London Blitz bomb web map a hit-and-miss affair
Last week a fanfare of press trumpets heralded the launch of Bomb Sight, an online map showing just where Luftwaffe bombs fell on London during the Blitz from October 1940 to June 1941. The Bomb Sight team from the University of Portsmouth "geo-referenced" the Bomb Census Survey maps held at The National Archives and "digitally …
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Re: We were mislead by the authorities!
Copper did his job, then, as far as I'm concerned.
Eliminated panic, through a show of almost-certainly-deliberate ignorance, to reassure an old lady who would have been in constant fear every time the sirens went off ABOVE AND BEYOND what she already would have been experiencing, for a problem neither she nor anybody else could actually do anything about.
Every time there's a lightning storm, my dad, brother and I would sit and talk about the physics of it and how with the various traits of lightning strikes and electricity there was nothing to worry about. Because my mum is petrified of them and will literally hide under the stairs when they are large enough storms. I'm not saying we're lying, there's no way we can *guarantee* she'll be safe, but the little bit of reassurance and our confident fronts mean that she starts to believe it for long enough that she doesn't panic and end up evicting the cat from its hiding place to cower there herself.
Pity, really, that that sort of old fashioned policing has gone the way of the dodo.
Re: We were mislead by the authorities!
A gasometer is a meter and would not explode. A "gasHOLDER" now!
A gasometer is a meter
@ arborlinden: No mate, it isn't. From wiki:
A gas holder (commonly known as a gasometer, sometimes also gas bell, though that term applies to the gas holding envelope alone) is a large container in which natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures. The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressure coming from the weight of a movable cap. Typical volumes for large gasholders are about 50,000 cubic metres, with 60 metre diameter structures.
@ Lee Dowling: 100% agree with the copper comment, he did precisely the right thing. It's the gullibility of my Grandma (who was 33 in 1940 so not an old lady) that's the point of the yarn!
Re: A gasometer is a meter
Wiki is correct in saying that a gasholder is commonly known as a gasometer by the same ignorant people who say "anythink" instead of anything and who presumably edit Wiki. Please please take my advice and never quote Wiki as an authority on anything except in proving that "ignorance is bliss"
Re: A gasometer is a meter
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/gasometer
Now fuck off
Re: We were mislead by the authorities!
(Big blast icon to indicate what would actually have happened as a result of a direct hit on the gasometer...),
Not at all. The gas/air mix wouldn't be suitable for an explosion. For proof you might want to investigate the heroes of the IRA, who made a couple of largely futile attacks against gas holders, for example in Warrington. Having failed in that they hid bombs in litter bins in Warrington town centre and killed a couple of children.
Re: We were mislead by the authorities!
Then why did the Pittsburgh gasometer explosion of 1927 happen? The IRA muppets bodged the Warrington gasworks bombing because they tried to bomb a pressure vessel and a water-tank, not a gasometer which is a low pressure storage device. From the Independent:
"The active service unit travelled to the site, bombs primed, in a van police sources described as a 'shed'. One of the bombs was planted against a water tank. Another failed to breach the skin of a high-pressure gas tank."
Bounds Green tube
No mention. Bomb fell across the street. Not there. Loads died.
V1 Survey
One of the odder things I have come across was a set of reports on each V1 strike in the London area. Quite fascinating to read. Each report had a hand drawn map, descriptions of the buildings, surrounding area, damage, and casualties (to include even the pets).
Re: V1 Survey
The V2 was the scary one - it travelled so fast that you had no warning before it struck. At first the British government kept their existence secret to prevent panic, even blaming one particularly destructive V2 strike on a gas leak.
My Nan's house took a direct hit, with the family in the shelter in the garden. Apparently she spent about the first hour afterwards asking the fire brigade whether they wouldn't mind going into the unstable rubble to rescue a rather nice pair of chops (with kidney attached) from the kitchen table that she'd got for her and my Grandad's tea. She then spent the next while accusing the firemen of stealing them... I guess blast and shock do funny things to you. She was particularly miffed because those were rather hard to get hold of under rationing.
Then they had to dig the shelter up again that they'd only just buried, and move it to their parent's place.
Nan used to complain about how much she'd been looking forward to that chop, and how Hitler had blown up all her new saucepans. Another reason she wasn't his number one fan...
What a marvellous psychology. She should be applauded. You can't do anything about the Germans dropping bombs on you in the middle of a war, but you can damn well make sure you get your chops back and have some tea.
Typically English, and logical, thinking. Someone, in the midst of battle, was working out how to feed her family and other mundaneness that *NOBODY ELSE* was going to sort on her behalf if she didn't do it. Good on her. There was something called "Blitz Spirit" and that was a perfect example of it, and something to be proud of. Bombs landing, houses destroyed, lives ruined, ... what's for tea, then? I can't think of a more classically British thing to be thinking.
Blast and shock? Nonsense. She was the most level-headed person in the place, and the only one thinking clearly.
It's a pity there weren't more like her, and a pity that more people aren't like that now even though we have NOWHERE NEAR the same stresses in our everyday life. Hell, people go potty if you park in their parking space now, imagine how the modern generations would survive in an era where you wouldn't know whether your house and possessions would be intact tomorrow and had little human contact beyond seeing people in the street.
What a wonderful woman.
Up vote just for this.
"Nan used to complain about how much she'd been looking forward to that chop, and how Hitler had blown up all her new saucepans. Another reason she wasn't his number one fan..."
This line alone made me smile. Forget the millions who died. I want my chops.
Re: Up vote just for this.
And NEW saucepans, the very cheek of it! ;)
Thanks for making me chuckle!
Ah, the Great British Nan - a fearsome institution!
Looking at those pictures...
London looked a lot better after the Blitz than it does now that the High Street has been taken over by betting chains and fast food outlets. Perhaps we could ask Frau Merkel to send the bombers back?
Re: Looking at those pictures...
I doubt she'll do it, she probably still has some silly romantic notions about fairness, and democracy and endless, relentless spying on the citizens :P.
Plus, I like a chick that knows the value of a good cheese trolley and isn't afraid to satisfy her appetites ;)
Reporting errors??
I saw a mistake in the data for a bomb near me and looked for somewhere to report this. Nothing doing... what a pity.
Hmm...
Be interesting to see a similar map of Coventry.
As for Dresden etc, one might argue a bit less marching into the Sudetenland, clanking through Poland, sneaking round the side of the Maginot Line and so forth and the whole mess could have been avoided, and Europe might not be as impoverished as it is. But of course then we'd get into the whole WWI peace treaty thing and yadayadayada back to Charlemagne.
But if it hadn't happened, Britain wouldn't have gone bankrupt trying to hold the line.
I was born and lived for five years in Hillfields, Coventry. I well remember the landscape of bomb sites pierced by completely soulless blocks of flats. What a view could be had from them - rubble and weeds. There was no money for clean-up or development, you see.
Most commodities were still rationed two years before I was born. My dad needed a permit for two tongue-and-groove floorboards before he could buy them. Remember that next time you are in the DIY centre. Britain's economy was wrecked by WWII, and it never recovered.
Also, if the pesky Hun hadn't mobilized with extreme prejudice, the Americans wouldn't now be able to say they came in to save the day. Don't blame the Americans for boasting, blame the buggers who pulled a knife and yelled "come on have a go if you think you're hard enough!" and provided the opportunity.
Who could ever have imagined the Boche had so many tomatoes to spare?
I can't find the bomb crater in my back garden
The map shows a high explosive bomb in my back garden or possibly mine and that of my neighbour. Bombs did fall round here - as one can see where there are 50s and 60s buildings in the middle of runs of Victorian houses. But not my immediate vicinity - and some of the trees in the alleged target area must have been planted before the 1940s and the blitz....
Re: I can't find the bomb crater in my back garden
Simply start digging, I'm sure you can find it if it's there.
Re: I can't find the bomb crater in my back garden
This is like a Viz top tip :)
Other cities
As others have mentioned, I think it would be very interesting to see equivalent maps of other cities, and particularly German ones. My mother (who was a child during the war) really won't believe that we gave as good as we got, or in fact much better. I've seen pictures of Frankfurt though, and I'm pretty sure that we did. Of course it may be that they did not record stuff as well, particularly towards the end.
Re: Other cities
From memory we lost about 40,000 people in the main 1940-41 Blitz, followed by slightly fewer from the V1s and V2s. Something around 100,000 total. The big fire-bombing raid on Tokyo killed something like 120,000 in one single night. Which (again from memory) is more than both the atomic bomb raids combined. Dresden was a similarly mind-bogglingly huge figure.
Re: Other cities
I think it would be very interesting to see equivalent maps of other cities, and particularly German ones
I doubt it would be very interesting, because by the end of the war the industrial areas of Germany had been thoroughly plastered, and you'd not see any ear that wasn't bomb damaged. And liberal use of incendiaries had extended the damage beyond where the bombs landed.
Missing data
Missing some obvious data:
http://lewishamwarmemorials.wikidot.com/memorial:hither-green-sandhurst-road-school-ww2-war-memorial
The way my grandmother used to tell it, just before the above happened the German bomber was low enough to clearly see the children waving at the aircraft.....
Re: Missing data
OK this is just an individual anecdote but I am pretty sure I heard my old man say there was some strafing of civilians going on. In Montrose, Scotland. Apart from the bombing of houses and circling chimney towers etc.
As in, planes heading down the Montrose High Street and trying to pepper as many pedestrians as possible.
Confirmed here:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/36/a2822636.shtml
Also some subsidence problems still in Aberdeen, Scotland due to bomb damage. Particularly Bedford Road, or so I was told.
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