70 years on, the horror of the German bombing of Britain is revealed

Blackleaf

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It is 70 years ago this year that British cities were devastated by the Luftwaffe.

To commemorate, Channel 4 has made a new series called Blitz Street, hosted by Blackadder's "Baldrick", Tony Robinson.

In the series, replica terraced houses, similar to those built in the early 20th century all over England, have been constructed on an airfield and then blown up.

Channel 4 (run by school kids) obviously hope seeing the resultant devastation can give you some idea of what it was like to live through the Blitz, when London suffered the second Great Fire of London, which was more devastating than the original in 1666. And it wasn't only London - cities such as Birmingham, Coventry, Plymouth, Manchester, Liberpool, Newcastle, Glasow and Edinburgh were all bombed.

But one woman who DOES know what the Blitz - which killed 43,000 Britons - was like is Dorothy Hughes. Now a Chelsea Pensioner. Dorothy was just a 17 year old girl when she tried to shoot Luftwaffe planes out of the sky. She remembers the ground shaking as bombs hit, the devastation, the fires and the death. And she will also remember Britain's staunch refusal to surrender, despite everything.

Here, Dorothy recalls in vivid detail Britain's darkest hour...

HOW WE BATTLED THE BLITZ

By Dennis Ellam
18/04/2010
The Mirro

EXCLUSIVE: 70 years on, the horror of the Nazi bombing of Britain is re-lived


A double decker bus, advertising Swan Vesta matches, in a bomb crater in Balham, London, during the Blitz. October 1940.

"A woman was brought in stuck to a door, her arms outstretched as if she had been crucified."

"Her clothes were blown off down to her underwear. Her husband was sobbing, 'Don't tell me my wife is dead!', but of course she was, blown up against that door."
She was just 17... but the defence of the nation rested on Dorothy Hughes' slender shoulders.

At an age when she might have been dancing to the latest big band sounds, she was helping fire the big guns shielding London against the Blitz.

Bombs were raining down on the capital and Dorothy the trainee secretary now became Gunner Hughes, serving with the Royal Artillery in the darkest hours of World War Two.

Seventy years on, the remarkable story of how Britain's cities survived the nightly onslaught of the German air raids is being told in graphic detail for a new TV series.


A group of children sits outside a destroyed home, probably their own

To provide a close-up view of the kind of terror that was unleashed on ordinary people in their homes, the film-makers reconstructed a war-time street of terraced houses - and then devastated it with explosives.

"We still talk about the Blitz Spirit, but it's always been difficult to explain in detail just how horrible it was," says Dorothy, now 87 and a Chelsea Pensioner. "Perhaps this is the closest people will come to knowing."

For most of the Blitz Dorothy served on anti-aircraft guns in sand-bagged emplacements around London's famous parks.

Her job was to call out the co-ordinates - the calculations essential to find the targets in the sky - as the crews took aim.

"The enemy bombers followed a line along the Thames and came over in waves, blotting out the sky because there were so many of them," Dorothy says.

"Next, the ground started shaking, from the pounding of the bombs dropping and the pounding of the guns firing... it seemed like an earthquake. Every time it was frightening. You never got used to it.

"I don't know if we even ever actually hit a plane, but we were just ordered to keep firing because, as long as people could hear the guns, then it gave them some hope, a little confidence that somehow we were fighting back."

One time Dorothy was injured, hit in the foot by shrapnel. "I was back on duty within a month - but sadly I could never wear stiletto heels again," she says. "The civilians suffered more than we did, I often thought. At least we were taking action, shooting back at the enemy. But in their houses and shelters all they could do was wait and hope that when the night was over they would still be alive.


Germany bombed London, Manchester, Liverpool, Belfast, and Glasgow. In London, St. Paul's Cathedral, symbol of British spirit, survived the Blitz, despite all around it being ablaze.

"It was the same then as now - we were fighting with equipment that was out of date and less effective than the enemy's. Some of our guns had a range of just 15,000ft. So the Germans flew at 20,000ft - the best we could do was to keep them at a distance.

"The next day we would walk through the streets and there would be ruins where there had been houses, and you knew lives had been lost there.

"People would be trudging around, looking for what possessions they could find in the ruins. The old news reels can't portray it all, the constant sense of danger, the smell of cordite that was always there, and the dust that hung in the air all the time."

Before she joined up, while she was still living in her hometown of Swansea, Dorothy had already experienced the terror of war first-hand.

43,000 VICTIMS
The Blitz lasted eight months and left 43,000 civilians dead, half in London. Belfast had 1,200 deaths, Birmingham 2,240, Bristol 1,299, Coventry 1,250, Hull 1,200, Manchester 1,010, Plymouth 1,172 and Liverpool 1,700.

She returned home one afternoon to find the family home had been flattened by a stray bomb.

Her mother was trapped in the wreckage bu t , miraculously, she had been cleaning the kitchen floor beneath a marble work slab and escaped almost unhurt. "Despite everything, I didn't hate," Dorothy says. "One day a bomber crash-landed close by our position on Wimbledon Common and I saw one of the German crew - he was a boy no older than I, and he looked terrified.

"I had caught a glimpse of the enemy and they were flesh and blood, like us. From that moment, we weren't just shooting at distant shapes in the sky, we were shooting at human beings."

The girl soldiers of the Auxiliary Territorial Service like Dorothy lived in Nissen huts in the parks.


The London Necropolis Railway Station, a privately owned station in Westminster Bridge Road, after London's biggest night raid of the war. This grim railway, built in 1854 and operated by the London Necropolis Company, took coffins and mourners from Waterloo Statuon to Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. It never re-opened after it was bombed in the Blitz.

Apart from their uniforms they were issued with two blouses, two sets of underwear and two pairs of flannel stockings. Bathing was a luxury - once a week, in cold water, in a makeshift wash house.

This night of 29th/30th December 1940 has been dubbed The Second Great Fire of London and destroyed an area arguably greater than that of the Great Fire of London of 1666. Some 1500 fires were started, including three major conflagrations. Whereas in 1666 the devastation was overwhelmingly within the City proper, in 1940 it extended far beyond. The largest continuous area of Blitz destruction anywhere in Britain occurred on this night, stretching south from Islington to the very edge of St Paul's Churchyard. St Paul's Cathedral itself was only saved by the dedication of the London firemen who kept the fire away from the Cathedral and the volunteer firewatchers of the St Paul's Watch who fought to keep the flames from firebombs on its roof from spreading.

"We were just a stroll away from some of the city's finest hotels, but they would never have let us through the doors," Dorothy says. "We roughed it out in the open, in the middle of this desolation."

In the final months of the war Dorothy and her team were moved to the South Coast, to reinforce defences against the Germans' ultimate weapon, the pilotless flying V2 bomb.

They were a formidable threat. But the gunners defeated them. Of 10,000 missiles aimed at Britain, only 2,000 got through.

For the four-part Channel 4 series Blitz Street, a terrace of two-up, two-down houses complete with a corner shop, was built on a remote military base where the buildings could be blown up. Scientists recorded the effects, discovering how a bomb blast could travel along a street, in and out of doorways, through windows and into roof spaces, shattering buildings as it went.

They also found out how some victims had their clothes ripped away or were thrown on to rooftops by shock waves, while others died without a mark on their body as the air was sucked out of their lungs.


A man is rescued from the ruins of Farringdon Market, London, after the dropping of a V-2 bomb killed over 300 people

And it confirmed one of the legendary stories of the Blitz - that many families survived by sheltering under the stairs. It was one of the safest places to be, the experts proved.

The film crew were not allowed to drop bombs from the sky, but they detonated up to 250 kilos of explosives on the set to recreate the impact of a single bomb.

The first day of the Blitz was Saturday, September 7, 1940 - a year after war had been declared - when hundreds of Luftwaffe bombers attacked London's East End.

The sirens sounded at 4.43 in the afternoon. By the time of the allclear, at five the next morning, 430 people had been killed and 1,600 seriously injured.

After that the raids continued relentlessly, every night for eight months, on cities around the UK.

In the first epiosde of Blitz Street, which is presented by Time Team's Tony Robinson, one wartime fireman in London talks of the agonising search through the rubble for survivors.

"Mums, grandparents, children - the hardest part was the babies," he said. "You just had to ignore what you saw. If they were not alive then you just left them."


A group of men playing cricket on a blitzed site during their lunch-hour with St Paul's Cathedral in the background, 1945

And a nurse recalls the horrors of what she saw in hospital.

"A woman was brought in stuck to a door, her arms outstretched as if she had been crucified," she said.

"Her clothes were blown off down to her underwear. Her husband was sobbing, 'Don't tell me my wife is dead!', but of course she was, blown up against that door."

And, of course, London was not alone in its suffering. Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Plymouth and Coventry were also badly hit.

Later in the series, survivors who lived through the Coventry bombing recall the
destruction there. The Luftwaffe carpet-bombed the city, first setting it ablaze with 10,000 incendiary bombs, in an operation known as Moonlight Sonata.

It left almost 600 dead in one night in November 1940. Alan Edgson, who was six, remembers shrapnel rolling down the roof of his house, making a noise like musical instruments.

Still from Channel 4's new series Blitz Street




Tony Robinson, the show's presenter





"You couldn't tell if a bomb was coming straight at you - then you would hear an explosion, and that one hadn't hit you," he said. "But more would be following.

"Even as a child, you felt you couldn't take any more. At school they would call the register and every so often there would be a pause.

"Where's so and so? "Oh, they're dead miss, their house got hit last night."

Dorothy's war ended in 1946. The gunner went back to being a secretary, then married and raised a family, and trained to become a teacher for the last 15 years of her working life.

"The memories are still so clear... images like that, you just don't forget," she says.

Blitz Street begins on Channel 4 tomorrow at 9pm.

mirror.co.uk
 
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darkbeaver

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70 years on, the horror of the German bombing of Britain is revealed

what did the citizens a Britian actually think was happening at the time of the blitz and why has it taken so long for the truth to be revealed? I suppose state security at the time deemed it in the best interests of English peepols that the bombing be kept secret.
 

The Old Medic

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May 16, 2010
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Gee, I guess that those British never did anything even remotely similar to Germany?

How about Dresden? It was a city of no military importance, filled to the brim with refugees, and the Brits firebombed that city till it was totally destroyed. Nobody knows how many people were killed, but every estimate is that it was well over 250,000 men, women and children. In fact, more people died in Dresden than did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (including those that died years later from radiation).

It was the deliberate policy of Air Marshall Harris (the head of the British Bomber Command) to deliberately target civilian cities, and to raze them to the ground.

So, don't bleed for those Brits, bleed for every civilian that died in that war.
 

Bar Sinister

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Jan 17, 2010
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Gee, I guess that those British never did anything even remotely similar to Germany?

How about Dresden? It was a city of no military importance, filled to the brim with refugees, and the Brits firebombed that city till it was totally destroyed. Nobody knows how many people were killed, but every estimate is that it was well over 250,000 men, women and children. In fact, more people died in Dresden than did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (including those that died years later from radiation).

It was the deliberate policy of Air Marshall Harris (the head of the British Bomber Command) to deliberately target civilian cities, and to raze them to the ground.

So, don't bleed for those Brits, bleed for every civilian that died in that war.

I suspect you need to study the history of World War II more carefully. If you do you will note that it was the Japanese, Italians, and Germans who instituted policies of terror bombing. After a number of German bombing atrocities in Britain Winston Churchill gave this speech:

We ask no favours of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight the people of London were asked to cast their votes as to whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities, an overwhelming majority would cry, "No, we will mete out to the Germans the measure, and more than the measure, they have meted out to us." The people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: "You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal. It was you who began the indiscriminate bombing. We remember Warsaw! In the first few days of the war. We remember Rotterdam. We have been newly reminded of your habits by the hideous massacre in Belgrade. We know too well the bestial assaults you're making upon the Russian people, to whom our hearts go out in their valiant struggle! We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will! You do your worst! - and we will do our best! Perhaps it may be our turn soon. Perhaps it may be our turn now."

Total war was a concept advocated by German propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. It just turns out that the British, Americans, and Canadians were better at it than the Axis Powers were.

I realize that much of the bombing that took place in World War II would be considered unacceptable by the standards of the 21st Century. But World War II was a different era. Civilized standards were thrown out the window by both sides. But it is important to consider who instituted the policy of deliberately terrorizing and killing civilian populations. It is difficult to feel sorry for the three million Germans who died when one realizes that they supported a government that killed ten times that number.
 

Machjo

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70 years on, the horror of the German bombing of Britain is revealed

what did the citizens a Britian actually think was happening at the time of the blitz and why has it taken so long for the truth to be revealed? I suppose state security at the time deemed it in the best interests of English peepols that the bombing be kept secret.

I could see the guy sitting on the rubble that was once his home, reading the paper with article after article of Britain's successes on the battlefield and not one about his street.
 

Starscream

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May 23, 2008
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The concept of mass bombing was dabbled by several countries even prior to WW2 breaking out. During the Spanish Civil War, the german volunteer group (Condor Legion) operated bombers and other aircraft for Franco's Nationalists. The most infamous example of mass bombing (prior to WW2) was the spanish town of Guernica, where the Condor Legion virtually bombed it to the ground. The aftermath of Guernica and other subsiquent carpet bombings throughout the Spanish Civil War was carefully examined by various, future warring nations (ie: Germany, Italy, Japan, Soviet Union, Britain, U.S.).

The Axis used the lessons learned in spain to use mass bombing as a tool of terrorizing civilian populations into submission and systematicaly wiping out whole cities if they refused.

The Allies however used the lessons of the spanish bombings by using mass bombings to destroy a nation's ability to wage war by attacking its factories, railways, refineries, etc. Therefore called strategic bombing.

The lessons were applied in the future formation of their bomber forces. The Axis bombers were built mainly for tactical operations (ie: bomb enemy troops and instilations prior to ground forces reaching their objectives), but can also be used to bomb cities to force submission. The Allies on the other hand built heavy, four-engined bombers that carried mass amounts of bombs, had massive operational range, and brissled with machine guns. These were purposed built for the task of strategic bombing.

However, it really doesn't matter what concept of mass bombing (terror or strategic) a side chooses because it is the civilian populations (allied and axis) whom suffer the most.

I agree with Bar Sinister about how in total war, civilized standards are thrown out the window.

Total war is when a nation throws its entire military, economic, industrial, and intellectual capabilities into the war effort. It also erases the distinction between military and non-combatans, and also pays no heed to collateral damage done. Total War puts the old saying; "do you worst" in perspective. Thankfully, none of us here had to of lived through that hell.
 

Colpy

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Gee, I guess that those British never did anything even remotely similar to Germany?

How about Dresden? It was a city of no military importance, filled to the brim with refugees, and the Brits firebombed that city till it was totally destroyed. Nobody knows how many people were killed, but every estimate is that it was well over 250,000 men, women and children. In fact, more people died in Dresden than did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (including those that died years later from radiation).

It was the deliberate policy of Air Marshall Harris (the head of the British Bomber Command) to deliberately target civilian cities, and to raze them to the ground.

So, don't bleed for those Brits, bleed for every civilian that died in that war.

Wrong about Dresden.....although not about the extensive revenge bombing of German civilians.

Estimates of the dead in Dresden have varied, some claiming as many as 100,000 dead........but recently historians have modified that to a maximum of about 35,000. Don't get me wrong, that is horrendous...........I just bring it up to correct a misconception.
 

Starscream

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There is much debate about the bombing (as well as the effectiveness of strategic bombing as a whole) of Dresden, even to this day.

Dresden did have major military targets. It had huge railway stations and rail lines, and massive road links. The major rail lines and roads there were all linked to several German cities including Berlin, Munich, Lepzieg, Hamburg, and Breslau. The transportation lines were also directly connected to Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

These transportation lines in Dresden were used by German Army Group South (comprised of four field armies with 300 000 troops in each) which was ferrying its troops in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Southern Germany. The rail yards and other marshalling areas were extensively bombed.

The original estimates and claims of casualties after the bombing were at 250 000. Although, like Colpy said, the casualty numbers have been lowered over time.
 

Prostar

New Member
The 'Old Medic from Kentucky' is obviously ignorant of the facts on which he comments. The USAAF also bombed Dresden, it wasn't only the RAF. Were you around at the time, I was born five days before the end of The Blitz. From 1941 to 1944 at the earliest I well remember being bombed on a dily basis as I lived in London. Many nights were spent in air-raid shelters, most mornings around 1943-4 I remember hearing the drone of V1's (doodlebugs) coming over, then waiting for the drone to stop!
Damn right we bombed Dresden and Berlin and Hamburg, you name it the RAF and the USAAF bombed it, and we had every right to do so. Please, don't believe what your comics tell you, you know zilch about WWII so I think you'd be best advised to keep your ridiculous comments to yourself.

The TV programme 'Blitz Street' was a waste of money. It tried to be technical but failed miserably, there was no interest in why a 1000 pound bomb would destroy buldings x number of yards away!
 

Scott Free

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On the bright side those Nazis didn't leave England covered in radioactive waste.
 
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Avro

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Feb 12, 2007
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Gee, I guess that those British never did anything even remotely similar to Germany?

How about Dresden? It was a city of no military importance, filled to the brim with refugees, and the Brits firebombed that city till it was totally destroyed. Nobody knows how many people were killed, but every estimate is that it was well over 250,000 men, women and children. In fact, more people died in Dresden than did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (including those that died years later from radiation).

It was the deliberate policy of Air Marshall Harris (the head of the British Bomber Command) to deliberately target civilian cities, and to raze them to the ground.

So, don't bleed for those Brits, bleed for every civilian that died in that war.

The Brits gased the Kurds before Saddam could...or the Iranians...or whomever.
 

Dingus

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May 19, 2010
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Does it really matter who did what to whom and when? All loss of life on a grand scale is horrendous, whether those lives are English, Jewish, Kurd, German or whomever. It seems that this thread could degenerate into a "point scoring forum" without too much trouble. Lets just thanks God that we didn't have to through the horrors that others did.
 

karrie

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Jan 6, 2007
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Leave the religion/God arguments out of the war thread. It was a simple phrase he used and doesn't warrant a religion argument unless you want to start a new thread for it.

I will restate what I said... this is not the thread for a religion argument based on one simple phrase. Start a religion thread if you feel like it. Thank you.
 

Avro

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Feb 12, 2007
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Leave the religion/God arguments out of the war thread. It was a simple phrase he used and doesn't warrant a religion argument unless you want to start a new thread for it.

I will restate what I said... this is not the thread for a religion argument based on one simple phrase. Start a religion thread if you feel like it. Thank you.

Fair enough.