The Blitz was Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s attempt to crush Britain’s spirit during World War Two with a massive bombing campaign against London and other major towns and cities
THE Blitz was Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's attempt to crush Britain's spirit during World War Two with a massive bombing campaign against London and other major towns and cities.
Initially he had intended that the German army would invade Britain, by launching an amphibious landing in September 1940.
First, Germany needed control of the skies over southern England by defeating the RAF. But although outnumbered, the RAF pilots and their Spitfires and Hurricanes saw off the Luftwaffe in what became known as the Battle of Britain.
It began on September 7, 1940.
In two separate raids, more than 1,000 German bombers and fighters struck London with devastating force.
The attacks were intended to cripple the capital's dockyards but many bombs hit homes in the East End. In total, 436 Londoners were killed and 1,666 injured.
Daily attacks on the capital followed, usually by 100 to 200 bombers.
The city was hit every night but one between mid-September and mid-November. The Luftwaffe dropped more than a million bombs.
Night-time blackouts were imposed to deny bombers easy targets.
Londoners' spirits were rallied by the eloqent leadership of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. But that resolve was sorely tested yet again a month later when on October 14, 1940, a 3,000lb bomb landed on Balham High Street. A bus driving in the blackout failed to see the crater and fell in, rupturing sewage and water mains, which flooded the local Tube station where 500 locals were sheltering from the onslaught.
Most managed to escape but as many as 68 died, mainly from drowning.
On December 29, a Luftwaffe incendiary bomb raid started 1,500 fires, a catastrophe that was known as the Second Great Fire of London. The roof of St Paul's Cathedral was hit but saved by the bravery of firemen.
The last major attack of the Blitz was on May 10, 1941 — and proved its deadliest. More than 500 bombers either destroyed or badly damaged Parliament, St James's Palace and the British Museum.
The raid killed 1,364 and injured 1,616. But by now Hitler's attention was firmly focused on his planned invasion of the Soviet Union — and the bombing ended.
London had not suffered alone. Most UK urban and industrial centres were targeted by the Luftwaffe between September 1940 and May 1941.
Shipbuilding centres Barrow, Hull, Clydebank and Belfast were heavily bombarded — as were Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Plymouth, Sheffield, Cardiff, Coventry, Nottingham, Portsmouth and Southampton.
Coventry's centre was devastated and its cathedral destroyed. In Hull, 85 per cent of the buildings were hit.
On April 15, 1941, 200 Luftwaffe bombers struck Belfast, killing almost 1,000 people -- the greatest loss of life in a single night outside London.
Liverpool was repeatedly bombarded due to the importance of its ports to the war effort. More than 4,000 died.
The Luftwaffe dropped around 2,000 tons of bombs on Birmingham. More than 12,000 houses, 300 factories and 230 other buildings were destroyed.
In Barrow, residential areas were hit hard because German bombers found it difficult to target the shipyard accurately. A quarter of the town's 40,000 homes were destroyed or damaged.
But Hitler ordered German bombers not to target Oxford because he planned to make it his capital after an invasion.
The Blitz was intended to demoralise Britain into surrender. It failed despite the deaths of 43,000 civilians, with another 51,000 injured.
More than 60,000 children were evacuated from British cities to the relative safety of the countryside.
But the courage Britons showed gave the nation a huge patriotic boost and was a major propaganda coup in the eyes of the world — including, crucially, those of the increasingly sympathetic Americans.
