At 11.12 pm on Saturday May 3rd 1941 the Air Raid Alert sounded over North Shields. Locals hurried as usual to the air raid shelter beneath Wilkinson's lemonade factory. At midnight, a single bomb from a lone German raider scored a direct hit on the three storey building. Walls, machinery and debris collapsed into the shelter. 107 people, 41 of them children under 16, were killed. It was the worst bombing incident in North East England during World War II.