Seventy years after a Norfolk village was targeted by one of Adolf Hitler's most deadly weapons, former schoolchildren came together to recall their lucky escape from a rocket which brought destruction from the sky.

It was at 9.25am on October 6, 1944, that the village of Shotesham All Saints came within a whisker of being hit by a V2 rocket, launched from the German-occupied Netherlands, some 200 miles away.

The ballistic missile, presumably intended for Norwich, exploded on the outskirts of the village, at Joy's Loke, but children had a narrow escape, with all the windows at the village school, only around a 100 metres from the crash site, blown in.

Locals have been researching the attack for some time and, to commemorate the anniversary of the close call, they organised an exhibition over the weekend at the village's Trinity Hall. In attendance, reliving the terrifying moment, were some of the former pupils who had scrambled beneath their desks for safety.

Michael Knights, a local resident who organised the exhibition, said: 'I moved here about five years ago and my partner said there was a crater caused by a V2 down in the woods. It's just a mud-filled hole these days, but I started talking to some people about it.

'We started up an oral history project and thought it would be good to find anyone who was alive the day it happened to get some idea of what was going on at that time.

'We found a number of people who were and they have been interviewed by volunteers, including some of the older teenagers in the village.

'Some of them came here over the weekend and have been talking about that day. Some of them still live in the village and some have come from round about.

'It's been really good. It has put people back in touch with the friends they were at school with all those years ago.'

Mr Knights said most of the V2 rockets were aimed at London, but 30 of them were aimed at East Anglia, including Norfolk.

He said: 'There were four batteries which they were fired from in different parts of the Netherlands. The Germans were worried the RAF would hit them, so they kept moving them about.

'When they fired them from Rijs, their range didn't quite make London, but it meant they could hit Norwich and Ipswich.'

The exhibition featured photographs illustrating the story of Shotesham All Saints' close call, as well as audio recordings of the memories of those who were at the school.

These are the memories of some of those who were at school in Shotesham All Saints on the day the V2 rocket exploded:

Joy Leighton: 'It was a Friday morning and our teacher was reading us Wind in the Willows. All of a sudden there was an almighty crash and we all dived under our desks.'

David Clarke: 'I remember a tremendous noise and the windows coming in and the next thing being out in the playground and going home.'

Barry Smith: 'Same as any other day. We were all told that if the teacher said down, we had to get under the desk, but by the time we'd got under the desk all the glass had come in. We didn't realise what happened.'

David Jackson: 'There were pieces of the V2 laying all over the village several fields away from where it landed. There were great big chunks – half the size of a car.'

While Shotesham All Saints had a narrow escape, other parts of the region were not so lucky.

On October 3, 1944, a rocket disintegrated over Mile Cross in Norwich, with the warhead hitting the Royal Norwich Golf Club at Hellesdon, damaging 400 homes in the process.

The same day, V2s caused injuries to eight people near Lowestoft, one person in Great Witchingham and two in Beeston St Lawrence.

Do you have memories of V2 attacks in Norfolk? Email dan.grimmer@archant.co.uk