Although there had been many bombing raids on London since mid 1940, the first raid where the survival of St. Paul's Cathedral was at risk and where the Watch were tested in the extreme was on Sunday 29th December 1940. [40] The Port of London, in particular, was an important target, bringing in one-third of overseas trade. BBC - WW2 People's War - Timeline Fact File : The Blitz 25 August 1940 to 16 May 1941 Theatre: United Kingdom Area: London and other major cities Players: Britain: RAF Fighter Command under. [126] RAF day fighters were converting to night operations and the interim Bristol Blenheim night fighter conversion of the light bomber was being replaced by the powerful Beaufighter, but this was only available in very small numbers. [165], The last major attack on London was on 10/11 May 1941, on which the Luftwaffe flew 571 sorties and dropped 787 long tons (800t) of bombs. The OKL had not been informed that Britain was to be considered a potential opponent until early 1938. [191] In other cities, class divisions became more evident. X-Gert received and analysed the pulses, giving the pilot visual and aural directions. On September 13, 1940, shortly after the start of Germany's bombing campaign on the towns and cities of Britain, five high explosive bombs were dropped on Buckingham Palace. Anti-Jewish sentiment was reported, particularly around the East End of London, with anti-Semitic graffiti and anti-Semitic rumours, such as that Jewish people were "hogging" air raid shelters. Support for peace negotiations declined from 29% in February. [133] By mid-November, nine squadrons were available, but only one was equipped with Beaufighters (No. [90][91], Y-Gert was an automatic beam-tracking system and the most complex of the three devices, which was operated through autopilot. Beginning in September 1940, the Blitz was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by the Luftwaffe against British cities. [87], Because of the inaccuracy of celestial navigation for night navigation and target finding in a fast-moving aircraft, the Luftwaffe developed radio navigation devices and relied on three systems: Knickebein (Crooked leg), X-Gert (X-Device), and Y-Gert (Y-Device). A tall white house known locally as the 'leaning tower of Rotherhithe' has sold for 1.5million. Some 107,400 gross tons (109,100t) of shipping was damaged in the Thames Estuary and 1,600 civilians were casualties. All but one railway station line was blocked for several weeks. "Civilian morale during the Second World War: Responses to air raids re-examined.". [161] This raid was significant, as 63 German fighters were sent with the bombers, indicating the growing effectiveness of RAF night fighter defences. Some people even told government surveyors that they enjoyed air raids if they occurred occasionally, perhaps once a week. The maps help to contextualize the staggering statistics from the Blitz: in London alone, there were 57 consecutive nights of bombing. Ports were easier to find and made better targets. The fake fires could only begin when the bombing started over an adjacent target and its effects were brought under control. [137] Around 21 factories were seriously damaged in Coventry, and loss of public utilities stopped work at nine others, disrupting industrial output for several months. [145], In 1941, the Luftwaffe shifted strategy again. German intelligence suggested Fighter Command was weakening, and an attack on London would force it into a final battle of annihilation while compelling the British Government to surrender. Moreover, bombers had four to five crewmen on board, representing a greater loss of manpower. Airfields became water-logged and the 18 Kampfgruppen (bomber groups) of the Luftwaffe's Kampfgeschwadern (bomber wings) were relocated to Germany for rest and re-equipment. IWM C 5424 1. The government planned the evacuation of four million peoplemostly women and childrenfrom urban areas, including 1.4million from London. More than 40,000civilians were killed by Luftwaffe bombing during the war, almost half of them in the capital, where more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged. dodged bombs to make her way across London from her aunts house to dance class. In March 1941, two raids on Plymouth and London dehoused 148,000 people. [93] In general, German bombers were likely to get through to their targets without too much difficulty. So worried were the government over the sudden campaign of leaflets and posters distributed by the Communist Party in Coventry and London, that the police were sent to seize their production facilities. In Sunderland on 25 April, Luftflotte 2 sent 60 bombers which dropped 80 tons (81.3t) of high explosive and 9,000 incendiaries. The first attack merely damaged the rail network for three days,[102] and the second attack failed altogether. [145] Part of the reason for this was inaccuracy of navigation. Red lamps were used to simulate blast furnaces and locomotive fireboxes. The blasts at Hyde Park and Regents Park kill 11 people and injure 50 others. By 19/20 April 1941, it had dropped 3,984 mines, .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}13 of the total dropped. By September 1940, London had already experienced German bombing. [130], Airborne Interception radar (AI) was unreliable. [23], While the war was being planned, Hitler never insisted upon the Luftwaffe planning a strategic bombing campaign and did not even give ample warning to the air staff that war with Britain or even Russia was a possibility. [157] Air attacks sank 39,126 long tons (39,754t) of shipping, with another 111,601 long tons (113,392t) damaged. [35][36], It was also possible, if RAF losses became severe, that they could pull out to the north, wait for the German invasion, then redeploy southward again. Here are the flats today, courtesy of Street View . The London boroughs of City of Westminster and St Marylebone - 8.3 square miles of central London stretching from the north bank of the Thames up to Paddington and St John's Wood - were to suffer considerable bombing during the ensuing London Blitz of 7 September 1940 - 11 May 1941 and in later attacks during 1944 -1945. [94], On 9 September the OKL appeared to be backing two strategies. The shortage of bombers caused OKL to improvise. World War 2 Timeline - 1940. by Ben Johnson. He was always reluctant to co-operate with Raeder. Bombing civilians would cause a collapse of morale and a loss of production in the remaining factories. Official histories concluded that the mental health of a nation may have improved, while panic was rare. In comparison to the Allied bombing campaign against Germany, casualties due to the Blitz were relatively low; the bombing of Hamburg alone inflicted about 40,000 civilian casualties. (Photo by J. Workers worked longer shifts and over weekends. This meant that British coastal centres and shipping at sea west of Ireland were the prime targets. The Blitz as it became known in the British press was a sustained aerial attack, sending waves of bombs raining down onto British towns and cities. Liverpool suffered 180 long tons (183t) of bombs dropped. The production of false radio navigation signals by re-transmitting the originals became known as meaconing using masking beacons (meacons). Of greater potential was the GL (Gunlaying) radar and searchlights with fighter direction from RAF fighter control rooms to begin a GCI system (Ground Control-led Interception) under Group-level control (No. Ingersol wrote that Battersea Power Station, one of the largest landmarks in London, received only a minor hit. Just three and twelve were claimed by the RAF and AA defences respectively. [2], The military effectiveness of bombing varied. [109] Special units, such as KGr 100, became the Beleuchtergruppe (Firelighter Group), which used incendiaries and high explosives to mark the target area. Little tonnage was dropped on Fighter Command airfields; Bomber Command airfields were hit instead. The Romanov family was the imperial house of the Russian Empire from 1613 until being forced out of power in 1917 during the Russian Revolution. The oil-fed fires were then injected with water from time to time; the flashes produced were similar to those of the German C-250 and C-500 Flammbomben. Dowding agreed air defence would require some offensive action and that fighters could not defend Britain alone. This was when warfare deliberately included civilian populations. [25] In 1940 and 1941, Gring's refusal to co-operate with the Kriegsmarine denied the entire Wehrmacht military forces of the Reich the chance to strangle British sea communications, which might have had a strategic or decisive effect in the war against the British Empire. [70], Although the intensity of the bombing was not as great as pre-war expectations so an equal comparison is impossible, no psychiatric crisis occurred because of the Blitz even during the period of greatest bombing of September 1940. An average of 200 were able to strike per night. Jones began a search for German beams; Avro Ansons of the Beam Approach Training Development Unit (BATDU) were flown up and down Britain fitted with a 30MHz receiver. The details of the conversation were passed to an RAF Air Staff technical advisor, Dr. R. V. Jones, who started a search which discovered that Luftwaffe Lorenz receivers were more than blind-landing devices. Edgar Jones, et al. [32], The decision to change strategy is sometimes claimed as a major mistake by OKL. [186] At the time it was seen as a useful propaganda tool for domestic and foreign consumption. [160], On 13 March, the upper Clyde port of Clydebank near Glasgow was bombed (Clydebank Blitz). A trial blackout was held on 10 August 1939 and when Germany invaded Poland on 1 September, a blackout began at sunset. The light guns, about half of which were of the excellent Bofors 40 mm, dealt with aircraft only up to 6,000ft (1,800m). The Luftwaffe attacked the main Atlantic seaport of Liverpool in the Liverpool Blitz. At this time, the Underground lines were mostly owned and run by separate companies, all of which were merged together with . [53] Winston Churchill told Parliament in 1934, "We must expect that, under the pressure of continuous attack upon London, at least three or four million people would be driven out into the open country around the metropolis". On occasion, only one-third of German bombs hit their targets. [50] London hospitals prepared for 300,000 casualties in the first week of war. In Wartime One Girls Journey From The Blitz To Sadlers Wells is understandable in our digital library an online permission to it is set as public . [142] Civilian casualties on London throughout the Blitz amounted to 28,556 killed, and 25,578 wounded. When this proved impossible, he began to fear that popular feeling would turn against his regime, and he redoubled efforts to mount a similar "terror offensive" against Britain in order to produce a stalemate in which both sides would hesitate to use bombing at all. London was bombed ever day and night, bar one, for 11 weeks. The Metropolitan-Vickers works in Manchester was hit by 12 long tons (12.2t) of bombs. While wartime bombings affected London in both world wars, it was the Blitz that truly altered the cityscape forever. [23], Ultimately, Hitler was trapped within his own vision of bombing as a terror weapon, formed in the 1930s when he threatened smaller nations into accepting German rule rather than submit to air bombardment. On 10/11 March, 240 bombers dropped 193 tons (196t) of high explosives and 46,000 incendiaries. Although many civilians had used them for shelter during the First World War, the government in 1939 refused to allow the stations to be used as shelters so as not to interfere with commuter and troop travel and the fears that occupants might refuse to leave. but even after the Blitz ended, danger remained. In 1938, a committee of psychiatrists predicted three times as many mental as physical casualties from aerial bombing, implying three to four million psychiatric patients. Direction-finding checks also enabled the controller to keep the pilot on course. [140] The first group to use these incendiaries was Kampfgruppe 100 which despatched 10 "pathfinder" He 111s. The crew would be ordered to drop their bombs either by a code word from the ground controller or at the conclusion of the signal transmissions which would stop. 6063, 6768, 75, 7879, 21516. [93], The first deliberate air raids on London were mainly aimed at the Port of London, causing severe damage. Battle noises were muffled and sleep was easier in the deepest stations, but many people were killed from direct hits on stations. An estimated 43,000 people lost their lives. 604 Squadron RAF shot down a bomber flying an AI-equipped Beaufighter, the first air victory for the airborne radar. Let us find out other historical facts about London Blitz below: Facts about London Blitz 1: the German intelligence If a vigilant bomber crew could spot the fighter first, they had a decent chance of evading it. Outside the capital, there had been widespread harassing activity by single aircraft, as well as fairly strong diversionary attacks on Birmingham, Coventry and Liverpool, but no major raids. Many popular works of fiction during the 1920s and 1930s portrayed aerial bombing, such as H. G. Wells' novel The Shape of Things to Come and its 1936 film adaptation, and others such as The Air War of 1936 and The Poison War. [5][6] Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall Hermann Gring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, ordered the new policy on 6 September 1940. All but seven of its 12,000 houses were damaged.
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