The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

From late 1940 a concerted effort was made by the government to learn lessons from the early experience of the bombing and to make sure that those lessons were communicated widely to the authorities responsible for civil defence. After the Coventry raid in November 1940 a number of ‘Coventry Conferences’ were held for local ARP Controllers where problems were discussed and recommendations made. The key issues isolated were the need for mobile canteens prepared for an emergency, the establishment of temporary information centres and posters or loudspeaker vans to announce exactly where they could be found, and the effective use of outside aid for emergency fire-fighting and repair work.¹¹⁹ The success of the learning curve can be judged by the reaction to raids later in the Blitz. The major raids on Hull on 7–8 and 8–9 May 1941, which followed smaller raids during March and April, showed that lessons had been learned from the problems experienced in Coventry and Southampton, highlighted at the Coventry Conference. Although the city guildhall was hit and the surrounding area was set on fire, the Control Room in its basement continued to function, using messengers when phone lines were ruptured. Although 24 reception centres were damaged and the WVS worked even during the raids without the promised steel helmets, 41 centres remained open on the first night and 46 on the second, coping with a total of 13,000 people. Clothing, tea and biscuits were supplied and over 13,000 garments distributed. The centres had representatives from the key welfare departments who could answer queries immediately. Volunteers were under instructions not to send anyone away even in crowded halls. On the following day the local authority opened district offices in the damaged areas to deal with the homeless and claims for assistance. The officials dealt with the long queues as quickly as they could and diverted people to slacker offices when that was possible. Over 36,000 people were seen during the week after the raids. During the first few days mobile canteens and emergency feeding centres provided 367,000 meals, most of them a midday dinner. Out of the 39 mobile canteens, 30 were supplied from outside the city. Meals were free for the first four days. The government authorized the release of 4,000 cases of oranges for the bomb victims. The result was an outcome very different from the experience of Southampton.¹²⁰

The state had learned much since the start of the Blitz, but there had been much to learn. Casualties still remained high in the spring of 1941 as the bombing spread out into areas less prepared to cope with it and starved of the resources now being provided for London. In late March 1941 Churchill wrote to Morrison and MacDonald urging them to speed up the programme of improvements to cope with the expected intensification of the Blitz later in the year. The moment of crisis evident in September 1940 had temporarily subsided. At least one of the explanations was the effective response of the government to the deficiencies in shelter and welfare provision exposed by the reality of heavy bombing. Another lay in efforts to limit the amount of material damage that bombing could do.

DAMAGE LIMITATION

No amount of effective blackout, camouflage or firepower could prevent damage on the ground to industry, commercial buildings and housing. People could be moved or sheltered, or choose to stay and be bombed, but physical assets were generally static, except for foodstuffs and machine tools. The government and the armed forces needed to guarantee the continued operation of the war economy by keeping factories working as many hours as possible. They needed to ensure a continuous supply of foodstuffs for the population by protecting stocks and maintaining the activity of the ports. Finally, the population needed to be housed in the bombed cities where they worked to keep production going. These were the elements of Britain’s war effort that German airmen were ordered to erode; damage limitation was critical to Britain’s survival.