On September 7, 1940 German bombers started appearing in the skies over London and dropping a seemingly endless stream of bombs on the civilians below. This changed the face of World War 2 in such a way that the civilians of Germany would regret even more in the following years of the war.
To be fair, the Germans were bombing civilian targets from the air in WW1 too.
It is a shame Bomber Harris never got the post WW2 credit and kudos he deserved.
And dont forget a lot of civilian areas on the continent had by then already been murderously pounded.
They were the first to enjoy the generous sharing of National Socialism’s industrial outputs.
E.g. Warsaw, Rotterdam, many more.
And Helsinki, courtesy of the International Socialists.
I’ve got my DeHavilland Mosquito t-shirt on this morning.
That could never happen here in Canada of course. All of our enemies are really friends, and everyone is too hip and enlightened in modern times to be so brutal.
North America just needs Obamba to continue grovelling and licking the feet of the world’s dictators and all will be well. I know because I eat at a Chinese restaurants occasionally and they are sooo nice, better than us actually……./ left off
Yes, and that’s why the next Islamic terror attack on the US should be met with a glass parking lot where today stands Mecca.
It’s ironic that this posting should appear when it has. I was just reading a story on CBC.Ca where the gov of Canada is being accused of spending too much on security. Had England heeded to the warnings it was given, they may have saved a lot of lives.
The follwing was my comment–needless to say, it never got published. Not in sync with CBC thinking–I guess.
“My uncle lived through the air raids of London during WWII. Had England heeded to the warnings of intelligence agencies, they could have offset the German invasion. What amount of money would have been “too much” to spend on security, or anti aircraft batteries??”
speaking of arial shots:
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=photos_show_enduring_traces__060911?ref=ccbox_weather_topstories
BBC had a good series – “Danger UXB” about EOD guys during the blitz. Seems Jerry had figured out in Spain that bombs that didn’t go off immediately caused far more trouble than those that did…
The Brits in those day shook their fists at the Hun and said “We will never surrender”
Today they just say go ahead and take it. And all over the Island you can find no go zones for white natvie Brits.
Not sure if it was the motto of Bomber Command or not. But I do believe it was Air Marshal Harris’s favorite bibical quote. “he who sews the wind, shall reap the world wind”. And the axis civilans sure did. Guess that is what happens when you elect socialist to power.
God Save the Queen, the Red Maple Leaf Forever
madmax:
That’s “reap the whirlwind” but I get your drift.
I was born in Kensington, London in ’38 and would have been just on two years old when this started. I have very vivid memories of all this. I suspect it may have affected me throughout my life.
Ironically there were those who did see it coming such a Winston Churchill…who were riduculed as being paranoid.
My favourite was a wealthy Brit widow, I believe Lady Harmsworth, who posted a prize for the first to produce a modern, enclosed cockpit monoplane fighter, capable of 300MPH, with retractable landing gear and mounting 8 machine guns.
Hawkers won with their prototype dubbed “Hurricane” by the air ministry….the Supermarine Spitfire was late…it’s first flight was one year later….
Despite his reputation as an appeaser, Chamberlain place a high priority on manufacturing these vital aircraft which gave the Luftwaffe it’s first shock after a fairly easy campaign up to Dunkirk.
The deciding factor was the inovative “Chain Home” radar system which gave early warning and allowed the short ranged fighters to scamble at the most effective time and attack from favourable positions and altitudes.
Pivital was a lone night bombing raid on Berlin which incited Hitler to target London for the blitz, relieving the pressure on RAF airfields and placed the Luftwaffe at a disadvantage with a distant target beyond the effective fighter cover for the Luftwaffe’s day bombers.
The Luftwaffe’s night bombing campaign suffered unsustainable losses to the radar equiped RAF nightfighters, vectored by ground radar.
Day fighters, manned, by such individuals as “sailor Mallan”, who hunted the bombers among the AAA and search lights…at great risk and with a great deal of success.
The ready surrender of aluminum cookwear, by British civilians, to build aircraft was a feature of the times…….
Had they kept up the attacks on the airfields and Fighter Command, they may well have won.
“This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill
Where are the Winston Churchills and Margaret Thatchers of today?
Mojo — and anyone else who can appreciate a superb film:
Allow me to recommend Michael Powell’s “Small Back Room” on the same subject, but much earlier.
Interesting to see the number of Anderson shelters appearing in the photos. I’d be curious to know how many lives those saved.
The Germans were new enough at air warfare that they didn’t realize what every air force in the world woud shortly learn: that pilots overestimate their kills by a factor of about three. They also had inadequate follow-up on their raids against aircraft plans and airbases, and tended to assume that these were out of actions if they could be seen clearly to have been hit.
As a result, they thought that they had reduced the RAF to its bare minimum effective force, and that therefore the RAF was going to be reluctant to engage. That was why they launched the massive attack on London; they didn’t expect to accomplish anything by hitting the city, but they though that this was the only way to force the RAF to come out and fight, where they would then be destroyed once and for all.
In fact, the RAF was stronger than it had been at the start of the Battle of Britain. In two days of all-out attacks on London, the Germans lost two-thirds of their airforce, and had to scale back operations for fear that they’d lose all their air effectiveness.
In proportional terms, the cities of Birmingham and Coventry suffered worse damage in the dark days of 1940 — their central districts were eseentially obliterated as you would find by visiting them today, almost all the buildings are postwar. In Coventry, there is the stark monument of the bombed out cathedral standing beside the modernistic new structure.
Birmingham, which is where I was born after the war, had extensive bombing raids from the central zone southwest to where major factories were and still are located. My dad worked in one of those by day and fought fires (quite often, I would suppose) at night. Something like 20,000 people perished in these bombing raids in “Brum” and about five thousand in Coventry. My dad succumbed to brain cancer at a very early age when I was still in high school, so I think from the modern medical evidence he was probably a delayed victim as well.
Many overseas seem to think the Blitz and the Battle of Britain were all about London, which is natural, but in fact it gripped the entire country and was aimed primarily at the industrial heartland which tends to be the Midlands, south Lancashire and Yorkshire mainly.
Peter O’D – And South Lancashire is where I grew up. We still had an Anderson shelter in the back garden where we sheltered when the first ‘buzz bomb came over (my aunt, an anti-aircraft gunner, recognized the sound); postwar, there was still a bombsite where I used the ‘Zebra Crossing’ to get to my school. Oh yes, there was a cracked window in my parents’ bedroom, the result of an ammunition train blowing up not too far away. The superstition of the time was if it was fixed, the next bomb would hit the house. I joined the Air Force so I could be on the sending end of bombs, instead of the receiving end (that’s lefty bait).
If anyone travels to London, a stop at the Imperial War Museum is a must. Fantastic exhibits on The Blitz and WWII.
Peter O’Donnell 6:16 pm.
I would not rush in with the now known truth about that air war. My generation will die with their beliefs to the grave. I do not begrudge them that. 1931 born London myself.
I would like to mention the gallant city of Hull, Yorkshire. Sister and I were sent to Gt Hatfield, about 15 miles away from Hull. From the greater London area. A spinster lady who looked after her widow mother, a former mill worker, kept us. Showed us scars on the fleshy part of her arm, from being caught by gears “int mill”. She had been only sixteen years old at Otley, Yorkshire.
Her brother came in and spoke of his good wife, Kathy. She was having an operation at Hull Infirmary. He waited as the boom of gunfire and crump of bombs sounded. The lights in the Infirmary dimmed once in a while. She survived ok. Had a 400 ft miss when a Luftwaffe bomber maybe jettisoned one last land mine. Little bungalow had windows broken.
Chamberlain bought time, no matter what was said.
The RAF had 1000 operational all metal fighters completed by the end of the phoney war. This by May 1940. I understand that only six all metal fighters were operational when Chamberlain backed down against Hitler. What would have happened then is anyones guess, had Hitler have been given an ultimatum 1938? We will never know.
No fan of war myself. Do not wish to hurt anyone over it at all.
“the Germans were bombing civilian targets from the air in WW1 too.”
Too true. Civilian casualties in WW1 from bombing raids were far greater than military leaders would confirm.
i lived down the way from a Hawker-Siddley plant that built the Hurricane in Ft William, Ont.
Dad lost his twin bro on D-Day, and part of his left leg a year later, while sweeping for landmines.
Sen. Patterson flew a Spitfire on wknds over the city in the 60’s.
that’s as close to war i’ve come…god bless
watch the Thames production ‘World at War’ episode ‘Reap the Whirlwind’. you can see Harris explain his decision in his own words.
and all that video of German real estate in flames.
so long ago.
WWII victory was because of:
-Russian scarifice
-British espionage smarts (cracking enigma in pre-computer days)
-American production capacity
oh, and anyone boohooing about Dresden and German non-combatant casualties?
what would happen if nazis took the prize? these same civilians would have benefitted immensely from the plunder of the conquered nations, and on an individual level would have, for instance, acquired housekeepers from the same conquered nations for free. the dead German civilians stood to gain a great deal instead what they got was a quick and early death.
c’est la vie a.k.a. be careful what you wish for mein frau.
Personally I found the photo array very poignant, but perhaps because I come at it from a different perspective.
I lost half my family in the war, all killed serving in the military. Both grandfathers, ships Captains each, had their ships torpedoed and sunk. One died, the other ultimately Knighted because he managed to keep his crew alive in open boats for seven weeks 400 miles off the coast of France.
My father, horribly wounded when his Mitchell’s bomber crashed on takeoff. My uncles, killed in Singapore and Hong Kong.
But there was a blitz elsewhere than in London, not to take anything away from the incredible courage and fortitude demonstrated by Londoners.
In my family’s case it was Glasgow. My family had, prior to the war, been fairly wealthy, owning tracts of apartment blocks and other properties. All went due to the bombing, all destroyed, including my father’s family home.
After the war, my parents emigrated to Canada, with very little money, and found a place in Montreal, a complex of 3-storey apartment buildings built specifically to accomodate returning war veterans. The place was called Benny Farm. It became mildly famous because of the people who came out of living there and became successful in their various endeavors.
But a unique childhood I had. Every single kid was the progeny of a war vet, we all played together and grew up together. We all shared similar backgrounds and values. And most of us became very successful.
My kids now are grown, and they have little concept of what I experienced. For them, the war is a largely forgotten historical incident. For us, the children of the returned vets, the war was an integral part of us, on reflection, it was what made us “us”.
A long post, perhaps boring to most, but some may appreciate a bit of a look back in time.
London took the pounding and casualties that saved the RAF from defeat thanks to Hitler’s
brutish mentality and a few British bombs going off in Berlin overnight on a continuing basis.
Lord Beaverbrook and his staff spearheaded aircraft production miracles.
Engineers from English Ford converted Rolls Royce engine output from slow hand work
to cutting edge mass production.
A Spitfire wing took more man hours to make than an entire German fighter minus engine.
But the strategy was sound and paid off handsomely in the later dogfights.
Casualty rates for those who flew fighters and bombers against the Germans were horrendous.
Chamberlain and British industry ran the prewar crash rearmament program with great success
but his public personna was lacking in leadership and morale building as a war leader.
Stanley Baldwin was the great failure as PM who deserved a lot of the blame for ignoring
Britain’s peril and rearmament needs as Hitler got ready for war. Hitler’s General Staff war
plan had a target date of 1946 but Hitler knew his inflated economy would collapse before
then without looted foreign countries to sustain Germany.
It was a close thing.
Sasquatch, allow me to correct you on a point. The RAF did not have radar in its night fighters until 1941, when the battle of Britain was over. During the fall of 1940 day fighters were vectored by radar to pursue bombers at night, since the Germans had switched to night bombing. Peter Townsend, (not rock star Townshend) the CO of 85 squadron throughout the battle wrote a very informative book “Duel of Eagles”. If you see a copy, buy it, I’m not giving up mine.
The Germans invented the bombing of civilians in 1915 with Zeppelin raids on London later switching to Gotha bombers. Don’t forget ‘Big Bertha’ aka ‘the Paris gun’ which was built with only one goal; to force the surrender of France by destroying Paris from over 70 miles away. Remember Guernica, anyone?
CEO, I would add ‘Hitler’s impatience & incompetence’ to your list of what won the war. In 1936 the General staff laid out the plans for the conquest of Europe to begin in 1943. They would have had the four Tirpitz class battleships, over a thousand U-boats, hundreds of Mk IV panzers and thousands of Mk IIIs.
Hitler couldn’t wait and ending up fighting a war on three fronts (England, Russia and North Africa) at once. Had Hitler let his generals run the war on their timetable, one front at a time, they would have won.
It seems to be a flaw of socialist politicians that they are good at winning elections but totally useless at anything else.
I do remember the warm spirit that pervaded my native country in those days. Never see anything like that feeling again. Perhaps our American friends briefly had that kind of spirit after 9/11. Canada a bedrock of support for them.
It is not the time to naysay- for me at any rate. I do urge those that want a somewhat sober view of war, to research.
Find out the first civilian casualties in UK/Germany in the air war. We know the Luftwaffe hit the European civilians hard. One riposte here though. Herman Goering was sentenced to death for terror bombing at Nuremburg. Other than that I would concentrate of the more human side of the civilian war in the UK.
“Don’t cha know therze a war on?” (laughs).
Al, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that Germany had the resources to win the war, and their failure to do so in itself proves that they fought incompetently. But it’s self-important to think that the war against England made a difference. It was the failure to win the knockout victory over Russia that made the big difference, and it was compounded much more by bad decisions and bad strategy in Russia than by any inconvenience the English could cause. And although the German generals are understandably reluctant to admit it, that was much more their fault than Hitler’s.
Hitler’s big contribution to losing the war was declaring war on the USA, for no good reason on earth. Without the Americans, D-Day wouldn’t have been possible, and without the western front in Europe in 1944-45, the Germans might have kept the Russians held up indefinitely or even turned them back. In any event they would not likely have lost as quickly and completely as they did.