course being a bog, it didn't explode. Always makes for an interesting small town tale.

  24. @Arp1757

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    We shouldn’t be surprised if there were memories of German bombs violently ploughing up the fields near the town, even if completely unrelated to the Lindy Docks. With so much ordnance dropped in the Blitz, and so many aircraft suffering damage in combat over England, you could almost expect some injured bombers to salvo their loads to try and make it home. Some of those bombs were bound to rain down over strategically insignificant targets.
    Fodder for Folk tales.

  32. @xr6lad

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    How ironic listen to someone go on about propaganda while daily listening to propaganda about Covid and using hyperbole and exaggerating danger to get people to do things they wouldn’t normally do in a democracy if public figures are doing their jobs. Hey Tom?

  33. @pacificostudios

    September 8, 2025 at 2:07 am

    Did you notice from the maps that Tom presented that Linsby once had a train station, courtesy of the Great Northern Railway? I wonder if it even survived to the age of Dr. Beeching?

Comments are closed.

Related
How Additive Synthesis Works
Benn Jordan | April 18, 2026
Related
The Most Insane Megaproject You Never Heard About
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell | April 18, 2026
Related
All The Ghosts You Will Be
Vsauce | April 17, 2026

This area can contain widgets, menus, shortcodes and custom content. You can manage it from the Customizer, in the Second layer section.

 

 

 

Go to album
  • play_circle_filled

    92.9 : The Torch

  • play_circle_filled

    AGGRO
    'Til Deaf Do Us Part...

  • play_circle_filled

    SLACK!
    The Music That Made Gen-X

  • play_circle_filled

    KUDZU
    The Northwoods' Alt-Country & Americana

  • play_circle_filled

    BOOZHOO
    Indigenous Radio

  • play_circle_filled

    THE FLOW
    The Northwoods' Hip Hop and R&B

play_arrow skip_previous skip_next volume_down
playlist_play