The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

The most serious threat faced in the last years of the war came from the bombs and missiles directed chiefly at south-east England between January 1944 and March 1945. The first attacks of Operation Steinbock (the ‘Baby Blitz’ in spring 1944) caught the population and the authorities by surprise. There were 1,300 deaths from raids on London and a number of port cities, most of them in the first few weeks before a fresh wave of evacuation and greater care with sheltering once again reduced the level of human damage. By this stage of the war there was shelter provision for over 28 million people nationwide and 6.8 million bunks in public dormitories, but with the first heavy raids Londoners again clamoured to be able to use the Underground system. At the Oval police lost control of the crowd and 200 people broke into the station. The Regional Commissioner and London Transport agreed to reopen the system on 23 February and by early March 150,000 were sheltering each evening, 63,000 sleeping all night. Work had begun on a number of deep shelters in 1941, but although many had been completed they were kept in reserve for military purposes and were not yet open to the public. Despite public demands, the Cabinet decided on 29 February to keep them closed.²⁵¹ Health officials found the remaining shelters for the most part well lit, clean and catering drinks and food.²⁵² The civil defence organization had its first serious test for two years and coped effectively enough against a modest bombing effort. German aircraft scattered their loads widely and started a large number of small fires, but volunteer Fire Guards succeeded in extinguishing an estimated 75 per cent of them. ‘Bombs dropped haphazard,’ ran London civil defence instructions, ‘though unpleasant, can be dealt with.’²⁵³

The impact of the Second Blitz on the public was limited after a first initial shock. Published diaries from the period show little interest or anxiety over the raids, but a constant concern about when and where the second front in northern Europe would open.²⁵⁴ The same could not be said of the missile attacks which began in June 1944 and continued until almost the end of the war. The first warnings about a possible German secret weapon had been confirmed in April 1943 and a committee established under Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, to estimate the nature and seriousness of the threat. Intelligence sources confirmed that there were two possible weapons, a flying bomb and a long-range rocket. Coordination for all forms of defence against the new weapons was made the responsibility of the Home Defence Executive, the military equivalent of the civil defence apparatus. Scientific opinion was divided over the possibility of effective rocket technology. Some forecasts suggested a rocket of 10 tons, capable of killing 100,000 in the first month and turning London into a wasteland in six.²⁵⁵ By early 1944 intelligence estimates began to scale down the threat and a sceptical Churchill admonished his Cabinet colleagues for becoming ‘slaves to our fears’. It was judged that civil defence could deal with any fresh emergency, whatever the scale of the new aerial assault, and the judgement proved sound.²⁵⁶ Four flying bombs (or ‘doodle-bugs’ as the RAF christened them) first fell on the night of 12–13 June, one of them in London at Bethnal Green, killing six people. On 15–16 June a further 40 fell in the London area and the attack continued at a high rate for a further few weeks until anti-aircraft fire, fighter interception and the Allied advance on the firing sites reduced the threat to a fraction.²⁵⁷