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VAD Fact Sheet: Bombing of UK Cities |
- In August 1940, the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) failed to win control of the skies over Britain, which meant that their invasion plans had to be postponed. However, Nazi leaders were convinced Britain would surrender if her civilians lost the will to fight. The plan was to destroy morale through heavy bombing raids.
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‘Incendiaries in a
Suburb’ by H Carr. Courtesy
of the Imperial War Museum |
‘A Street in Silvertown’
by E
Ardizzone. Courtesy of
the Imperial War Museum.
This painting shows the
aftermath of an air raid in
the East
End of London
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- The first bomb fell on Hoy in the Orkneys on 17th October 1939, with the first bomb on mainland Britain falling near Canterbury on 9th May. The first bomb in the London area hit farmland in Surrey on 18th June.
- London was the main target - between 7 September 1940 and 2 November 1940 London suffered 57 consecutive nights of bombing, and between September and July of the same year 50,000 High Explosive bombs fell.
- One of the worst raids on London was on the night of 10th May, 1941, when 1436 civilians were killed and much of the city burnt. Mrs Saville, who worked on a First Aid Post, recalls it clearly:
"We were in London on our weekend when we had that fire of London, oh, that was a terrific sight. We knew we were nearby…you could see the redness in the sky. "
- There were also very heavy bombing raids on Coventry, Southampton, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Grimsby, Bristol, Belfast, Dover and Plymouth. Areas that made arms for the war were particular targets, as were ports and military and naval bases.
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Bomb damage
in Coventry |
‘Hertford Street,
Coventry, the Night of November
14 th’ by G Harrington. Coventry
suffered its heaviest raids of the
war this night
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- Between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941, 41000 civilians were killed and 137000 injured during air raids. The provinces were hit just as hard as London – 6186 of the dead were in Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield and Manchester, and 10967 were killed in port cities.
- Grace Lister, who worked at a JWO First Aid Post under Guy’s Hospital, remembers the chaos during an air raid:
"So on the bus I went and before we got to the terminus – whizzz! – the high explosives started coming down and the conductor on the bus said “Jump for your lives!” Oh I felt terrible, you had to leave people just jumping and laying in the gutter and just run for the nearest shelter you could find…I ran towards that and the blast took me of my feet and I went in headfirst."
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