London Bomb Damage Map 1939-45

[Ruskie]

Hi Ruskie, I have seen bombsight before.  However, that is only for 9 months of the war wheras the book shows the results at the end of the war (so covers 6 years).  That site is fantastic though!

Yes, it is amazing to see how many fell in such a short period of time. It would be good if they could expand the date range. I love the interactivity of the site and how easy it is to use. Good stuff.

[andrewalston]

How did you look up civilian (or otherwise) deaths?

Civilian war deaths are listed on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's site (www.cwgc.org).

[coombs]

My great, great grandparents lived in Camden Town until 1939 when they moved to Dartmouth Park. In 1940 a bomb hit Baynes Street, Camden, just round the corner from the address they lived at until 1939. Interesting.

UPDATE
And during the Blitz I just looked up, a bomb hit the south east corner of Twisden Road, where great, great grandmother and father lived from 1939 to their deaths in 1943 and 1947 respectively.

[smudwhisk]

Hi Ruskie, I have seen bombsight before.  However, that is only for 9 months of the war wheras the book shows the results at the end of the war (so covers 6 years).  That site is fantastic though!

The bombsight does show damage from later waves of bombings but doesn't give specific dates of when they happened.  Does the book show specific dates for later bombings or just the area of destruction at the end of the war please?  My great grandmother's house in Bromley St Leonard was bombed after the initial wave but we don't know exactly when and there is sadly nobody about to ask now.  We have a good idea where it was (it was a very long road) based on the later bombing reports in relation to census information (they lived in the house from the late 1800s) as the area was very widely redeveloped after the war.

[Ruskie]

I know of some bombs dropped in an area where my OH lived as a child. On the "bombsight" site area is completely clear and not one is marked.

I have details of what, where and when from a booklet specifically relating to bomb and other damage in the area. I don't have the booklet to hand so can't check dates, but presumably the damage falls outside the bombsight date range.

[David Posnett]

How did you look up civilian (or otherwise) deaths?

Civilian war deaths are listed on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's site (www.cwgc.org).

Thank you Andrew!

[David Posnett]

Hi Ruskie, I have seen bombsight before.  However, that is only for 9 months of the war wheras the book shows the results at the end of the war (so covers 6 years).  That site is fantastic though!

The bombsight does show damage from later waves of bombings but doesn't give specific dates of when they happened.  Does the book show specific dates for later bombings or just the area of destruction at the end of the war please?  My great grandmother's house in Bromley St Leonard was bombed after the initial wave but we don't know exactly when and there is sadly nobody about to ask now.  We have a good idea where it was (it was a very long road) based on the later bombing reports in relation to census information (they lived in the house from the late 1800s) as the area was very widely redeveloped after the war.

Sadly to book does not indicate any dates at all, but is detailed down to individual houses, and colour coded to indicate the amount of damage.

This is a link so you get the idea:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/London-County-Council-Damage-1939-1945/dp/0500518254

UPDATE - There a list of 'incidents', I doubt it is complete, but if you give me more detail I can see if anything is listed

[StevieSteve]

Complementary exhibition at LMA at the moment

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01icf/


There seems to be a lot of records at TNA but the indexing has proved too opaque for me

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01fyt/

[smudwhisk]

UPDATE - There a list of 'incidents', I doubt it is complete, but if you give me more detail I can see if anything is listed

Thanks David.  This is the link - http://bombsight.org/bombs/29738/ - to what we suspect was the incident, the location ties in with location from the Census.  Abbot Road was a rather long road (and still is to a certain extent but has been completely renumbered).  We know they were bombed out during the blitz but as you can see the Bomb Sight map has a rather large date range for the incident as it wasn't in the first wave.

And as Steve says, the TNA catalogue is somewhat opaque to help.  I suspect it could unfortunately involve ploughing through all the Fire Brigade records looking for that incident.  Something that isn't really feasible unfortunately.  Just wish someone had asked the relatives in the past.  But then there are quite a few questions we never asked in spite of having been researching for quite some years.