Interactive London Blitz Map

[Agaricus bisporus]

Bomb Sight - Mapping the World War 2 London Blitz Bomb Census (http://www.bombsight.org)

Incredible...

[Kitbag]

Superb piece of work, and very scary.
My mother was there as a child but never spoke about it.

[Wander00]

My Dad was in the Fire Brigade in Pinner but spent a lot of time in central London - was in the City for the May 41 blitz. saw a few photos but he spke liitle of it. Mum used to put out incendiarieS that fell in Eastcote. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things

[gruntie]

Hmmmmm....it was actually worse. It seems this was only 9 months or so of the Blitz: there were a lot of incendiaries, land-mines, V1s and V2s etc that are not even marked. There are parts of suburban London I remember from a decade or so later that had all sorts of gaps etc in the houses that are not mentioned here.

[Limeygal]

It's a wonder any of London was left standing. Checked my parent's house. I was always told some shrapnel brought the roof down, but don't see anything close enough to have caused that-mm, Mum telling porkies I fear. :hmm:

[aviate1138]

Limeygal " Mum telling porkies I fear"

Superb map but it only covers a short period. Mum probably wasn't telling porkies!

I see the September 4th [1940] raid on Vickers Armstrong's at Brooklands was too early to

be included. My old man was building Wellingtons when the bombs fell. Not a scratch to him

but many died close by. He never mentioned it as I grew up......

Would love to know if there is a V-1 plot for the area covered in the Bomb Census.

[Penny Washers]

I must say, I was impressed by the clustering of the bombs on to valid military targets - e.g. the City of London, and the docklands. I know there was a lot of scatter, but I don't think that at that time we could properly say that the bombing was indiscriminate.

But perhaps the map is not totally accurate. There seem to have been very few bombs falling into the water. Not worth recording at the time, I suppose.

[Wander00]

My parents often talked about a bomb nearby that shook a piece of the coving on the sitting room ceiling. From the plot I can now see where that bomb fell. Oddly, they could never get a repair to that piece of coving to "stick". And surprising how many bombs fell in the outskirts - my parents were in Eastcote - almost "out" of W London.

[D120A]

What is interesting is that out in the suburbs, where the density of the bomb-fall was lower, some of the red dots are in a line and are therefore very likely to be part of the same stick. And sometimes there is a space in the line, perhaps indicating one that didn't explode?

I think if I lived in a house on such a space I would be inviting my friends in the Royal Engineers for tea and stickies, in return for deploying some of their sensitive instruments so that a few readings could be obtained while we all had a cuppa...

[Wander00]

D120A - Now there is a thought!

[cuefaye]

I was at a Blitz in London only two days ago :)

[WHBM]

And surprising how many bombs fell in the outskirts.
There was a considerable amount of disinformation and false signals put out to try and divert the bombs away from urban centres.

V2 rocket attacks were consistently reported in the press to be north/west of their actual position, to make the Germans via their agents believe they were overshooting their targets and resetting the guidance, so in practice they commonlyy fell short, in Kent.

[parabellum]

Bombs dropped away from the target area were also dropped by aircraft that had been shot up and were going to try and get home, or to France, at least so the just dumped them, which explains bombs dropped in the most unlikely places. A gap in a stick could also indicate a 'hang-up'!:(

[500N]

gruntie

"there were a lot of incendiaries, land-mines, V1s and V2s etc that are not even marked. There are parts of suburban London I remember from a decade or so later that had all sorts of gaps etc in the houses that are not mentioned here."

I agree.

I looked at my grandmothers old house in Croydon
and know one of the houses behind here was flattened.

Plus Croydon had one of the highest V1 bombs yet it
doesn't really show this.

[Wander00]

But V1 s and V2s were later in the war - this mapping shows only to mid 1941

[Lancman]

Exactly in the centre of Kew Bridge there is shrapnel damage equally distributed to both of the retaining walls along the pavements. A pretty accurate bomb release. It's as well that the bridge is made of solid Cornish granite.

[pasir]

Havnt studied the map in depth but does seem to be a remarkable achievement. Inevitably there will be some missing areas of bomb fall
such as one that seems lost to memory and seems to have been unrecorded that fell in Ross Parade Wallington - although cannot guarantee it occurred during the dates outlined - As a child I can recall it was during one of the periods in the war where we mostly slept in the Anderson shelter during heavy raids. This even stands out in my memory as a young schoolfriend whose flat over the shop I had visited was killed in the raid when the bomb scored a direct hit on their Anderson shelter.
Would be interesting to know if any others have knowledge of this
particular event.

[Slasher]

Just to put the map in a 1940 perspective -


rH4Ibru7BTY

A neighbour in Adelaide who lived through the Blitz when he was 20 told me
a great deal of life in London during 1940 before during and after. Fortunately
I wrote down virtually everything he said and I still have the food coupons he
gave me shortly before he died.

Sorry for the intrusion.

[Kiltrash]

Bloody hell that explains why my flat on the Seven Sisters road was a built in 1950 when on both sides the houses were Victorian#
Always suspected

[Cremeegg]

Great piece of work but I doubt its accuracy. A stick of bombs fell locally and are shown on local bomb records as being in a field near the house. In times of heavy rain the craters can still be seen as foot deep puddles. This map shows them straight through the house whereas they were about 100 metres away.

[sisemen]

More interesting stuff here: http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/502845-targetting-how-effective-your-bomb-aiming.html

[reynoldsno1]

Lived in a flat in a Victorian house in Abbey Wood in 1980 - looks as though there was a bomb in the back garden ....:uhoh: