WHEN the sun came up over York 60 years ago today, it exposed scenes of devastation. Houses were destroyed, the Guildhall burnt out. The Bar Convent had collapsed, killing five nuns. Pavements were littered with rubble and shattered glass. Huge craters scarred the streets and Clifton airfield.

This was the city's second dawn that day. York had first been lit up by the eerie flicker of flares and fires, and bleached by the flash of high explosive.

You didn't need to see the city burn to know what was happening. The thousands sheltering in cupboards, under tables and in Anderson shelters, were all too aware. The ominous whistle of the falling shells, and the "whump, whump" of the blasts, told them everything. As one young man had said to his parents, "It's York's turn tonight."

The German air raid of April 29, 1942, was not entirely unexpected. In the previous few days, the Luftwaffe had attacked two other cathedral cities, Norwich and Bath.

These were the so-called Baedecker raids. The story has it that Hitler was enraged by the RAF's attacks on Lubeck and Rostock, designed to wreck German workers' morale. So he picked up a Baedecker guidebook and ordered that every historic place in England marked with three stars be bombed in retaliation.

The German aircrew seemed determined to cause maximum terror. Unopposed for much of the raid, they dive bombed ordinary streets, strafing them with machine gun fire.

This was more than just a mission to wreck morale, however. The planes bombarded strategic targets - the railway line, the station, the Carriage Works, the airfield. York Minster, by contrast, was not touched.

Beginning at 2.30am and finishing 90 minutes later - although the official all-clear was not given until 4.46am - the raid left 92 people dead and hundreds injured.

It could have been worse. A two-night raid on Bath had killed 350 people. Large, industrial cities like Liverpool and Hull had sustained repeated bombing and much greater destruction.

But the Post-Blitz Report of the Welfare Officer, submitted to York councillors on May 10, 1942, said the psychological toll could be high.

"Like many others, we have been present at attacks on other cities, including sustained raids upon the conglomeration of metropolitan boroughs, and have no hesitation in saying that, with the exception of specific target areas such as dockland, the effect of a sharp attack upon a city like York is infinitely more terrifying to the passive civilian, who get the impression that they cannot escape a direct hit in such a confined limit of operations.

"The services also have a harder task owing to narrowness of streets, steepness of roofs and so on."

The emergency services performed heroically that night. In fact, nigh on everyone rose to the occasion: civil defence wardens, medical staff, control and telephone room workers, and ordinary residents who gave first aid, opened their homes to the homeless and offered comfort to the distressed.

"Coolness and courage under fire characterised the citizens of York last night, when the city underwent the ordeal of what was described by the Germans as a reprisal for the attack on Cologne," said the Evening Press on April 29.

The testimony of some of those who survived the raid is at the heart of a special Evening Press supplement published to commemorate the air raid, York's Darkest Hour.

Their eye-witness accounts bring home the horror, heartache and even the humour of a night and day that York will never forget.

Owen Calpin was 17 and sharing his Crombie Avenue home with his nine siblings, and mum and dad. When the bombs started falling, the family took to an Anderson shelter and a garden shed.

Suddenly, an explosion blasted open the shed door, with Owen hanging on to it. The shed filled with fumes and his dad went into the house to get water.

"I was still holding the open door trying to get rid of all the fumes, when I suddenly heard a plane's engine coming from the St Joseph's Church - I believe it was a Dornier - and the pilot started machine gunning right down the length of Kingsway," Mr Calpin recalled.

"My dad still had the jug of water in his hand. He pushed me out of the way, stood in the middle of the garden, ignored the shells spewing out from the aircraft and roof tiles flying in all directions - and during those terrifying few seconds he threw the jug straight in the plane's path and screamed out 'Take that you murdering German bastard!'"

Cook's Bakery in Hanover Street, off Leeman Road, took a direct hit. It was both home and business for the Cook family. Daughter Kathleen Moss, now 81, will never forget sitting in the shelter with her mum, dad and brother.

"Then I heard this bomb coming down. I quickly dashed into the brick shelter.

"It whirred down. It was an awful noise. A few seconds later and I would have been caught. It was a terrible noise."

Eventually, all was quiet. They emerged to see that the home and bakery were wrecked.

"I will never forget my dad. He just stood and looked. He said 'I am so sorry, but you haven't got a home.' That went to my heart.

"I thought, he's such a nice, good man, and all this has to happen."

For what we believe is the first time, York's Darkest Hour also reproduces a complete list of those who lost their lives in the raid. David Poole, a York historian, compiled it, a task that took painstaking research.

He would like to see the city erect a memorial including these names and those of the other civilians who died in York in air raids and military accidents during the Second World War.

That was precisely what Dean Eric Milner-White called for in a York Minster service days after the 1942 raid.

"We mourn our dead and those whose homes were destroyed," he said. "We grieve over ancient buildings which were our city's glory; we ache for the injured in hospital.

"One day we will raise a memorial for our dead, for God forbid they should be forgotten.

"It will be a new sort of memorial. We are used to the records of sailors and soldiers, fighting men who made great sacrifice in far-off places, but not to warriors like these - old folk, little children, men and women crushed in their dear homes.

"But they all died for a cause: their bodies are the ramparts before which the foes of our freedom and faith storm in vain."

York's Darkest Hour is on sale from Tuesday 30th April, price 50p

Updated: 10:23 Monday, April 29, 2002