Obviously the proximity of Dover to the continent would be as much a problem to the Dover Grand Hotel during this war as it had been during the First World War. The seafront location, which attracted so many visitors in peacetime, was suddenly not so appealing. The stretch of English Channel between Dover and Calais was nicknamed “Hellfire Corner”. It wasn’t long into the war before Dover was heavily hit by enemy fire. On 11th September 1940 the town was bombed and shelled simultaneously. The bombs were dropped from aircraft onto the town, but the shells were fired from Cap Gris-Nez on the French coast (the spot from which Sally Bauer began her cross channel swim the year before). Sixteen people were killed and 62 injured and in total 26 bombs fell, but only ten were accounted for in this raid. The attack began at three in the afternoon and went on until 9pm. Shells fired from the French coast by the Germans hit Wellesley Terrace heavily and so the Grand Hotel was badly damaged with one entire wing collapsing. It took some days for all the casualties to be found and pulled from the debris. Many of those in the hotel fell through five floors and ended up stuck under many feet of rubble whilst gas leaked around them. It was miraculous that only two people were killed. Amongst those injured was American journalist Guy Murchie who worked for the Chicago Tribune. The American people eagerly sought news about the effect of the war in England. Guy had asked to be sent to Hellfire Corner as soon as the battle of Britain started and said that he wanted to be there should the Germans attempt to invade. At this time it was considered a certainty that Germany would invade Britain at any moment as troops were massed at points in France that were closest to the British coast. Guy Murchie was an all American hero. He was tall (6 feet 5 inches) and had graduated from Harvard University where he had rowed on the varsity crew. He was an artist often producing sketches to help explain his experiences. He travelled around the world when he had graduated, working as a deck hand on various vessels. His father was an attorney and was also called Guy, and had been a rough rider with Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish American Civil war. He left the Tribune in 1942 and went on to become a flight instructor and navigator. In later years he wrote several books about space, all became best sellers. Acclainmed science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote of one of his books “one can only stand amazed at the breadth of Mr. Murchie’s understanding and his ability to put the facts and speculations of Science into colourful and non-technical language”. He died in a convalescent hospital in Anaheim in 1997 at the age of 90. When he left England in a convoy in 1942 one of the items he borough back as a souvenir in his suit case was a piece of the wreckage of the Grand Hotel. In fact the Grand Hotel was so badly damaged that it became unusable for the rest of the war and just stood as an empty shell until rebuilding could begin.
In 1946 the Dover Grand Hotel Company who owned the hotel put together a plan to spend £38,000 on rebuilding the hotel. This was refused by the Dover Corporation because it did not fit in with their plans for the rebuilding of Dover, which had been very badly damaged during the war, especially the seafront area. After the first failure to secure permission to go ahead, they appealed several times, but each time the appeal was refused and in the end the hotel’s condition had deteriorated so much that there was no alternative but to go ahead with demolition. The demolition finally happened quietly and with a small amount of press coverage, in August 1951