Bombs dropped during the Blitz

[NARSES2]

This was in my local paper and for a Londoner who grew up playing on bomb sites it's fascinating. I'm just amazed how many bombs dropped in the Crystal Palace area.

http://www.bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900

[zenrat]

Interesting.
Not easy to search though unless you know the geography.

[kitnut617]

There was a news blurb over here only a couple of weeks ago about the airport by the Thames being closed down and the area evacuated because a 1000lber was found near the airport

[lenny100]

try this only covers london but  WOW      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2243951/The-astonishing-interactive-map-EVERY-bomb-dropped-London-Blitz.html

[Old Wombat]

try this only covers london but  WOW      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2243951/The-astonishing-interactive-map-EVERY-bomb-dropped-London-Blitz.html

Same map as in Chris' link (below).

This was in my local paper and for a Londoner who grew up playing on bomb sites it's fascinating. I'm just amazed how many bombs dropped in the Crystal Palace area.

http://www.bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900

[Martin H]

I spotted five hits within spitting distance of my Grandparents old house in Greenwich. I knew about one of em before seeing this, the others are new to me.

[NARSES2]

Interesting.
Not easy to search though unless you know the geography.

Very much so. I struggled a bit and I know the geography, certainly south of the Thames anyway. It just confirmed some things I knew and taught me some things I didn't  It's amazing how many hits Upper Norwood, where I live, had. No strategic targets around here I can think of. Also the area where I was born in Croydon was badly hit, but that had all the industries associated with the old airport so was "fair game" so to speak.

Be interesting to see if they expand it to include the latter raids and then the V1 and V2 hits. I'm certain our favourite playground as kids was a V1 hit.

I've seen a WWI version of this as well in a book, not on line unfortunately. And one Zepelin pilot followed the A23 up from Brighton to London dropping a bomb every few miles or so. Just as accurate as some of these 

[Nick]

The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps is a very good book on this topic, saw it in Stanfords last week.

They used Ordnance Survey 25 Inch mapping from 1916 which shows the outlines of all the buildings and street names (even some that had been removed by then). They then coloured in each building that was deemed to be damaged by a bomb or missile.
The colour codes related to the level of damage such as mild (windows out), severe (roof off) and destroyed.

Where the explosion was caused by a V1 or V2 they drew a circle showing the exact point of hit and how large it was.

[zenrat]

Interesting.
Not easy to search though unless you know the geography.

Very much so. I struggled a bit and I know the geography, certainly south of the Thames anyway. It just confirmed some things I knew and taught me some things I didn't  It's amazing how many hits Upper Norwood, where I live, had. No strategic targets around here I can think of. Also the area where I was born in Croydon was badly hit, but that had all the industries associated with the old airport so was "fair game" so to speak.

Be interesting to see if they expand it to include the latter raids and then the V1 and V2 hits. I'm certain our favourite playground as kids was a V1 hit.

I've seen a WWI version of this as well in a book, not on line unfortunately. And one Zepelin pilot followed the A23 up from Brighton to London dropping a bomb every few miles or so. Just as accurate as some of these 

Yes.  I'd like to see V2 hits as my Dad likes to tell us how Hitler specifically tried to get him with one that landed down the road.
I eventually found the street but there were no close bombs. 
It didn't help that what was always described as Sidcup turned out to be Blackfen.  I suspect that was my Grandmother being upwardly mobile.

[NARSES2]

It didn't help that what was always described as Sidcup turned out to be Blackfen.  I suspect that was my Grandmother being upwardly mobile.

Yup a bit like Battersea being called South Chelsea by some estate agents 

If you can't find the hit, don't forget this map is not the complete story by any means, just the "Blitz".

I was told a few things as a kid, and indeed saw the results with my own eyes and they are not on this map.

[PR19_Kit]

If you can't find the hit, don't forget this map is not the complete story by any means, just the "Blitz".

I was told a few things as a kid, and indeed saw the results with my own eyes and they are not on this map.

So it seems. There was one that dropped right opposite my Nanna's house in Chatsworth Rd. Croydon, which levelled a big house there , but only blew out our windows, and its not on the map.

As I can remember it happening, it must have been a late war hit and run raid, it certainly wasn't big enough for a V1 or V2 or I wouldn't be writing this! 

[Weaver]

Got a few stories from the Manchester Blitz. We're in Stockport, but we'd occasionally get hit when bombers navigating along the rivers Goyt or Mersey thought they saw a built-up area and dropped too soon. The town centre also had the Fairey and Crossley works, so it was sometimes targeted directly.

One night, my mum was running down the path with her baby brother in her arms to the Anderson shelter when something dropped at her heels with an almighty clang. It was a ladder-shaped metal device subsequently identified as a bomb-rack from a German plane. It missed her by inches. I remember that the crack in the path that it made was still there when I was a kid, and I can still point out the concrete repair that eventually replaced it.

Another night, German planes dropped incendialy bombs all over the Goyt Valley behind our house. Nowadays that would set a dense woodland on fire and create quite some risk, but in those days it was an open grass slope so nothing much happened. The bomb tails were a tube with three fins that would stand upright, so in the morning, my uncle and his mate gathered up over a hundred of them, snuck them into Fairey's factory when he worked, put them through the chroming plant as a foreigner and sold them as candle-sticks! I'm told we had a pair on the fireplace here until the late 1960s, when grandma threw them out in a fit of 'modernisation'.

An unexploded bomb fell at the bottom of the hill (about 200 yards from my house) and buried itself in the road. The road was closed while Bomb Disposal arrived, but in the meantime, an ambulance arrived at the barricade. The ambulance was driven by an 18 year old girl and had a man in the back who would die if he didn't get to hospital immediately. When the situation was explained to her, the driver volunteered to drive her ambulance very slowly right past the bomb, close enough to have killed her instantly had it gone off, in order to give her patient a chance. It worked, and he got to hospital in time to save his life. I've no idea if she got any kind of award for her bravery, but she certainly should have!

An He 111 was hit by flak over Manchester one night, and drifted over Stockport, on fire, with it's pilot fighting to keep the plane in level flight while his crew baled out. There's a little story along his route from every point where a crewman landed. His problem then was that he couldn't keep the aircraft flying straight and bale out himself at the same time, so he elected to make a crash landing on the golf course just down the road. My mum saw it go over our house leaving a trail of fire and sparks behind it. A local farmer named Johnny Holland went out with his shotgun and took him prisoner. The pilot offered no resistance: he was only a young lad, white as a sheet, shaking (clearly in shock) and he'd messed his pants. Johnny took pity on him and walked him back to the farmhouse, where he and his wife cleaned him up and sat him down by the fire with a mug of cocoa. When the police arrived to take him away, they let him finish his drink first. As they were leaving, the pilot burst into tears and explained that he couldn't believe how well he'd been treated. Apparently he'd been told all sorts of dire tales about what would happen if he was shot down and captured.

Stockport is built on a series of sandstone hills, and there have always been tunnels in the rocks underneath it. There were greatly expanded during the war to provide the town with some of the safest air-raid shelters in the region, so much so that some people from Manchester would travel here to spend the night in them. After the war they were sealed up to prevent kids playing in them or used for council storage. However in 1989, the biggest one was opened up again as a tourist attraction, since it proved to have many perfectly preserved wartime artifacts in it. Us bikers were a bit miffed at the time though: the area in front of the old doors, now the visitors' centre, was one of our favorite free parking spots!

Good article on the tunnels: https://web.archive.org/web/20090427083107/http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=265602590&blogId=475929653

[PR19_Kit]

LOVE the story of the chrome plated bomb tails! 

[NARSES2]

So it seems. There was one that dropped right opposite my Nanna's house in Chatsworth Rd. Croydon, which levelled a big house there , but only blew out our windows, and its not on the map.

I had my 50th in the Chatsworth Club, small world.

Mum and dad always told a story of just missing a train at Newcastle and the subsequent train they were on got stuck outside Kings Cross for a few hours. When they eventually got in the platform was full of stretchers. The train they'd missed had taken a direct hit ! Fate or what ?

My dad's dad was in the ARP during WWII (East Surrey's WWI) and apparently one night after a heavy raid he didn't get home until the day afterwards. When my gran asked him why he'd been away for almost 36 hours his reply (suitably cleaned up) was "flippin' Luftwaffe. We spent all night sorting the bodies out in the morgue and then the B's bombed it. had to do it all again" . I think he was down the pub