RootsChat.Com
England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => London and Middlesex => Topic started by: stewart_M on Sunday 07 March 10 19:46 GMT (UK)
-
Does anyone know any links/websites dealing specifically with the London Blitz during WW2. My family endured it in Walworth and my partner's family were in Peckham and I'm trying to identify which streets were hit.
Regards
Stewart
-
Hi Stewart
if you google bomb damage maps, you'll find quite a few references including a recently published (2005) book which you may be able to borrow from the library.
I think Yersinia's blog has had all the pitcures removed due to copyright issues.
Dawn
-
I'll send you the link that I have when I am back home. Are you able to get to LMA? Their map section has interesting maps of bomb damage which shows the streets affected and notes on the amount of damage
Monique
-
The maps at the LMA are featured in the book, it's called LCC Bomb Damage maps 1939-1945 by Ann Saunders
Dawn
-
I'll send you the link that I have when I am back home. Are you able to get to LMA? Their map section has interesting maps of bomb damage which shows the streets affected and notes on the amount of damage
Monique
here is the link http://www.flyingbombsandrockets.com/V1_summary_se15.html
regards
Monique
-
Many thanks to you all. The links are excellent unfortunately the book "LCC Bomb Damage maps 1939-1945" is now out of print and there are no plans to republish it which is a shame.
-
Try your local library, if they don't have it try to get it on the inter library loan service
Dawn
-
Whilst on the subject of the Blitz- when was the first WW2 bombing raid on London?
Also, on what date did the evacuations of children from London begin?
Where would one find a definitive list of all those Londoners killed in the blitz?
Finally, a real "shot in the dark" - anyone out there who was evacuated from London to Shoreham and thence to Dunford Bridge, West Yorkshire?
-
Whilst on the subject of the Blitz- when was the first WW2 bombing raid on London?
The first raids on London were in September 1940.
Also, on what date did the evacuations of children from London begin?
Evacuation started in February 1941.
Where would one find a definitive list of all those Londoners killed in the blitz?
There isn't one. There was too much chaos to record details like that. My father was a fireman in the WW2 London Blitz and the firemen were often asked to help move bodies of the dead. My father told me that sometimes all they could do was to put a head, body and limbs into a casket, and hope they all belonged to the same person. Often the dead were only identified by the fact that their residence had been bombed, and they had disappeared, and that could be days after the bombing.
Deaths during WW2 were all recorded in the usual way. Some deaths due to bombing had to be "missing presumed dead" because often bodies were either not found or too badly mutilated or burned to be identified. These will not appear any differently to any other death in the BMD database.
-
I would like to pick up on the question of when the first evacuation of children from London took place. It was certainly prior to Feb 1941.
I was on holiday in Great Yarmouth in August 1939 when word reached my parents that evacuation of of London was imminent. We returned home immediately to Tottenham , North London where within a few days I was evacuated with my school to Saffron Walden, Essex. I don't remember being at home when war as actually declared on Sept. 3rd & the first air raid sirens sounded. Yes, they actually sounded on that first day, well remembered by my father who had had the foresight to have the Anderson Air-raid shelter installed in the garden by the local council who offered to do this free of charge when the shelters were first delivered. He was the only one in our road who had it done & after the allclear had sounded there was a continual stream of neighbours trouping thro' our garden wanting to see how the shelter was installed, they then organised groups to help each other dig the big hole needed, & then to bolt the sections of corrugated iron together as this was far beyond the work for a single man to do.
Try this site, it will give you an idea of the work involved in installing the shelter
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=anderson+air+raid+shelter&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=0IaXS4nkI5n-0gSBvJnvCw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBEQsAQwAA
Meliora
-
Evacuation of children and pregnant mothers started 1st September 1939
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/war/evacuation.htm
Britain declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939
Dawn
-
If you have a specific name civilians are listed on the Commonwealth War Graves site.
www.cwgc.org
You can also search by a cemetery name.
-
My gran remembers the first attack on 7th Sep 1940. She said the sky was full of hundreds of bombers and so she chose the clever option: run as fast as she could!!! She remembered a margerine factory being hit which burned and caused a horrendous stink across the city for several weeks; she never ate margerine again after that as the smell repulsed her! She also remembered running up the street with her uncle as a little girl with a German triplane droppping bombs along the street in the first world war.
Stewart
-
Evacuation of children and pregnant mothers started 1st September 1939
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/war/evacuation.htm
Britain declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939
Dawn
I seem to get a different answer, depending on whose account I read (fortunately I wasn't born until 3 years after the war ended). This account (http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/nettsch/time/wlife.html) suggests that some children were evacuated the day that the Germand invaded Poland (1st February 1939) ?
My mother was evacuated to Suffolk in 1944, when she was pregnant with my sister - she hated the isolation so much, she came back to London on the very next train ! She suffered badly from claustrophobia, and never went down an air-raid shelter - when the sirens went, she would don a tin hat and go out and help the air-raid wardens. It's a miracle that I'm here at all ! :)
-
Many thanks for all the contributions- very useful.