Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 98 total)
  • Bomb Site – How did anyone survive?
  • piedidiformaggio
    Free Member

    Fascinating!

    WWII London bombs mapped with interactive details

    http://bombsight.org/

    TatWink
    Free Member

    That is crazy and very interesting.

    xcgb
    Free Member

    Jaw dropping really, I wonder if there is one for Dresden too?

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    ThePinkster
    Full Member

    xcgb – Member
    Jaw dropping really, I wonder if there is one for Dresden too?

    Wasn’t most of the damage at Dresden down to the firestorm that ensued the bombing rather than the volume of bombs itself?

    timc
    Free Member

    how did they survive? they obviously moved to the bomb free safe havens on that map like Coventry 8)

    bikebouy
    Free Member

    Eeek! there’s one at the bottom of our Apartments road

    jota180
    Free Member

    Wasn’t most of the damage at Dresden down to the firestorm that ensued the bombing rather than the volume of bombs itself?

    There was still an awful lot of ordnance dropped during the final raid there, more than a thousand planes emptied their bomb bays on the city.

    hora
    Free Member

    I used to walk down the back of Tottenham Court road (Gower St) to work and noted alot of pitted/damage to the beatiful old facades on the buildings

    mark90
    Free Member

    Bomb Sight project

    Sorry, we are experiencing high load at present. Please try again later.

    Bah, you lot have overloaded ir before I got a look in.

    how did they survive? they obviously moved to the bomb free safe havens on that map like Coventry

    Be bombed or go to Coventry. Tough call 😕

    WorldClassAccident
    Free Member

    Maybe the bombs dropped at different times rather than in one big load….

    jota180
    Free Member

    Maybe the bombs dropped at different times rather than in one big load….

    They were, that’s over the 8 months of the Blitz

    hora
    Free Member

    Next time you are at Earls court station look up.

    There were twin girls blown into the roof rafters.

    Sobering stuff.

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    My father’s primary school was bombed by a solitary FW-190 in 1942. He was one of few survivors in his class, for he’d been allowed out to lunch early for scoring well in a maths test.

    He recalls that the pilot made a pass over the school and waved to kids in the playground before turning round to drop a bomb.

    Not too long afterward, the RAF were ordered to attack a German school in daylight as a reprisal.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    My father’s primary school was bombed by a solitary FW-190 in 1942. He was one of few survivors in his class, for he’d been allowed out to lunch early for scoring well in a maths test.

    Odd to think that if he’d not scored so well in that maths test as a child, you probably wouldn’t exist.

    bikebouy
    Free Member

    ^^ yikes ^^

    FB-ATB
    Full Member

    There’s even a map for V1 & V2 hits. I managed to find the V2 site where my Grandad got his GC.

    ononeorange
    Full Member

    My father was in a shelter at school which suffered a direct hit from a bomb. He’d been machine-gunned at by the plane running to the shelter too (again a single plane raid). You weren’t supposed to survive a direct hit but he managed to get out. He still does talks to kids at local schools on it.

    mattk
    Free Member

    He recalls that the pilot made a pass over the school and waved to kids in the playground before turning round to drop a bomb.

    Speechless. That has made my blood run cold

    ti_pin_man
    Free Member

    wow, as others have said, very sobering. One went off down the other end of the street i live in. in fact either side of us. Sobering.

    hora
    Free Member

    Speechless. That has made my blood run cold

    Theres a recently released book documenting conversations with captured German Airman and what they said. A few happily recall chasing women/prams/children down the street shooting them up.

    A side note- Sir Patrick Moore (who served in the bombing campaign) recently bitterly said the only good Kraut is a dead one. Only you can argue against him if you went through what they did…

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    Speechless. That has made my blood run cold

    I don’t know what was worse, the pilot waving to the kids he was about to bomb, or the fact that the RAF were ordered undertake a reprisal raid against a German school. It just illustrates the futility of it all.

    My father has no bitterness, it should be noted that both his parents were themselves born into German immigrant families. My grandfather may well have had cousins on the other side when he fought at the Somme.

    StirlingCrispin
    Full Member

    Cool.
    I’ll show this to my dad – his earliest memory is being held up by his father to see the glow of the docks burning.

    Moses
    Full Member

    Both my parents’ house and the one I live in used to have air-raid shelters in the garden, solid brick & concrete things. The closest hits to us here (Bristol) are all of 100 yards away, so this one saw use. When we took it down we found a live 303 bullet, which is still kicking around somewhere in a drawer.

    There was also a dessicated rat corpse. We threw that away.

    hora
    Free Member

    Get rid of that bullet. Take it down to your local nick. If its kicking round forever, what if you move, leave it, grow old/die and it falls into a adolesants hands? Brick/propped-etc.

    They can do alot of damage at a fair range cant they.

    ScottChegg
    Free Member

    My father has no bitterness…

    My Paternal Grandfather was a POW of the Japanese. He was bitter. Really, really.

    He wouldn’t get in a japanese car. If someone called to his house in a Japanese car he’d make them move it.

    When he came back he was 4 and a half stone. He hated them as a race until he died. I think he earned his opinion.

    hora
    Free Member

    My Great Grandfather (lost his son as well) never spoke about his experiences. Not one word. Nothing.

    richc
    Free Member

    Have you read the railway man? He should be taken as an inspiration to us all.

    avdave2
    Full Member

    My mother in law travelled three floors into the basement in her cot during the Blitz and still has a mirror that was in the bedroom and also survived the journey with her.

    I assume the map shows all bombs dropped including the pretty high percentage of dud ones.

    brakes
    Free Member

    Fascinating.
    I had always supposed that the last townhouse on our row was newer than the rest because it had been bombed during the war – now I know it was – it’s a little red dot on that map and is labelled ‘high explosive bomb.’

    yossarian
    Free Member

    My Paternal Grandfather was a POW of the Japanese. He was bitter. Really, really.
    He wouldn’t get in a japanese car. If someone called to his house in a Japanese car he’d make them move it.
    When he came back he was 4 and a half stone. He hated them as a race until he died. I think he earned his opinion.

    My Dad fought in the Far East. He was part of the liberation of many allied POW camps. His hatred of the Japanese was primal.

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    I had an uncle too, who was in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese. He spent the next three and a half years in captivity around Burma, my grandmother assumed he’d been killed right up until early 1945 when a Red Cross postcard finally came through. My dad remembers it well, for it was the only time during the whole war that he recalls seeing his mother moved to tears.

    Uncle John has endured appalling treatment, but he eventually forgave the Japanese enough to buy a Mazda 323 when I was a kid. He only passed away a year ago.

    hammyuk
    Free Member

    Coventry took more bombs than pretty much anywhere else outside of London as it was where Alvis had the tank factory, munitions, weapons, cars, etc where built and stored.
    It was flattened and burned.

    Mikeypies
    Free Member

    I had a maths instructor who had flown catalina flying boat in the far east doing allsorts of sneaky stuff. He still had a burning hatred for the Japanese of his generation(but not post war generations) and used fluent anglo saxon to describe them and wouldnt have anything to do with anything from there including touching calculators.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    I had an uncle too, who was in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese. He spent the next three and a half years in captivity around Burma,

    As was my dad. He was imprisoned in Changi.

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    There’s two houses across the road from where I grew up (SE London) that are newer than the rest in that row. Built to the same style but you can see the difference in the colours of the roof tiles. One dot on the map.

    He recalls that the pilot made a pass over the school and waved to kids in the playground before turning round to drop a bomb.

    Opposite angle to what’s been said above but there are also stories (from both sides) of how pilots would do dummy runs over targets to warn civilians to get out before actually bombing them. It’s possible that the pilot was doing that?

    andrewy
    Full Member

    The map’s amazing. There were three about 50m from where I’m sitting. Sobering stuff.

    Klunk
    Free Member

    that map should be called “sowing the wind”

    ormondroyd
    Free Member

    My father was in a shelter at school which suffered a direct hit from a bomb. He’d been machine-gunned at by the plane running to the shelter too (again a single plane raid). You weren’t supposed to survive a direct hit but he managed to get out. He still does talks to kids at local schools on it.

    Was that Reading?

    JoeG
    Free Member

    I had a history professor in college that was a junior officer in the US Navy in WWII. He served in the Pacific and saw the invasion plan for Japan!

    BTW, today is December 7; the day Pearl Harbor was attacked bringing the US into the war.

    stevewhyte
    Free Member

    My Paternal Grandfather was a POW of the Japanese. He was bitter. Really, really.

    He wouldn’t get in a japanese car. If someone called to his house in a Japanese car he’d make them move it.

    When he came back he was 4 and a half stone. He hated them as a race until he died. I think he earned his opinion.

    I guess it shows that you will always reap what you sow.

    The Japanese really did some awful things.

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