Behind Victoria Station, close to the docks, a maelstrom of smoke rolls across the sky at 4:35 p.m., as trolleys, cars, buses and bullock-carts fill Cruikshank Road.
Victoria, built in mongrel style, is called one of the world's most beautiful stations.
Apparently far from the war, the British in Bombay on April 14 abruptly found themselves on a serious fighting front, in deadly peril of their lives.
A Liberty ship put in at the port and began unloading cargo. Among the cargo were 155 gold bars, bales of cotton and a deadly load of TNT and gray ammonal.
In the early afternoon of the 14th, the baled cotton somehow caught fire. Without hesitation, the British of Bombay threw themselves into the attack.
Some 30 hoses poured four tons of water a minute into the explosive hold.
The general manager of the Bombay Port Trust of Docks and Railways, Lieut. Colonel J. R. Sadler, and his subordinates rushed down to the docks.
Suddenly the black smoke changed to a more ominous milky white. At 4:07 p.m. the thing blew up.
No fragment was ever found of seven fire engines on the dock or of any of their crews.
Four officers and 66 men of the Bombay fire brigade were dead.
Colonel Sadler was dead.
The explosion was heard for 50 miles.
Whole blocks were blown flat.
A rain of white-hot steel bombarded Bombay.
The survivors along the shore returned to the attack.
Within half an hour there was another explosion, even more terrible than the first.
What caused it is still not clear, but it was ammunition.
Again the city quivered and rocked.
And now the fires spread all along the great warehouses of Bombay, holding grain, paper, paint and Bombay's chief commodity, cotton.
A big iron pipe into which a police inspector had dived for shelter turned red hot and toasted him alive.
A gold bar worth $27,700 sailed a mile through the air and landed on a bungalow veranda.
By the third day the city's main business center, Ballard Estate, had been saved.
On the fourth day the fire was beaten but still smoldering.
The counted dead came to 336, the injured to 1,040, homeless to 50,000.
Property claims of citizens exceeded $150,000,000 not counting the damage to the port.
Along the docks, a dozen great hoses pour water into a burning ship, not the one that blew up.
The first explosion tossed one 4,000-ton vessel up on the wharf, twisted the big dock cranes, cracked the concrete docks and ignited a dozen ships.
British Infantry and Royal Indian Navy men work in high wind to clear buildings in path of flames.
In the wake of the conflagration, there remain only charred shells of buildings, with in this case the flames still licking at the burnable residue.
Some of the most important and modern section of the city of Bombay was wiped out by the fire.
These warehouses are said to have held stocks of ghee (Indian name for clarified butter) and kerosene, which made the fire even fiercer in this area,
extending back from great Alexandra, Victoria and Prince's Docks on Bombay's east shore.
On second explosion, antiaircraft shells and tracer bullets curve around the sky, below the startled birds who hastily gain altitude.
Cause of this explosion has not been satisfactorily determined. It was even more spectacular than the first.
Past one dead body on the sidewalk (rear, center) soldiers run toward the fires to join in the fight.
The European business section, including the Old Fort, the Town Hall and Mint, is silhouetted against the flame and the night in this dramatic photograph looking across Bombay's drawn-out peninsula.
But by this time explosions were past.
LIFE'S COVER: Mrs. Edward Reid (Natalie Reid, 24) is a popular professional model whose career - like those of other model mothers - has not been at all hampered by motherhood.
Wife of an associate editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, she is mother of 2-year-old Michael who appears with her on the cover.
Having a baby kept her from work nine months - five before his birth and four after - but it improved her looks.
Adapted from the May 22, 1944 issue of
LIFE.
Portions copyright 1944 Time, Inc.
Behind Victoria Station, close to the docks, a maelstrom of smoke rolls across the sky at 4:35 p.m., as trolleys, cars, buses and bullock-carts fill Cruikshank Road.
Victoria, built in mongrel style, is called one of the world's most beautiful stations.
British Infantry and Royal Indian Navy men work in high wind to clear buildings in path of flames.
In the wake of the conflagration, there remain only charred shells of buildings, with in this case the flames still licking at the burnable residue.
Some of the most important and modern section of the city of Bombay was wiped out by the fire.
On second explosion, antiaircraft shells and tracer bullets curve around the sky, below the startled birds who hastily gain altitude.
Cause of this explosion has not been satisfactorily determined. It was even more spectacular than the first.
Past one dead body on the sidewalk (rear, center) soldiers run toward the fires to join in the fight.
The European business section, including the Old Fort, the Town Hall and Mint, is silhouetted against the flame and the night in this dramatic photograph looking across Bombay's drawn-out peninsula.
But by this time explosions were past.
