This V1 was a direct hit on the Eastern side of Victoria station (by Wilton road) at 02:00 25th June 1944.This was on the offices by the part of the station that is known as the Chatham side (the platform 1 side of the complex). 17 people were killed in the blast and 30 injured. The dead included 6 porters who were on fire watching duty and the room in which they were sitting was near the centre of the blast area and very badly damaged.. Another of the fire watching porters escaped because he suffered from mild claustrophobia and spent much of his duty roaming from room to room ,rather than in one small confined space. Just before the Doodlebug came down he was on the roof of the building watching the searchlights in the night sky. He came back downstairs and opened the door of an empty room. At that moment he heard a V1 cut out overhead and he dived under the cover of a desk. He heard no explosion at all ( apparently this was often the case for people near the centre of the blast area). The only thing that he was concious of was that he was unable to get his legs under the desk and he could fell rubble falling on them.After the mayhem stopped he was able to get back on his feet and stumble out of the wreckage of the room.He tried to get down a staircase and found this unusable as it was blocked. He then found a lift shaft and was able to climb down the metal framework. Once at the bottom he was able to leave the building and he immediateley tried to join the rescue party. However it was soon realised that he was too dazed and shaken by the experience and he was taken to a first aid station himself. Apart from the human toll the whole of the Eastern side station offices were badly damaged. There was also lesser damage to the Grosvenor Hotel and to shops in the Wilton road area.
The entire eastern sized arched roof at Victoria did not have any glass left in it at all.
In the ruins of the offices a fire started and the fire crews were badly hampered because some of their tenders had been damaged by blast (it was not recorded why-perhaps they had been attending a previous bomb).
The name of the porter is not known but his story is typical of that endured by ten of thousands of londoners throughout Doodlebug Summer
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