The Blitz

A detailed Summary of The Blitz

In September of 1940 through May of 1941 there was a strategic bombing attack that was lead by the Germans targeted towards London and other cities located in England, this was known as The Blitz. The Germans aimed the bombs mostly at populated cities, dock yards, and factories. The bombing on London began on September 7, 1940 and lasted for 57 consecutive nights. During these nights of bombing people took shelter in warehouse basements, and in underground subway stations with no privacy and poor sanitation facilities. British radar, detected the huge formation, the Observer Corps started to count the mass of German bombers in the sky, then came a warning call, "One hundred plus bandits approaching..." Fighter Command could do nothing but scramble all twenty two squadrons around London and they vectored towards Thames Haven and Tilbury. "......all we could see was row upon row of German raiders heading for London. I have never seen so many aircraft in the air all at the same time.....The escorting fighters saw us at once and came down like a ton of bricks, when the squadron split up and the sky became a seething cauldron of aeroplanes, swooping and swerving in and out of the vapour trails and tracer smoke. A Hurri

cane on fire spun out of control ahead of me while above to my right, a 110 flashed across my vision and disappeared into the fog of the battle before I could draw a bead on it. Everyone was shouting at once and the earphones became filled with a meaningless cacophony of jumbled noises. Everything became a maelstrom of jumbled impression - a Dornier spinning wildly with part of its port mainplane missing; black streaks of tracer ahead, when I put my arm up to shield my face; taking a breather when the haze absorbed me for a moment....." 1 The main reason for all of this bombing was to break up the morale of the British people so Hitler could pressure Churchill into negotiating. To Hitler's surprise the bombing had an opposite effect. The bombing actually brought the English people together. "Between five and six o'clock on the evening of Saturday 7th September, some 320 German bombers supported by over 600 fighters flew up the Thames and proceeded to bomb Woolwich Arsenal, Beckton gas Works, a large number of docks, West Ham Power Station, and then the city, Westminster and Kensington. They succeeded in causing a serious fire situation in the docks. An area about 11/2 square miles between North Woolwich Road and the Thames was almost destroyed, and the population of Silvertown was surrounded by fire and had to be evacuated by water. At 8.10pm some 250 bombers resumed the attack which was maintained until 4.30 on Sunday morning. They caused 9 conflagrations, 59 large fires, and nearly 1,000 lesser fires. Three main line railway t

Some common words found in the essay are:
Road Thames, Haven Tilbury, Blitz London, According Duxford's, London September, Observer Corps, BLITZ September, Westminster Kensington, Northern Ireland, Pauls Cathedral, german bombers, seriously injured, bang bang, day bombing, nights bombing, consecutive nights, persons killed, september 7,

Approximate Word count = 1036
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History