That is crazy and very interesting.
Jaw dropping really, I wonder if there is one for Dresden too?
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?
how did they survive? they obviously moved to the bomb free safe havens on that map like Coventry 8)
Eeek! there’s one at the bottom of our Apartments road
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.
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
Bomb Sight projectSorry, 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 😕
Maybe the bombs dropped at different times rather than in one big load....
Maybe the bombs dropped at different times rather than in one big load....
They were, that's over the 8 months of the Blitz
Next time you are at Earls court station look up.
There were twin girls blown into the roof rafters.
Sobering stuff.
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.
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.
^^ yikes ^^
There's even a map for V1 & V2 hits. I managed to find the V2 site where my Grandad got his GC.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My Great Grandfather (lost his son as well) never spoke about his experiences. Not one word. Nothing.
Have you read the railway man? He should be taken as an inspiration to us all.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
The map's amazing. There were three about 50m from where I'm sitting. Sobering stuff.
that map should be called "sowing the wind"
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?
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.
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.
So many of the bomb markers on the map are in a straight line, presumably the way they are dropped from the aircraft..
BTW, today is December 7; the day Pearl Harbor was attacked bringing the US into the war.
Just to keep some perspective, now, realise that we'd been at war, alone, since September 2009 when you think of all the movies showing us how they won the bloody thing for us.
My old man was in the Raf, my Grandfather was in the Great War, disfigured, never really talked about it, the old man however said he had the time of his life. I guess it depended on what happened to you, but the fact still remains as far as the bombing was concerned the Germans were carpet bombing London long before the RAF had capability to match what were really atrocity's against the civilian population, taken because they couldn't subdue the RAF fighters during daytime operations.
Londoners survived because they pretty much lived in Tube stations at night. My Grandfather lost his hardware stores, 3 of them pretty much wiped him out.
^^^
September 2009
1939 Maybe???
reading the replies on this thread reminded me of one thing , not so much the people that have given there lives in recent conflicts but the storys of the people of the WW2 era , my god it must of been scary as shit and of course why we give them 2 mins of thought a year.
A few happily recall chasing women/prams/children down the street shooting them up.
I'm actually pretty doubtful of this claim, yes they might have decided to strafe civilians but it's pretty hard to pick out women and children when your doing 350 - 400 mph a few hundred feet off the deck. I've done just that in a single engined vintage fighter as a backseat ride - save for the strafing people part.
Also Germany didn't start bombing London because they failed to subdue fighter command, they did it after bomber command accidentally bombed one of their cities (Berlin I think) instead of a military target.
All sides during the war seemed to be pretty guilty of some awful atrocities as well and I never buy the line "oh well they started it so they reaped what the sowed".