HAPPILY gathered on a warm Saturday afternoon in 1940, the families attending the Kemp Town Odeon had no idea of the devastation they were about to encounter.

About 300 people had settled to watch a matinee showing of The Ghost Comes Home, a US comedy film released earlier that year.

At about 3.40pm that day, September 14, a German Dornier bomber was being hotly pursued by a Spitfire over Brighton after getting separated from the rest of its squadron.

In a vain last-ditch attempt to escape his pursuer, the German pilot decided to release all his bombs, hoping the lost weight would boost the plane's speed, manoeuvrability and chance of survival.

Its deadly load, 20 bombs of 500lb each, rained down on Kemp Town.

Two of them hit the cinema, crashing through the roof directly into the auditorium and screen. Flying shrapnel from the exploding bombs cut down men, women and children.

There had been no time to sound the alarm, no time to run for the shelters.

In the ensuing carnage 52 people were killed.

One young man attempted to carry his sister to the nearby Royal Sussex County Hospital but sadly she died soon after of her injuries.

Tony Bishop has traumatic memories of that dreadful day.

His mother had told him and his sister Connie they were forbidden from going to the pictures, but they had gone anyway.

He recalled: “I remember there was a good audience.

"In the seat in front of me was a soldier. The film was at a point where a door opened and a hand and forearm appeared.

"The hand was about to grab hold of a bottle of milk when there was a terrifying rattle, almost like a shower of giant hailstones landing on the roof of the cinema.

"In a split second the rattle was followed by an enormous explosion and I saw the soldier in front of me had no head.”

Mr Bishop then remembers sunlight streaming in through the caved-in roof and rescuers grasping to save the survivors.

Other bombs fell in an east-west line in Kemp Town Place, Upper Bedford Street, Hereford Street, Upper Rock Gardens and Edward Street.

Ken Brown, 89, was working in a newsagents in Upper Rock Gardens.

He remembered: “I heard the siren going off so I went to warn one of my friends. The next thing I knew there was a huge blast and I was blown behind the cash desk.

“When I came outside there was a man lying there who I believe later died.

“After a while I had to go to the Royal Sussex County Hospital to have glass taken out of my face.

"There were mothers there looking for their lost kids who had been in the cinema. It was horrendous.”

Some were lucky.

The Evening Argus of the time reported that two brothers from Whitehawk, aged nine and 12, were in the cinema. For nearly five hours their distraught parents thought they were dead.

Later that evening they walked through the door, telling their mum and dad: “We went to the Odeon, but it was bombed, so we came out and went to another.”

The cinema was at 38 St George's Road, which is now the site of a block of flats called Cavendish Court, on the corner of Paston Place, and opposite an ornate cabaret ballroom building.

Shops still line St George's Road.

Marion Rogers from Brighton remembered the day her 17-year-old sister Violet, who worked in a grocery shop opposite the Odeon cinema, was killed.

She spoke to The Argus in 2013: “That day my sister had a bad cold and my mother told her not to go to work because she was ill.

“Violet said she had to go because the owner of the shop was out for the day and they had a row.

“Mum wasn’t happy but she went anyway.

“She was so pretty and I still miss her. I can remember that day as if it was yesterday.”

Later that year Marion and the rest of her family were bombed out of their home near Western Road.

They were just one of 20,000 families across Brighton, Hove, Rottingdean, Saltdean and Shoreham who lost their homes because of bombing during the war.