The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

Unlike the Second Blitz, the flying bombs provoked a flurry of activity in the capital. Popular discussion of the new weapons sounded, according to the writer George Stonier, like ‘a high-pitched buzz’. Edward Stebbing found the talk endless and the fear greater: ‘I must admit that these things have put my nerves on edge more than ordinary raids. I suppose the novelty of them, the devilish ingenuity, has something to do with it.’²⁵⁸ The arrival of the new menace coincided with the successful Allied landings in France, dampening morale during what should have been a period of growing public confidence. One of the first official reports suggested that popular opinion in London had moved from bewilderment to consternation as the random nature of the threat became clear. ‘The incongruous effect,’ continued the report, ‘was a greater disturbance of morale by a form of attack that caused fewer casualties.’²⁵⁹ Local firms in London reported rising absenteeism and evidence of fatigue, which it was claimed ‘undermined the tonic effect of D Day’. In one company in Battersea, an area in the path of the new weapon, morale was thought to be ‘at the lowest in the history of this war’, with 50 per cent decline in production.²⁶⁰ Opinion polls found that exactly half of respondents thought the new bombs harder to bear than the Blitz. ‘It’s not like the old Blitz,’ complained one Londoner. ‘People are just getting down and disheartened.’²⁶¹

Evacuation, which had fallen to a countrywide total of 343,000 by March 1944, was resumed again in July with the transfer of 307,600 under formal schemes, and more limited assistance for a further 552,000 women and children voluntary evacuees.²⁶² The civil defences called on resources from other parts of the country. An extra 7,000 wardens were sent along with thousands of spare Anderson and Morrison shelters. Special ‘flying squads’ were recruited to be sent rapidly from one incident to the next.²⁶³ Yet in the end the emergency services found the flying-bomb attacks easier to cope with than a conventional raid because they were isolated, easy to spot at once and did little damage below ground level. ‘An almost clock-work precision has been reached,’ ran a Home Security report on the response to the flying-bomb campaign.²⁶⁴ Many incidents were cleared up in an hour; fires were infrequent except with a lucky hit. Casualties were nevertheless high because attacks came by day and by night, with only the briefest warning. Estimates showed an average of around 20 dead and injured for each flying bomb that landed in an urban area, higher than the average of 16 for a landmine or 14 for a ton of regular bombs.²⁶⁵ The worst injuries were caused by flying glass as windows repaired after the Blitz were shattered once more. Research showed that sheltering levels were again low among people who only had access to public shelters, overwhelmingly among the poorer neighbourhoods. Tube shelters were hastily refilled, reaching a peak of 81,240 at the end of July, and three of the reserved deep shelters were finally handed over. During June, July and August 5,482 were killed and 15,900 injured, the highest figures since May 1941.²⁶⁶ The blast effect of the bombs resulted in extensive housing damage once again, but out of more than 1 million homes hit but habitable, only 27,000 still needed ‘first-aid’ repairs by September.

The rocket was an altogether more formidable weapon but its uneven range, poor technical performance and random targeting meant that like the flying bomb, civil defence services could cope with its consequences more effectively than had been expected. The precise nature of the weapon remained uncertain until fresh intelligence arrived shortly before the first two rockets hit the outskirts of London at Chiswick and Epping on 8 September 1944. Because of that uncertainty, Morrison had persuaded the Cabinet in late July to set up a Rocket Consequences Committee to organize emergency measures to cope with the imagined scale of the threat. Fresh evacuation was planned, and the transfer of 120,000 men, including soldiers, to help to restore battered services and utilities. But by the middle of August a report from Air Intelligence finally indicated correctly a small rocket with a 1-ton warhead. The emergency was scaled down and finally abandoned on 1 September.