South Essex was target of Soviet nukes

2:05am Friday 16th May 2008

SOUTH Essex was pinpointed on the Soviet Army's nuclear attack hitlist during the Cold War, a secret Government report has revealed.

The previously secret report from the Defence Plans Division was released by the National Archives earlier this month.

The Government document lists London, Birmingham, Merseyside, Manchester and Clydeside, Glasgow, as the five cities the Soviets planned to target in the 1950s with a 20-megaton Hydrogen bomb.

The Soviets also planned to hit 14 other targets around the country with a less powerful atom bomb. Purfleet was among these listed in the report.

The bomb would have been similar to the one the Americans dropped on Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War, completely destroying the city, and killing almost 74,000 people.

Purfleet is thought to have been a target because it was one of the biggest ports in the country at that time.

Bombing the area would have rendered the entire country's infrastructure redundant because freight trains used Purfleet as a base to distribute goods across the country.

Jonathan Catton, Thurrock museum and heritage officer, said: "The Purfleet Magazines had by this time additional storage for high explosive and anti-aircraft ammunition stores added, there must have been additional storage of military equipment in the area that would have made it another military target to eliminate."

In 1944 the Germans dropped bombs on the Esso Oil Tanks in the town causing a massive explosion.