Blitz 70th anniversary: Night of fire that heralded a new kind of war

[IndianaGreen]

Blitz 70th anniversary: Night of fire that heralded a new kind of war

London Blitz: 7 September 1940 was the first day of the German bombardment of London that lasted 76 consecutive nights

• Datablog: See how the first day's attacks looked. Full list
• The first day: hour by hour. An interactive map

Stephen Bates The Guardian, Monday 6 September 2010


St Paul's cathedral in London during the blitz in World War II. Credit: Popperfoto

It was late in the afternoon of an early September Saturday 70 years ago when the German bombers came, flying low, in formation, up the Thames, their engines roaring as they headed for London to start eight months of bombing the capital.

"It was the most amazing, impressive, riveting sight," wrote Colin Perry, a lad cycling that afternoon on Chipstead Hill, Surrey, in a memoir years later. "Directly above me were literally hundreds of planes … the sky was full of them. Bombers hemmed in with fighters, like bees around their queen, like destroyers round the battleship, so came Jerry."

Mavis Fabling, now 80, remembers that afternoon of 7 September 1940 just as clearly. She said: "I can still remember it very vividly. We lived in Abbey Wood, three miles from Woolwich Arsenal. My mother was baking in the kitchen, I was playing outside and my father was digging in the garden. Suddenly he rushed inside. He'd seen the planes overhead. 'Quick, quick, quick, get into the air raid shelter.' We ran down into the shelter in our garden.

"There were awfully frightening sounds, of bombs dropping and then there was one ghastly, thunderous sound. It was a direct hit on our neighbour's shelter. They were all killed, the whole family, except the father who was out. My mother had taken his wife shopping the day before to buy clothes at the Co-op. I can remember looking out of the window at the coffins being brought out and my mother very distressed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/06/blitz-night-fire-new-war

Our parents, or grandparents generation was quite familiar with the Blitz, the relentless bombing of London by the Luftwaffe. The bombers would be followed months later by the terrifying V-1 buzz-bombs (doodlebugs), and Von Braun's V-2.