A Heinkel III flying over the Isle of Dogs, London, during the Battle of Britain, 1940 (C5422)

Blitz, the German word for lightning, was applied by the British press to the tempest of heavy and frequent bombing raids carried out over Great Britain, particularly over London and other major cities, in 1940 and 1941.

Concentrated direct bombing of industrial targets and civilian centres began on 7 September 1940 with heavy raids on London. The scale of the attack rapidly escalated, as the German Air Force dropped 5,300 tons of high explosives on the capital in twenty-four nights in September alone.

In their efforts to 'soften up' the British population and to destroy morale before the planned invasion, German planes extended their targets to include the major coastal ports and centres of production and supply.

The remains of Coventry Cathedral, 17 November 1940 (SG14860)

The infamous raid of 14 November 1940 on Coventry brought a still worse twist to the campaign when 500 German bombers dropped 500 tons of explosives and nearly 900 incendiary bombs in ten hours of unrelenting bombardment, a tactic later emulated on an even greater scale by the RAF in their attacks on German cities.

The British population had been warned in September 1939 that air attacks on cities were likely and civil defence preparations had been started some time before, both on a national and a local level. Simple corrugated steel Anderson shelters, covered over by earth, were dug into gardens up and down the country. Larger civic shelters built of brick and concrete were erected in British towns and a blackout was rigorously enforced after darkness.

Shelters

Sheltering in the Elephant and Castle tube station, London (D1568)

Soon the night raids became so frequent that they were practically continuous and many people, tired of repeatedly interrupting their sleep to go back and forth to the street shelters, virtually took up residence in a particular one, giving rise to a new spirit of solidarity and community.

Londoners took what seemed to them an obvious and sensible solution to the problem and moved down in their thousands into the Tube stations. At first actively discouraged by the government, this popular action held sway and it was a common sight for a traveller on the underground in wartime London to pass through a station crowded with the sleeping bodies of men, women and children, the platforms piled high with their belongings.

The main air offensive against British cities diminished after May 1941 with the change of direction of the German war machine towards Russia, though sporadic and lethal raids, using increasingly larger bombs, continued for several more years.