2194days

Western Europe · United Kingdom vs Germany

The Blitz

7 September 1940 – 11 May 1941

Night bombing of London and other British cities by the Luftwaffe over eight months. London was attacked on 57 consecutive nights from 7 September 1940; Coventry, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Belfast and others followed. About 43,000 civilians were killed before the bombers moved east for the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Explore The Blitz on the interactive map · Wikipedia

Day by day

— Black Saturday

Nearly a thousand aircraft come up the Thames on the afternoon of 7 September and set the docks and the East End alight; 250 bombers return that night, guided by the fires. London is bombed on 57 consecutive nights. The shelters are the Underground stations the government had tried to keep closed, and the anti-aircraft guns can hit almost nothing in the dark.

— Coventry

Operation Moonlight Sonata sends 515 aircraft to Coventry on a clear night at full moon, led in by the pathfinders of KGr 100 flying down a radio beam from Vannes. The city centre and the cathedral burn out and the water mains are cut; 568 people are killed in a place of a quarter of a million. Southampton, Birmingham and Bristol follow within the fortnight.

— The Second Great Fire

A small force drops nearly 25,000 incendiaries on the City on a Sunday night, when the offices and warehouses are locked and empty and the Thames is at a low tide the fireboats cannot draw from. Eight Wren churches and the Guildhall burn; St Paul's is saved by its own watch. Nineteen fire crews are killed.

— The ports

From the spring the weight shifts to the Atlantic ports, to strangle the convoy trade. Clydebank is razed over the nights of 13 and 14 March: of 12,000 houses, seven are left undamaged and 35,000 people are made homeless. Belfast, with almost no guns and no shelters, loses about 900 people on 15 April, and Plymouth, Swansea and Merseyside are hit through the same weeks.

— The last night

Liverpool has just taken seven nights running, the worst provincial battering of the war. On 10 May 507 aircraft make the heaviest raid on London of the whole Blitz: 1,436 people are killed, the Chamber of the House of Commons is destroyed and 700 acres burn. Then the bombers go east for Barbarossa. About 43,000 civilians have been killed and the war production they were meant to stop has risen.

Operations: A German Luftwaffe Heinkel He 111 bomber flying over Wapping, London at the start of the Luftwaffe's evening raids of 7 September 1940. Copy negative of part of an aerial photograph taken from a German aircra
Operations: A German Luftwaffe Heinkel He 111 bomber flying over Wapping, London at the start of the Luftwaffe's evening raids of 7 September 1940. Copy negative of part of an aerial photograph taken from a German aircraGerman Air Force photographer · Public domain · source
A boy and girl sitting on a bench sheltering in the London Underground during the Blitz of World War Two.
A boy and girl sitting on a bench sheltering in the London Underground during the Blitz of World War Two.Edmond Xavier Kapp · Public domain · source
A young woman plays a gramophone in an air raid shelter in north London during 1940. A young woman places the gramophone needle on a record to bring some light relief to an air raid shelter, somewhere in north London. Th
A young woman plays a gramophone in an air raid shelter in north London during 1940. A young woman places the gramophone needle on a record to bring some light relief to an air raid shelter, somewhere in north London. ThMinistry of Information Photo Division Photographer · Public domain · source
Air Raid Damage in London, 1940 Women salvaging prized possessions from their bombed house, including plants and a clock.
Air Raid Damage in London, 1940 Women salvaging prized possessions from their bombed house, including plants and a clock.Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain · source

Equipment in this battle

Also in Western Europe