World War 2
The Blitz
On Saturday the 7th of September 1940 the the Luftwaffe launched its first bombing raid on London. That afternoon it’s commander-in-chief: Reichsmarschall Herman Goring, stood on the cliff tops at Cap Gris Nez watching flights of bombers thundering overhead across the English Channel. The Blitz was about to begin.
On that day 300 German aircraft dropped more than 300 tons of bombs on London’s docks and densely packed streets of the East End. The fires that the first raids started lit the way for 250 more bombers which attacked between 8pm and dawn.
For the following 56 nights London was bombed from dusk to dawn, the bombers following the unmistakable line of the River Thames to strike right in the heart of one of the busiest cities in the world. By the end of the year the death toll in London had reached 13’600, with many thousands more injured and over 250’000 people left homeless. The cost to the Luftwaffe was negligible; the Allies anti-aircraft guns were downing only one enemy aircraft in every 300.
In the 1930’s British planners calculated that civilian morale would crack almost as soon as the bombs started to fall. But as the weeks passed, the British people found that life was bearable in spite of the bombs. London proved too tough to crack! Winston Churchill declared ‘I see the damage done by the enemy attacks; but I also see, side by side with the devastation and the ruins, quiet, confident, bright and smiling eyes, beaming with the consciousness of being associated with a cause far higher than any human or personal issue. I can see the spirit of an unquenchable people’.
And so the Luftwaffe turned its attention to ports like Southampton and industrial centres in the Midlands. On the 14th of November the city of Coventry suffered a devastating raid which introduced a new word to the modern-day language- to ‘Coventrate’.
And so the Luftwaffe turned its attention to ports like Southampton and industrial centres in the Midlands. On the 14th of November the city of Coventry suffered a devastating raid which introduced a new word to the modern-day language- to ‘Coventrate’.
The final phase of the Blitz began on the 16th of April 1941, climaxing with a huge raid on London on the 10th of May which left one-third of the capital’s streets impassable and 16’000 families without water, gas and electricity. But by the end of June 1941 two-thirds of the Luftwaffe had been transferred to the Eastern Front... The Blitz was over.