The Blitz

Imagine this scene: You're on Piccadilly road, in London, the year and month is November 19th, 1940. You can hear Christmas music, see children looking at toys and other possible presents in store windows, and smell the smell of Christmas foods and drinks as a peddler walks by with his cart. Suddenly, you hear a wailing sound and suddenly see everyone running towards shleter, in the tubes or a bomb shelter, as you hear deafening exploisions and the sounds of bricks crashing on streets nearby and windows shattering, you are filled with adrenaline and run with a small crowd of people towards the famous undergroud sign. You look back and see a huge block of bricks smash where you were just walking, and then, all at once a cloud of black smoke obstructs the view of the street. You finally enter the shelter, the lights flickering on and off, explosions coming ever closer. You silently pray along with everyone else that you and everyone around you would make it through the attack. A bomb explodes less than 100 feet from the shelter, the closest yet. The air raid sirens still wail, and you hear children crying in the shelter. This goes on for the next 45 minutes, with the lights finally being put out by another close bomb, which you can feel the shockwave of. Then, after almost an hour, the sirens stop. When you finally exit the shelter, you see smoke rising from the rubble, and most of the windows of stores and buildings are blown out. The desrtroyed bulidings rise above the ground like spires, hardly anything left. You can hear people crying in the distance, and you see your Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, walking through the rubble, surveying the damage with his aides. You then hear the sound of your own Spitfires and Hurricanes engaging the He-111 bombers, and the sound of gunfire. More explosions, very distant. You're thankful to survive another attack, with the entire shelter. 

This was the average scene in cities across England during the Blitz. Of course, some details could be more graphic, but for these purposes it's not necessary.

This isn't an account taken from history, I simply wrote it from knowledge of the Blitz. I don't know if Piccadilly was bombed on November 19th, 1940, and I don't think it was destroyed as bad as I have depicted, but many British cities were almost leveled because of the bombings. 

Today, September 7th, 2020, is the 80th anniversary of the start of the Blitz. I'll write a follow-up article about it on the 80th anniversary of the end of the Blitz when it comes time.

Now, I'll write a short history of it.

Germany had bombed the RAF(Royal Air Force) bases for quite some time by now, with little effect. Hermann Goring, the head of the Luftwaffe, or German Air Force, decided to start bombing cities instead of just military installations, hoping to crush morale, a tactic referred to as "fear-bombing" like he had done with smaller European countries, like Belgium and Poland. However, with England, they had nothing to lose because of it, and morale seeed to increase, along with the desire for revenge. Winston Churchill refused to leave his office in London during the London Blitz, which also increased morale for the British. He had a bunker-like office and war room, which the British Army had reinforced with steel and concrete, and he stayed there the duration of the attacks. Immediately after the attacks were over, he exited the bunker and appeared before the people of London, surveying the damage with his aides, as I have depicted in the story above. 

Germany used their main medium bomber, called the Heinkel He-111, was originally built under the guise that it was a civil airliner, due to restrictions on Germany after WWI. It was only lightly armored, which was its downfall in the Battle of Britain, but it wasn't necessary for the Blitz, because the RAF couldn't always scramble fighters in time.  This wasn't the case with the Battle of Britain, which happened during the Blitz, because the Geran planes were eventually thwarted then, Goring losing the Battle of Britain and keeping his planes on the mainland to eventually attempt to defend the borders... That worked well...

If you look at the home page of the History Guys, you'll see an image of one of the war rooms in Churchill's London bunker.

Enjoy!