What was life like during the Blitz

One of the biggest advancements in military technology during the First World War was airplanes. These new flying machines were able to quickly travel across difficult terrain and survey the battlefield like never before, but they still weren’t effective enough to make a difference in the war. The fastest among them had top speeds around 100 mph, but the average was closer to 50 mph, and could normally fly for less than 3 hours before needing to refuel.

(A common sight for anyone living in a city during the Blitz)

After WWI ended, airplane technology was one of the best-funded areas of research for many countries and by the time the Second World War broke out, planes were more advanced than ever before and much more capable. They were now able to carry several tons of explosives, fly much faster, and stay in the air for long enough to reach Britain and return home.

The only threat civilians in Britain had from air attacks during WW1 was from zeppelins, a large balloon-type craft that had propellors on the back and sides to move them forward. These were very slow and made easy targets, but could stay in the air for long enough to drop bombs and return home again.

There were 52 Zeppelin raids on Britain throughout WWI, and they managed to cause 556 confirmed deaths and injure over 1000 people. This may sound like a large amount but for an entire country throughout the whole war, this is a relatively low figure.

By the time the Second World War broke out in 1939, aircraft were so advanced that they became one of the most important weapons a nation had. Over the course of the war, Britain saw over 40,000 civilian deaths from air attacks, over half of which happened in the capital during a period of heavy bombing that became known as “The Blitz”. But what was life like during the Blitz and how did people survive this difficult time?

(Part of the city of Birmingham the day after a bombing raid)

What exactly was “The Blitz”?

Between 7 Sept 1940 and 11 May 1941, the German air force, called the Luftwaffe, launched a huge bombing campaign across most of mainland Britain. This was apparently in response to a nighttime bombing raid the British previously carried out on Berlin and was ordered by Hitler himself.

The word Blitz means lightning and was taken from their ground tactics known as Blitzkrieg, which means lightning war. The almost constant and rapid air attacks on Britain between 7 Sept 1940 and 11 May 1941 was the heaviest period of bombing throughout the war, which earned it its own special name.

The goal of this bombing campaign was to cripple the British empire and stop it from being able to make new weapons and vehicles, but there was also plenty of retaliation bombing involved in the blitz. Luftwaffe pilots were regularly ordered to bomb a city, often with a mix of high-explosive and incendiary bombs, to burn down anything they couldn’t blow up.

Around half of the 40,000 civilians who lost their lives in the Blitz died in London, which was hit harder than any other city in the country after Hull. Not only was it the capital of Britain, but it was also the nearest and most populated major city to mainland Europe.

(People hiding in the London Underground tunnels with wardens trying to control to panic)

How much danger were you in during the Blitz?

This would depend entirely on which city you were in. If you lived in either London or Hull, the threat would have been much higher, but there were major bombings in 15 cities across Britain, affecting most of the population. There were two very important things you needed to know when it came to an air attack, which were how to recognize the sound of an air raid siren, and then what to do when you heard it.

One of the biggest problems for people living in a city was that you never knew where the bombs would drop. Luftwaffe intelligence wasn’t the best, and planes would often drop bombs in the wrong areas or release them too high so they missed. This meant that it wasn’t important where you lived within a city, there was always a very real chance that you could be bombed. The threat of any building or home being on the list of targets caused the entire country to fear for their children and loved ones, so the government introduced something new to deal with this danger.

(For certain cities, scenes like this would be seen several times a week)

Operation Pied Piper

In credit to the British government, they not only saw the potential threat from the air before it happened but also made every effort to protect the country’s most vulnerable. Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, but 2 days earlier the British government initiated Operation Pied Piper. This operation was named after the children’s story of the pied piper who led millions of rats out of the city by playing music on a flute.

(Scenes like this were the main reason people sent their children away, luckily they weren’t in the house when it bombed)

The intention was to send hundreds of thousands of children out of the cities to live in quiet areas around the country. In total, there were over 1.5 million people who were evacuated from the cities and danger zones, of which around 800,000 were children.

Most of the adults involved in the program were pregnant mothers, or mothers looking after several children who could be relocated somewhere together. As for the children, they were often sent somewhere alone, or housed with other children they did not know.

The places they were sent to were either remote farms and country houses or small and isolated villages the Luftwaffe had no need to bomb. The initial sending away of the children was the worst part of the experience for most, as hundreds of crying mothers would line train station platforms waving goodbye to their children for an unknown amount of time.

The Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB)

This was the more extreme version of sending your children to the countryside. This program was set up to send children overseas, mostly to relatives but often to families who were willing to accept someone. CORB evacuated a total of 2,664 children during the war to several overseas countries, including 1,532 to Canada, 577 to Australia, 202 to New Zealand, 838 to the US, and 353 to South Africa.

(The SS City of Benares, the last CORB voyage to move children overseas)

The Final voyage of a CORB ship

The main ship used in the CORB program was called the SS City of Benares and was an unarmed transport ship. It made dozens of voyages during the early months of the war, but the ship and the program itself came to a halt on 17 September 1940. The ship had left Liverpool in England a week earlier and was heading west across the Atlantic, bound for Montreal in Canada with 408 people on board, 90 of which were children in the relocation program, all aged between 5 and 15.

At 10 pm on 17 September, the convoy the SS City of Benares was part of was sighted by U boat 48, a type of German submarine that would hunt transport ships. Because the convoy was being escorted by several warships, it was likely the U-boat thought the unarmed transport ship was carrying something valuable to the war effort, and so the captain launched 2 torpedoes towards her. Both of them missed but the submarine repositioned and fired a third torpedo, which struck the stern of the ship at 10:03 pm, causing her to sink in 31 minutes.

The ship went down 630 miles from the nearest inhabited island, but fortunately, the other ships in the convoy were there to pick up any survivors. Out of the 408 people on board the ship, 258 lost their lives from the initial explosion and sinking. Of the 90 children on the ship who were being relocated in the CORB program, 77 of them died in the attack, along with dozens of other women and children who were on the ship as paying customers or crew.

The loss of life from a single ship sinking was bad enough, but when it comes to bad news, nothing hits harder than the loss of women and children. The program to relocate children overseas was scrapped and deemed too dangerous, especially since the attack was committed by a U-boat whose attacks had been increasing rapidly.

The Hull Blitz

The term “The Blitz” was the name given the the bombing campaign against the entire country, but nowhere in Britain had it worse than Hull. This city had around 95% of its houses destroyed or damaged, with an equal amount of its infrastructure and industrial buildings affected.

The reason this city was hit worse than the others was because it was designated as the missed payload or unfound target city for the Luftwaffe. This meant that when a German pilot couldn’t find his primary target, or he had bombs left over for whatever reason, they were ordered to drop them on the coastal and easy-to-find city of Hull before returning home.

The city is located close to the coast on the north side of the Humber estuary, a massive inlet that’s so big, that German pilots could see it from the air and easily locate the city. Because the Luftwaffe’s intelligence on Britain was so bad, hundreds of pilots either missed their initial targets or had leftover bombs they dropped on Hull. The city was also the target of numerous direct bombing campaigns because of its large docks and ship-building capabilities, making it the single most dangerous city to be in Britain during the Blitz.

The air raid siren and public shelters

Communication during the early 1940’s was restricted to one-way radios for most people. Very few households had phones, and there was no such thing as mobiles, texting, or anything past public radio and newspapers. There was simply no way to warn the public quickly enough of an air raid with what the country already had, so the military invented their own version of the siren, powered with an electric motor and louder than ever before.

(Thick beams of light cutting through the dark from lights like these would only add to the amount of panic when a siren went off)

These sirens made a very distinctive noise and when placed in an elevated position were able to be heard over 15 miles away. Versions were made powered by a hand crank so electricity didn’t have to be relied on, and they were placed strategically around the cities so their sound could be heard on every street.

Everyone got used to the very distinct sound of the siren very quickly and knew exactly what it meant, but it was also only the warning and not the solution. When the siren was heard, the safest thing you could do was to get underground and away from anything large that could collapse and bury you. For people in the bigger cities, this would involve finding an underground train tunnel or designated shelter, but there simply wasn’t enough space to hide an entire city’s population.

the most popular place to go was anywhere with an underground train system, and the largest in the country was in London. Throughout the war, thousands of beds were brought into the tunnels, and parts were converted to act as kitchens and infirmaries, but these shelters were only temporary. During a bombing run, it was the intention of the attackers to cause as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible, and escape before the defending fighters had a chance to take off and reach them. Because of this, air raids didn’t normally last for more than a few hours, with some of the worst ones causing people to take cover for an entire day.

Homemade shelters

There simply wasn’t enough room in the already-built underground spaces to house everyone, so the government advised people on how to build their own shelters. The most common design for a homemade bomb shelter in Britain was called the Anderson Shelter, and plans were given out by the government along with where to find the supplies to build them.

(An Anderson shelter right in the middle of a city, but people often had no choice but to put them so close to buildings that could collapse on them)

Most families built them at the bottom of their gardens, which was the advised place to avoid any buildings collapsing on them. They were nothing more than corrugated metal sheeting supported by planks that would cover a small dugout space several feet into the ground, but they were strong enough to survive nearby blasts and debris raining down from explosions.

What was life like during the Blitz for the average person?

Any civilian who was able was expected to find a job, and unemployment dropped to an all-time low during the war because of the extra manpower needed to run the factories. This meant that life would exist in a normal way, and people would go about their lives but with the constant psychological threat of knowing that at any moment a screeching sound would send fear into the hearts of an entire city. No matter what you were doing or where you were, at any moment you’d have to drop everything and hope you were near something to use as protection from the coming bombs.

(People going to work and about their daily lives through the rubble of their city)

It would be difficult to see the ruined buildings across the entire city and always smell the charred remains of what used to be someone’s house. People could lose everything they had in a single explosion, returning from their shelters after the raid to find their house and all their possessions were now nothing more than ash and rubble.

Out of the estimated 40,000 deaths across Britain during the Blitz, around half of these happened in the city of London. It would be a common sight to see dead bodies being collected from the ruins, and your life could completely change with every explosion. People wouldn’t just lose those they loved, but could also return from a shelter to find their children’s school or the factory they work in no longer exists.

Blackouts

If the air raid siren wasn’t going off then life would operate as normal, but with the addition of the new blackout rules. Aircraft didn’t have cameras or advanced lenses and sensor equipment to determine the best place to drop their bombs, and accuracy involved a pilot looking out the window to tell where he was. The night was the best time to attack a town or city because all the street and houselights would stand out like a beacon.

To combat this, blackout rules were brought in and people had restrictions on when they could use lights, or at least have them showing from outside. Windows had to be covered so no light at all could escape, and to help with this the government started to produce blackout paper, a thick roll of black paper used to cover windows from the inside.

Vehicles weren’t allowed to use their headlights during blackout hours and this led to a huge increase in the amount of accidents, with the peak being over 9,000 deaths in 1940 alone across the whole country.

Wardens were hired to make sure people followed the rules, and this often led to fines and rarely short prison terms for those who refused to follow them. Apart from traveling on the roads during a blackout being very dangerous, life inside the home would have carried on the same as it always did, but without the ability to see outside.