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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 1619.PDF
222 THE BLITZ in PERSPECTIVE A Revealing Analysis of the Luftwaffe's War on Britain Reviewed by B. J. HURREN THERE is much to be said for the journalist who, toattract attention to an article on recruitment, entitled itThere's a Horse in the Kitchen. In an age pap-fed on sensationalism, such a title has much to commend it. Con- versely, a new Government publication, of considerable interest to the air world, bears the forbidding title Problems of Social Policy;* but it is, in fact, one of the most fascinating books yet written about the bombing of Britain. The story begins in the early twenties, when an analysis of German raids during 1917-18 is quoted. Then, about 300 tons of bombs were dropped on the British Isles; they caused 4,820 casualties, of whom 1,413 were killed. The casualty ratio was therefore 16 per ton of bombs; but 128 aeroplanes raided London, and on the only two day raids the ratio was 121 :i, while for the 16 night raids it was 52 :i. The Air Staff therefore assumed 50 casualties per ton—one third killed, two-thirds wounded. Lord Balfour, in 1922, pointing out that the worst German raid involved only three tons of bombs, predicted that a Con- tinental enemy could drop on London a "continuous tor- rent" of high explosives at the rate of 75 tons a day. By 1934, the Air Staff had a second think; and they cal- culated that by 1942 the maximum daily weight of bombs on Britain would be 150 tons. That was Hitler's first year of power. In 1937, a drastic revision of estimates put the potential German air effort at 644 tons for a 24-hour period. Two years after that, in March 1939, the Air Ministry informed the Ministry of Health that the attack might aver- age 700 tons each day for the first fortnight. Incidentally, the Air Raid Precautions Department based civil defence on 50 per cent high explosive, 25 per cent incendiary, and 25 per cent gas attack. The chief target would be London, with 9,000,000 people packed in 750 square miles. The scale of the headache in Whitehall may well be gauged from the fact that evacuation of civilians from "hot" zones was planned for 4,000,000 people, mainly women and children—equivalent to evacuating all Denmark, or Finland, or Norway. On September 1st 1939, the evacuation plan was put into effect: and in three days no fewer than 1,473,000 mothers, children, teachers and escorts were moved from crowded cities without a single accident or casualty. Between June and September, 1939, it is estimated that 2,000,000 other people moved privately to "safe" areas, and half of this number had earmarked accommodation at least seven months before the outbreak of war. On September 7th 1940, the great air attack on London and other crowded cities began. The monthly average was 1,870 enemy aircraft from September 1940 to May 1941; but thereafter the scale of attack lessened progressively to 101 aircraft in December 1941. Hitherto, the bombing had been desultory. For the record, the first bomb dropped on the British Isles fell at Hoy, Orkneys, on October 17, 1939; the first civilian cas- ualty was at Bridge of Wraith, Orkneys, March 17th 1940; the first "incident" in England was on April 30, 1940, when an enemy mine-laying bomber crashed at Clacton-on-Sea, its mines killing two civilians; and the first bombs on England for 22 years fell near Canterbury on May 9th, 1940. In June, 100 civilians were killed, in July 300, in August 1,150, and in September, mainly during night raids, the total for the month reached 6,700. *By Richard Titmuss. Published by H.M. Stationery Office andLongmans, Green and Co.; 538 pages. Price 25s. FLIGHT, 24 August 1951 In the first phase of the attack, London was bombed coa- tinuously for 76 nights, with the exception of November 2, 1940. About 27,500 bombs of all kinds were dropped. The attack was made indiscriminately but with stronger emphasis on the East End than the Central and West End areas because (a) the East End was a shorter flight for the enemy bombers, and (b) it was the deliberate and diabolical plan to bomb the poor of the East End in the hope that they might rise in a form of civil war and take over the West End. The damage was enormous; and confusion looked as though it would turn to chaos until the ordinary people of London ignored the Government and took matters into their own hands—by forcing the Tube stations to remain open as shelters at night. No fewer than 53,000,000 attendances in these stations were logged. In October 1940 there were 120,000 people sleeping in Tube stations and 220,000 in public shelters of various types. Housing damage reached colossal proportions. In two nights in April 1941 some 148,000 houses were damaged or destroyed in London. In general terms, during the opening raids one ton of bombs on a built-up area destroyed or seriously damaged 115 houses, made 80 people temporarily homeless and left 35 without homes at all. For every civilian killed, 35 were bombed out. By the end of May 1944, and before the V.i and V.2 attacks began, 3,034,000 houses had been damaged in the United Kingdom, but were not rendered permanently uninhabitable; 175,000 houses had been de- stroyed; 201,000 were seriously damaged. Flying bombs and the rockets produced far more devas- tating damage. One V.i, on average, affected 1,000 houses in densely built-up areas. The first of 1,054 rockets fell on England on September 8, 1944—on London, which in all received 518 rockets. The last landed in Kent on March 27, 1945, and the last attack of any kind was by a V.i which fell on Datchworth, Herts, on March 29th. These closing stage attacks damaged or destroyed 1,510,000 houses; and the grand total of damaged houses reached 4,698,000, though as some houses were hit more than once, a harder figure is given as 3,745,000 different houses. In effect, two houses out of every seven in the land were affected in some way by enemy action. The Capital's Share London received the brunt of the attack. One sixth of Britain's total stock of houses, the 2,150,000 in the London area, took more than half the total damage. Only one house in ten escaped damage of some kind in the Metropolis. London was in the front line for five years; between the first bomb on Britain and the last, 2,019 days elapsed. The air raid warning siren was sounded in London 1,224 times— and that means that for over five years each citizen of this, the world's largest city, was, on the average, threatened with death and disaster once every 36 hours. To make matters worse, 326 hospitals were damaged on 687 occasions. Whilst the material damage was vast and widespread, the extraordinary fact emerges that not until three years had passed was it possible to say that the enemy had killed more soldiers than women and children! In all, 62,464 civilians were killed, a further 86,000 seriously injured, and about 150,000 slightly injured : and of these totals approximately half were borne by London. An astonishing piece of forecasting is revealed concern- ing the bombing of Coventry. It appears that this town was arbitrarily selected before the war by Professor Bernal and Dr. Garwood in an Appreciation of what might be expected in the way of death and damage from a 500-bomber raid. The results they predicted were almost exactly right. How- ever, the enemy used only 330 bombers, not 500, and the number of bombs dropped was only half the number postu- lated by the experts—who, in common with almost every other authority, overlooked or at least did not mention the gigantic problem of homeless people. Mr. Richard Titmuss has produced a thought-provoking book, and the figures he has marshalled give a new aspect to war. They also indicate that if England is to be atom- bombed, the housing problem, already acute, will be the major problem; and the paradoxical situation will exi|t of the necessity to concentrate for maximum production and a need to disperse to avoid maximum destruction.
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