Let us examine two nights of heavy bombing to investigate
what damage the Luftwaffe could inflict on these targets in London. On the
nights of 14–15 and 15–16 October, London was repeatedly bombed. On the first
night five factories were hit, including one that made instruments for
aircraft. In addition six gas works, three electricity supply substations and a
water main were damaged, two telephone exchanges were put out of action and six
hospitals. No. 10 Downing Street and the Treasury were hit, 10 major roads
blocked and five Underground lines affected. Railway services had to be
suspended from Broad Street, Fenchurch Street, Marylebone, Charing Cross and
London Bridge. Only restricted services could run from Euston, St Pancras and
Waterloo.
The next evening the Luftwaffe returned in equal strength.
On this night seven factories, two gas works, four electricity supply
substations and three water supply facilities were hit, and five docks put out
of action. One water culvert at New Bridge Road, Edmonton, supplied London with
46 million gallons of water per day. Fifteen million gallons were restored
within 24 hours, but it took 2,000 workers some time to excavate the 2,000
cubic yards of soil to get to the source of the problem. Meanwhile many London
suburbs had no running water. Also that night, railway services were again hit
badly and the position deteriorated further from the previous bombing. Damage
was inflicted on four additional Underground lines, and services from three
telephone exchanges were suspended. Finally Marlborough House, the BBC and four
hospitals were hit.
This amounted to substantial damage. It made everyday life
difficult, getting to work inconvenient, and it did affect the efficient
running of the capital. But what the bombing did not do was radically affect
the war effort. A total of twelve factories were hit but over 600 were not. The
docks were back in operation in short order. The railway lines could be
repaired. Buses could replace damaged Underground lines. Routes could be found
around blocked roads. Interruptions to electricity and gas supplies were
usually short. Couriers could be used by some firms instead of the telephone.
The Home Security Report on electricity supply was an indicator of a more
general trend:
London suffered the most [of any city in this area]. 30
power stations and three transformer stations were hit, while 1,393 main and
secondary transmission cables and 8,590 distribution cables were involved in
the general damage. Despite all this it was unusual for stoppages of supply to
last longer than an hour. The most seriously affected generating station was
that at Fulham, where a 190,000kw plant was not in full operation for a year.
The load, however, was taken over by the grid system and the supply was only
interrupted for a matter of hours.
This situation applied generally to all of London’s
facilities. As for its output of war materiel, it was just too widely spread
for the Luftwaffe to make much of an impact. Overall just 35 factories were
totally destroyed. Damaged factories were usually soon back in operation and a
sophisticated system of sub-contracting provided many alternative sources of
supply.
#
So far we have dealt only with the Blitz on London. But
there was another aspect of the German air assault – the assault on British
provincial cities. These phases of the Blitz are not discrete events – there
was much overlap between the raids on London and those on the provinces. As we
have seen, the Luftwaffe never gave up on attacking the capital. And some heavy
raids on the provinces took place while London was being bombed. However, as a
generalisation and with one notable exception, London bore the brunt of the
enemy attacks from September to December 1940, whereas the Germans concentrated
more on the provinces in the early months of 1941. And in this case we cannot
stop the story on the last day of December 1940. The campaign to break the
British people and the industrial capacity of the country was just as severe in
the New Year as it had been in 1940.
The main problem for the Luftwaffe was that provincial
Britain was what would now be called a target-rich environment. In the north
there were the industrial cities of Birmingham, Manchester, Coventry, Sheffield
and Leeds. South Wales also had a concentration of industry around Cardiff and
Swansea. Along the south coast lay the major ports of Plymouth, Portsmouth and
Southampton. In the north-east were major shipbuilding and industrial areas
around Hull and Newcastle. Major shipbuilding centres were located at Clydeside
and Belfast. Each group of cities could be given a high priority. Spitfires
were made around Southampton and at Castle Bromwich near Birmingham. The south
coast ports commanded the Channel. The west coast ports saw vital supplies of
oil and raw materials arrive from the United States. The ships that kept the
trans-Atlantic trade flowing were built and based at Liverpool, the Clyde, the
Tyne and Belfast.
Given the plethora of targets and given the fact that the
Luftwaffe was hard pressed to assemble many more than 400 bombers per night, it
was vital to the fulfilment of their objectives that a plan be developed to
maximise the effectiveness of their bombing. No such plan eventuated or even
formed in the minds of Goering, Kesselring or Sperrle. All they knew was that
the attack on London had neither reduced the RAF to manageable proportions nor
collapsed morale. Nor had the capital’s industry and infrastructure been
reduced to rubble. Yet they would continue to attack London, while at the same
time sending small packets of bombers to a variety of targets around Britain
and mounting major raids on a selection of provincial cities. This was the
opposite of a concentration of effort, but it was what the Germans would carry
through from November 1940 until March 1941.
In that period heavy raids (defined as the dropping of over
100 tons of bombs) would be carried out on London on 12 occasions. Cities such
as Southampton, Liverpool, Bristol, Portsmouth, Manchester and many others
would be visited by small numbers of bombers and occasionally attacked in
force.
The limitations of such methods can be demonstrated by
examining one of the best-known provincial raids, the attack on Coventry on
14–15 November 1940. In many ways the city was an ideal target for the
Luftwaffe. Coventry was small (a population of just under 250,000 in 1940) but
it had many factories making such warlike goods as aero engines, motor vehicles
and munitions. Some of these works (such as Daimler) were large, but there was
a great number of smaller factories clustered with houses in the city centre
around the medieval cathedral. The raid was carefully planned by the Germans.
The special pathfinder group (Kg 100) led the way, guided by radio beams that
the British failed to jam. Around 7.00 p.m. they dropped a mixture of high
explosive with some accuracy on the city centre. The fires started guided the
main force of about 440 bombers to the city.
Around 11.45 p.m. the raid reached its height but bombing
continued until 6.15 a.m., some German aircraft returning to France to refuel
and then bombing a second time. In all over 500 tons of high explosive and
30,000 incendiary bombs were dropped. The havoc caused was considerable. The
medieval cathedral of St Michael was destroyed beyond repair. A total of 41,500
houses (three-quarters of all houses in the city) suffered some damage. Of
these 2,300 were totally destroyed and 6,000 rendered unliveable. In addition
624 shops and 121 offices were destroyed. The war economy was badly hit.
Overall 111 out of 180 factories were damaged and 75 of them completely
destroyed. The casualties (570 dead and 1,100 wounded) would have been more
severe had not a proportion of the population been out of the city on their
nightly trek.
Mass Observation rushed a team to Coventry and they reported
on 18 November. The investigators found the damage greater than in any other
city including London. They found a feeling of ‘helplessness’ among the
population, many of whom had no idea what to do. There were signs of hysteria,
terror and neurosis. It would indeed be surprising had there not been such
feelings in a city small enough for almost everyone to know one of the dead or
injured and with such widespread property damage. The mood soon improved,
however. The army was drafted in to help clear rubble and essential services
slowly returned. Two days after the raid, arrangements had been made to
transport 10,000 people out of the centre, but only 300 actually left.
Nevertheless, considerable damage had been done to the war
economy. One of the Daimler aero-engine factories was completely wrecked. It was
estimated that it would take a month to restore production. A further 14
factories making engines or components for aircraft had suffered damage, as had
such firms as Triumph that made parts for tanks and armoured cars.
Coventry, if not quite ‘finished’ as one observer put it,
was certainly on its knees. Further raids of this nature by the Luftwaffe were
greatly feared. Home Security concluded that ‘Another such raid might well have
put Coventry beyond the possibility of repair.’ But the Luftwaffe did not
return. In subsequent days and weeks it turned its attention back to London, then
to Birmingham, then Bristol and then to other cities. Coventry did not suffer
another major raid for some five months, when 100 aircraft dropped 100 tons of
high explosive and incendiaries on it. Casualties were high – some 281 killed
and 525 severely wounded. The Daimler works was again put out of operation for
several weeks. On the night of 10–11 April there was a further major raid but
on this occasion no important target suffered significant damage. These raids
were certainly intense, but the five-month interval had allowed Coventry to
recover – both in spirit and in productive capacity. By repeated bombing the
Germans probably could have obliterated Coventry and that would have slowed
British aircraft production significantly. This was a lesson that its citizens
were happy for the Luftwaffe not to learn.
This pattern of dreadful destruction and then neglect was
repeated by the Luftwaffe throughout the Blitz. Bad weather drastically
curtailed their operations in January and February 1941, but by then some in
the German High Command were becoming disturbed by the lack of results. On 4
February Admiral Raeder, General Jodl and Field Marshal Keitel expressed their
concerns to Hitler. Raeder emphasised the importance of British dependence on
imports and its need to continually build escort and merchant ships for the
trans-Atlantic trade. As a result Hitler issued a new directive that gave the
Luftwaffe at least some direction. He ordered that major raids be concentrated
on the western ports that either built ships or received imports. Accordingly,
when the weather cleared the Luftwaffe launched a major raid on Clydebank,
which contained some of Britain’s largest shipbuilding yards. On the night of
13–14 March over 400 bombers dropped 1,100 tons of high explosive and
incendiary bombs on Clydebank. The loss of life was massive because many
workers lived close to the shipyards – over 1,200 were killed and 1,000
injured. Clydebank was a rather self-contained area just to the west of
Glasgow. Of its 60,000 inhabitants, just 3,000 remained after the raids – the
rest had fled to safety. Indeed, there was not much to return to – only seven
houses out of a total of 12,000 remained undamaged. The damage to the actual
shipyards was not extensive, but the dispersal of the population had serious
repercussions for the industry. John Brown’s shipyard normally employed 10,000
workers, yet a week after the raids just 6,500 had reported for work. Another
week was to pass before the yard was 75 per cent effective.
For one of the very few occasions during the Blitz the
deductions drawn by Home Security were alarming:
There is a real danger that continued and concentrated
attacks on the residential areas of the ports will lead to a large-scale
movement of the population, as a result of damage to houses and public
services. These attacks may prove more effective in hampering the work of the
ports than accurate bombing of the port facilities themselves. Undoubtedly
provision of relief for the homeless and facilities to enable the workers to
get back to work is of vital importance.
Home Security was no doubt correct. Many more raids on this
scale would have seen vital works such as John Brown’s shut down through lack
of labour. Yet once again the Luftwaffe did not follow up the attack. Over time
the workers were rehoused and returned to their tasks.
In keeping with Hitler’s directive, Belfast suffered a major
raid in mid-April. The shipbuilders Shorts and Harlands were out of production
for three weeks. Some 20,000 people were made homeless by this single raid. Yet
there was again no follow-up and shipbuilding in Northern Ireland was soon back
to normal.
If we follow the pattern of bombing during February, March
and April 1941, we can see that the Luftwaffe attempted to follow Hitler’s
directive. There were raids on Swansea, Hull, Bristol, Portsmouth, Plymouth,
Barrow and the Tyne in this period. But the pattern of one or two night raids
repeated itself. Plymouth was hit particularly hard in April to the extent that
civil administration almost broke down. Mass Observation reported much
dissatisfaction with the local authorities. Yet Plymouth survived. This time
there would be no more raids because Hitler had begun to regroup the Luftwaffe
for operations against Russia.
The last period of the Blitz presents one of the great
question marks over German strategy. Liverpool was the port through which
flowed most supplies from America. Before May 1941 the weekly tonnage handled
by the docks was 181,562 tons. It was an obvious target for the Luftwaffe.
Indeed, Liverpool was raided on over 60 occasions between the outbreak of war
and May 1941. Yet many of these raids were flights by just one or two aircraft
and most did not attain the status of a major raid. The main exceptions were
the nights of 12–13, 13–14 and 14–15 March. In these three nights over 450 tons
of high explosive were dropped, causing damage to the docks and to commercial
and residential buildings.
Despite these three nights it could be reasonably stated
that before May 1941 Liverpool had not received from the Germans the attention
warranted by its importance. That all changed in the first week of May. From 1
May the city was bombed for seven consecutive nights. In all 839 tons of high
explosive were dropped along with hundreds of thousand incendiaries. The raids
killed 1,900 people and seriously injured 1,450. At one stage four miles of
docks were engulfed in flames. On the night of 3–4 May the SS Malakand, which
had 1,000 tons of ammunition on board, was hit and exploded, virtually
destroying the Huskisson Dock. A total of 70,000 people, almost 10 per cent of
the total population, were made homeless and trekking became a way of life for
many. Mass Observation reported widespread dissatisfaction with the local
authorities and described an atmosphere of ineptitude, lack of energy and drive
on their part. A strong rumour circulated that martial law had been declared.
It had not but this was probably a comment on the population’s view of the
local leadership.
By the end of the week the capacity of the docks had been
reduced to just 25 per cent, a potentially disastrous situation for Britain.
Yet even during the Merseyside Blitz the Germans could not concentrate on just
one target. In the middle of their campaign against Liverpool they diverted
major forces of bombers to Barrow, Belfast, Glasgow and Hull. Thus the number
of bombers over Merseyside dropped from 293 on the night of 3–4 May to 55 on
the following night, to 27 on the following two nights, then back up to 166 on
the final night.
But the surpassing folly from the German point of view was
that this series of devastating raids came at the very end of the Blitz. After
one more massive attack on London on the night of 10–11 May, the bombers were
gradually withdrawn to the east for the impending attack on the Soviet Union.
Slowly Liverpool returned to some kind of normality. By mid-May the docks were
unloading just less than half their normal tonnage and by mid-June they had
returned to full capacity. The thousands of trekkers also returned. In fact
most of the dock workers who trekked only did so at night and returned to their
jobs during the day, so the same everyday imperatives that acted to keep London
going through the Blitz applied at Liverpool as well. For the remainder of the
war Liverpool continued to be the main destination for American imports. Any
chance that the Germans might have had to cut this lifeline had gone.
#
The Blitz failed in its objectives. The Germans could
neither cow the British people into surrender nor destroy the fundamentals of
their war economy. The Luftwaffe, which was never developed as a strategic
weapon, proved inadequate to the task. It had too few aircraft that carried
inadequate bomb loads, had too many targets to hit and lacked a coherent
overall plan. Civilians, it was proved, could stand up to bombing over a
prolonged period without cracking, despite the rather feeble defences the
British could deploy against the night Blitz and the government’s ramshackle
shelter policy.
However, this is much more apparent now than it was then.
When they put their minds to it the Luftwaffe could deliver concentrated blows
– against London, Coventry, Glasgow, Belfast, Plymouth, Birmingham and other
centres – that caused havoc and destruction to an extent never witnessed in
Britain before. To those under the bombs this certainly did not seem like an
air force too feeble to prevail. No city or country had ever been subjected to
the level of aerial bombardment experienced by Britain in these months. In this
sense those in charge of Home Security were only being prudent in their
attempts to test the daily ‘morale’ of the people. Their methods might appear
amateurish today but there seems little doubt that the overall tenor of the
reports must have given some comfort to those in authority. Panic at times was
reported; there was some looting; defeatist talk was occasionally expressed.
But the solidarity of the population was no myth. Most carried on with their
lives as best they could. After the constant series of reverses that marked the
first part of the year, the ordeal suffered by the British might have been the
last straw. That it came nowhere close to delivering a knock-out blow says much
about the resolution of a determined people. They had accepted Churchill’s
proposition that this war had to be fought to the end. Indeed, there was some
concern that the government might fall below this level of resolve. Churchill’s
presence in the bombed cities reassured them that this would not be the case,
as did his assurances that when the time came Nazi Germany would receive a
greater measure of destruction than had been meted out to Britain. He was as
good as his word.
