September 2025 marks 85 years since the start of the Blitz, the systematic attempt by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to bomb Britain into submission from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941.
'The Blitz' - the phrase derives from the German word 'Blitzkrieg' ('lightning war') - is remembered as a national ordeal which marked all who endured it. Heavy air raids took place on London and other British cities for over eight months (243 days and nights).
Nazi Germany’s area bombing campaign against Britain during the Second World War can be divided into several distinct phases. The Blitz was the first, most intensive period, lasting from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941. 1940-1941 was the phase of maximum destruction. 43,000 British civilians were killed by aerial bombing. Approximately 71,000 others were treated for life-threatening injuries and over 88,000 others were less seriously injured. Whilst London was bombed the most heavily - nearly 30,000 died and 50,000 others were seriously injured - devastating raids also took place on eighteen other British cities, towns, ports and industrial production centres. These included: Coventry, Cardiff, Swansea, Belfast, Tyneside, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Hull, Southampton, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Glasgow, Clydeside, Nottingham and Exeter.
Britain endured the physical and psychological consequences: fear, shock, the loss of loved ones, deprivation, comprehensive destruction of property and the potential of defeat and invasion.
In London, over one million buildings were destroyed or otherwise damaged as the most formidable air force in Europe, the Luftwaffe, dropped its ordnance across the capital (approximately 18,000 tons of high explosive). Londoners’ nerves were shredded, but their collective will to resist was not broken. A ‘Blitz Spirit’ of solidarity and defiance – encouraged by the rhetoric of new wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill – sustained both capital and nation during the darkest moments. A popular British documentary film of October 1940, narrated by American news correspondent Quentin Reynolds, was entitled ‘London Can Take It!”, a phrase which became the beleaguered capital’s watchword.
Battle of Britain to The Blitz
The onset of the Blitz coincided with the culmination of the Battle of Britain (10 July-31 October 1940) in which Hitler’s Luftwaffe tried to achieve daylight air superiority against the Royal Air Force (RAF) prior to a planned German invasion of the British Isles (‘Operation Sea Lion’). During the Battle, Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering dispatched an air armada of 2,500 German aircraft – of which over 1,000 were fast and heavily-armed Messerschmitt Bf-109E fighters - in massed daylight attacks. Their aim: destroy the RAF’s airfields and sweep its numerically inferior Hawker Hurricane Mk I and Supermarine Spitfire Mk I fighters from the skies.
The Luftwaffe effort to achieve air superiority failed. Despite intense (close to overwhelming) German bombing of RAF airfields throughout August, the tide had turned by 15 September. British strengths, island geography and German tactical errors confounded Hitler and Goering’s aims. The RAF prevailed by using a fully integrated air defence system guided by radar, directed by Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding and Air Vice Marshal Keith Park. Some 600 Hurricane and Spitfire fighters from 10, 11 and 12 Groups, RAF Fighter Command, doggedly defended the skies over southern England. Against the odds, they inflicted serious losses and denied the Luftwaffe air superiority in daylight. Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely in September and finally called it off on 12 October 1940. 2,937 British, Commonwealth and Allied aircrew from RAF Fighter Command fought in the Battle, supported by thousands of ground crews. 544 RAF pilots were killed together with 312 ground crew. 915 British aircraft were lost. The Luftwaffe lost 2,662 aircrew killed and 6,000 wounded or taken prisoner. 1,773 German aircraft were destroyed.
The Battle of Britain was the first strategic failure for Nazi Germany. It was an epic RAF victory. Even so, the Luftwaffe itself was far from defeated. As the Battle of Britain merged into the Blitz, a new chapter in Britain’s wartime experience was about to unfold. It was stimulated by RAF attacks on Berlin and Hitler’s retaliation. On 15 August, Croydon airfield, on the outskirts of London, was hit in a daylight raid by Luftwaffe Bf-110 fighter-bombers. Further raids took place on outer London on 18-19 August and 22-23 August. On 24 August, German aircraft bombed the city centre in error, despite Hitler’s standing orders to the contrary. The RAF retaliated, raiding Berlin on 25-26 and 29-30 August. Strike followed counter strike. German bombs fell on North and East London and Essex on 28-29 August. On 7 September 1940, the Luftwaffe turned comprehensively on London, in the process taking pressure off the RAF’s airfields. The intention: destroy the epicentre of Britain’s trade and war economy, wear down civilian morale and force Churchill’s government to sue for peace.
The Blitz begins
For the first month of the Battle of Britain, London was largely unaffected, except for periodic siren alerts and rigorous blackout regulations (in force since 1 September 1939). From August until early September 1940, residents in London’s outer suburbs were treated to an extraordinary display of criss-crossing water vapour (‘con’) trails high in the skies above them, as the rival air forces vied for supremacy over Kent, Essex, Surrey and Sussex. But Prime Minister Churchill had few illusions as to what was coming. During the 1930s many in both government and the general public assumed that an air campaign against British cities would cause catastrophic damage. As former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin put it in 1932:’the bomber will always get through’. In 1937 Air Chief Marshal Dowding, head of RAF Fighter Command, further advised that London (the envisaged primary target) might endure no more than two weeks of sustained aerial bombing before civilian panic led to probable defeat. Since 1939, the government had developed worst case plans to deal with over 600,000 fatalities and over 1.2 million serious injuries (25,000 bombing-related casualties in Britain per day). Around one million children were subsequently evacuated from London and from cities across Britain. Others were evacuated to Canada and the United States. Poison gas attacks on London and on other British cities were also expected (44 million gas masks were issued to British civilians between late 1938 and September 1939). Children received versions wth Mickey Mouse faces.
The Blitz began with a mass daylight raid on London’s docks and the East End from 5pm on 7 September 1940 (dubbed by locals as ‘Black Saturday’). A densely packed formation of 348 German bombers, escorted by 617 Bf-109 fighters, dropped 625 tons of high explosive bombs and thousands of incendiaries. A second bomber wave continued the attack into the early hours of 8 September. 436 civilians were killed; 1,600 were seriously injured. Nine miles of London’s docklands, oil and gas works, wharves and closely packed warehouses from Tower Bridge to Woolwich were set ablaze.
From 7 September to 2 November 1940 - 57 consecutive nights – London was bombed without respite. The Luftwaffe conducted daylight raids on the capital until rising RAF fighter interception rates forced a shift to night attacks only (from 29 October). In the Blitz’s first month, 5,730 Londoners were killed and over 9,000 seriously injured. From 7 September to mid-November, an estimated 28,000 high explosive bombs and tens of thousands of incendiaries were dropped on London. 3,759 unexploded high explosive bombs (UXBs) had been dealt with in London by the end of September alone. In the event, poison gas attacks on London and other British cities were not carried out. The Luftwaffe eschewed the use of gas – on grounds of ineffectiveness and the likelihood of British reprisal in kind – although concerns over its potential persisted well into 1944.
During the first weeks of the London Blitz, Luftwaffe bombing was concentrated on the East End’s riverside docks, industrial facilities and warehouses. Adjoining narrow streets and tenement houses were also badly damaged. So much so that the British government was at first seriously concerned by the possibility of domestic insurgency. Soon, bombs dropped in the West End showed that the pain would be shared by all Londoners. After Buckingham Palace was bombed on 13 September 1940, Queen Elizabeth was prompted to remark: “I am glad we have been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face”.
If the largest percentage of German bombs fell on the East End, the docks and the City of London, the capital’s West End and the suburbs also suffered. This was illustrated by the experience of the central London borough of City of Westminster. Over 1,100 City of Westminster residents were killed during the London Blitz and 2,500 others badly injured. The borough witnessed its first (minor) bomb incident when incendiaries fell on Belgravia on 30 August 1940. During daylight and night raids during 1940-1941, an average of 28 high explosive bombs fell per 100 acres in Westminster. Many iconic buildings in the City of Westminster were damaged to varying degree during the first three and a half months of the Blitz (September to December 1940). These included Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Whitehall, The National Gallery, BBC Broadcasting House, Soho, Piccadilly, and Pimlico. On the night of 17-18 September five famous British department stores along the length of Oxford Street were also badly damaged (John Lewis, Selfridges, Peter Robinson, Bourne and Hollingsworth and DH Evans).
By early November 1940 the Blitz was building in ferocity. Much worse was to follow.
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