The Bombing of London in World War II

Some very interesting personal accounts of the Blitz:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8703869/Sent-unleash-hell-London-JONATHAN-MAYO-documents-week-Blitz.html  Excerpts:

By the start of September 1940, the Battle of Britain had been raging for almost two months and Hitler was frustrated that his enemy remained defiant. In a speech on September 4th, he announced the Luftwaffe was to change tactics. 'We will raze their cities to the ground!' he raged. 'The hour will come when one of us will break, and it will not be National Socialist Germany!'  

London would be the first and chief target and the attacks would be overseen by Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe. German air raids on cities in Spain during the Civil War, and in Poland and Holland at the start of World War II, had brought those countries to their knees and Göring believed a decisive bombing campaign against London could win the day.

RAF radar stations pick up a massive force of German aircraft crossing the Channel. It is a formation 20 miles wide, filling 800 square miles of sky, consisting of 348 bombers and more than 600 fighters. It is the largest bombing raid the world has ever seen. Fighter Command wait for the planes to divide and head for separate targets, but they keep on coming as one solid mass. On the cliffs of northern France, Hermann Göring watches with satisfaction. He has promised to 'darken the sky over London' with his planes.

RAF fighters roar into the skies over London to defend it. One of the first pilots on the scene, Sandy Johnstone, of 602 Squadron, has never seen so many aircraft in the air all at the same time. 'They spotted us at once and before we had time to turn and face them, a batch of Messerschmitt 109s swooped down and made us scatter, whereupon the sky exploded into a seething cauldron of aeroplanes. Earphones were filled with a cacophony of meaningless sounds.'

In a riverside warehouse hit by bombs, barrels full of rum start to explode, sending burning liquid into the streets. Tate & Lyle barges full of sugar catch fire and begin to float downstream. They turn the air sweet with the smell of caramel and will return a few hours later on the incoming tide still burning. Rats scuttle round the streets fleeing the inferno.

The 'all clear' finally sounds. The docks around Millwall, Rotherhithe and Limehouse are in flames, as well as hundreds of terraced houses.

Sixteen-year-old Sidney Ties clambers out of the communal air raid shelter in Jamaica Street in the East End. The air is full of smoke and dust and all around him buildings are burning. The street is sticky with a yellow liquid that he realises is melted butter from a nearby warehouse. Sidney starts to help dig people out of wrecked houses, something he will do after every air raid for the next few days. American journalist Ben Robertson is on a hill overlooking the capital. 'The London we knew was burning — the London which had taken 30 generations of men a thousand years to build — and the Nazis had done that in 30 seconds.'

Despite the horror of the previous hours, many London pubs are packed. The writer Theodora FitzGibbon is in a Chelsea pub. 'Jokes were made to relieve the tension, beer mugs were put down more noisily to shut out other sounds. We were glued together by dread.'

The man in charge of the RAF in the South-East of England, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, is flying high above London in his personal Hurricane to see the destruction for himself. Park has a feeling not of despair but relief; the Germans are no longer targeting his beloved fighters and airfields. 'Now London is taking it,' he thinks, 'we shall be saved.' Göring has inadvertently given Park time to regroup and rebuild.

At St Mellons Golf Club on the outskirts of Cardiff, play carries on despite the war, although the club's rules have been amended: 'A ball moved by enemy action may be replaced; a ball lying in a crater may be dropped; a player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb or by machine gun fire may play another ball — penalty one stroke.'

A formation of Luftwaffe bombers is crossing the Channel, but this time Fighter Command is better prepared and nine squadrons take to the air and meet them over Canterbury. German pilot Hannes Trautloft said: 'The sky was full of roundels [the circular RAF symbol]. For the first time, we had the feeling that we were outnumbered.'

As the fighters attack, the Germans forget their designated targets in the West End and the docks and instead drop their bombs over the southern suburbs of London. Some 370 people are killed and 1,700 injured, but Fighter Command have shown that the Luftwaffe can be stopped in their tracks.

At South Hallsville School in Canning Town, coaches have finally arrived to take the refugees from the bombings to safety, but because of the air raid it is decided to postpone the transfer until tomorrow . . . South Hallsville School is hit by a bomb and reduced to rubble. The official death toll was given as 77, but is now believed to be closer to 600.

In a hospital bed in Woolwich, South-East London, Karl Missy, a Luftwaffe pilot shot down and captured a few weeks ago, is feeling nervous as his comrades are attacking the munitions factories at nearby Woolwich Arsenal. 'I knew how effective German bombs could be; if they hit us there would not be much left,' he said. A soldier posted at the end of Missy's bed in case he tried to escape is now hiding under it. Missy leans over and says sarcastically: 'How are you down there?' The soldier swears at him.

Winston Churchill is broadcasting to the nation from Downing Street: 'These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city. What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed.'

London is not the Luftwaffe's only target. Night bombers have attacked the docks in Liverpool and Bristol and the survivors are returning home. A German bomber flies into the cable of a barrage balloon over Newport and the pilot manages to bail out before his plane crashes into the home of the Phillips family in Stow Park Avenue, killing the rest of its crew. Eighteen-year-old Malcolm Phillips, having made sure his parents have survived the fire engulfing the house, runs inside to rescue his 14-year-old sister Myrtle. Neither of them gets out alive. Later the following day, Mr and Mrs Phillips visit the bedside of the pilot, and forgive him for killing their two children.

Because of the ferocity of the bombing, the War Cabinet is meeting for the first time underground in the recently reinforced Central War Room. A message is passed to Churchill to say that Buckingham Palace had been bombed, but that the King and Queen are safe. 'The Germans mean business,' Churchill says.

In Liverpool 90 evacuated children are on board the SS City of Benares, that will take them across the Atlantic to the safety of Canada. Eleven-year-old Colin Ryder-Richardson is on deck watching the city slowly disappear from view. He is wearing a bright red jacket which is mother has made for him, stuffed with kapok for insulation and with a lifejacket sown inside it. She has given him strict instructions to 'never take your jacket off'. When four days later the SS City of Benares is torpedoed by a German U-Boat, the jacket will save Colin's life.

The period of intense bombing of cities across Britain known as the Blitz lasted an agonising 246 days. But the German decision to attack British cities proved to be a turning point in the war. Churchill wrote: 'Göring should certainly have persevered against the airfields on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our Air Force at this moment depended . . . he made a foolish mistake.' Nevertheless, this mistake came at a cost: more than two million houses were damaged or destroyed; more than 43,500 civilians were killed and over 150,000 were injured. Two more years would pass before the number of British soldiers killed by Nazi Germany exceeded the number of British civilians.

Today, the 15th of September, is Battle of Britain Day.

https://www.rafbf.org/battle-of-britain

"2020 marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain which took place between July and October 1940.

The 15 September 1940 was officially named Battle of Britain Day as it was the day when RAF Fighter Command claimed what proved to be a decisive victory over the German Luftwaffe."