by Norman Gelb
We never thought of the struggle in terms of the defence of London or any other place, but only who won in the air ... If the enemy had persisted in heavy attacks against the [airfields] and damaged their Operations Rooms or telephone communications, the whole intricate organization of Fighter Command might have broken down.
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Joyce Atwood
When the docks were bombed, they were devastated. Whole areas north and south of the Thames — Millwall, East India Docks, Silvertown — were so badly damaged that many of the people living there had to be moved. In our own area, South Woodford, we had people brought to us who were cared for in our church hall. They were fed and found places to sleep until they could be rehoused in more suitable accommodations.
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Daily Mail, 9 September
It would be foolish to underestimate the severity of the ordeal. It would be unfair and foolish for the British public to be allowed only to read frank accounts of the damage after they have appeared in United States newspapers. The Daily Mail urges the Ministry of Information to tell the daily story with the utmost candour consistent with national safety. For one thing, the whole truth is never so alarming as fiction, passing from mouth to mouth, bred on half-truths or a suppression of the truth. For another, the full story of the fortitude of the people who have suffered and may suffer is to our race a noble inspiration, to the world an example, and to the Nazis a bitter and ominous report.
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Lord Mayor of London
Broadcast to America
The city of London has never in her long annals been called upon to face an ordeal so cruel and so searching as that through which she has in these days been passing. Her long established traditions of safe and settled ways have been assaulted as never before, and her peaceful citizens have been subjected to the ruthless cruelty of an embittered foe bent upon her destruction. Today London stands as the very bulwark of civilization and freedom as we know it. It is the greatest responsibility that the world has ever known. It is the endurance of Londoners — that courage which they are showing — which will save the civilized people of the world.
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Edward R. Murrow, CBS Radio News
London, 10 September — We are told today that the Germans believe Londoners, after a while, will rise up and demand a new government, one that will make peace with Germany. It’s more probable that they’ll rise up and murder a few German pilots who come down by parachute. The life of a parachutist would not be worth much in the East End of London tonight.
The politicians who called this a ‘people’s war’ were right, probably more right than they knew at the time. I’ve seen some horrible sights in this city during these days and nights, but not once have I heard man, woman or child suggest that Britain should throw in her hand. These people are angry. How much they can stand, I don’t know. The strain is very great.
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Sergeant Tom Naylor
When London was being bombed, a pilot from one of the squadrons at our airfield had to bale out over east London. He came to earth in a little front garden of a house in Goresbrook Road. The first thing he saw when he disentangled himself was the door of the house opening and a large woman coming out holding a brass fireplace fender. She thought he was a Hun. There he was, in a dogfight a few minutes before, and now running down Goresbrook Road with a woman chasing him with a brass fender till he found a policeman to straighten things out.
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Flight Lieutenant Gordon Sinclair
We were in a very tight formation. Johnnie Boulton was in the section behind me. We suddenly saw all these bombers and started to break up to go after them. I was getting ready to attack a Dornier. I don’t really know what happened next. I don’t know whether I pulled the throttle back too quickly, whether I hit Johnnie or he hit me. But our wings hit. I lost a wing. Johnnie went down and was killed and I think I collided with the Dornier. I was in too much of a panic about getting out to realize exactly what was happening.
I got out and parachuted down, landing on Coulsdon High Street near Croydon, spraining my ankle landing on the edge of the pavement. I lay there rather surprised to find myself still alive. Then a toe sort of turned me over in the gutter and a chap said, ‘Good God, Gordon, what are you doing lying there?’ It was a chap I’d been at school with. He was in the Irish Guards at Caterham Barracks not far away. He’d seen a parachute coming down and was rather hoping for a German prisoner.
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War Cabinet Memorandum
Chief of the Air Staff 12 September
Prime Minister
As you are aware, there has been a considerable amount of enemy bombing of railways and termini in the London area ... The following points are apparent:
i) congestion of rolling stock now building up in marshalling yards; and
ii) most of the trouble is caused by delayed action or unexploded bombs which paralyse movement until they are blown up or removed ...
The sooner the bombs are exploded, the sooner the lines will be reopened to traffic. I have mentioned this matter to the Minister of Transport, and apparently there is a serious shortage of skilled gangs capable of dealing with these bombs.
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Daily Mail, 13 September
The lesson of the raids is this: there is no such thing as 100 percent safety. But if you are in a shelter or a protected lower room of your house, it needs a direct hit — the ‘million-to-one-shot’ — to cause death or severe injury. If even a high explosive bomb falls a foot or two from your house or your shelter, it will probably cause spectacular damage and perhaps a fire — but you will be there the next day to tell the tale.
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Harold Nicholson, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Information
Diary, 13 September
There is a great concentration of shipping and barges in France, and it is evident that the Cabinet expect invasion at any moment. A raid starts at about 11.00 a.m. I go upstairs and go on with my work. At about 12.15 I meet Walter Monckton in the passage. He whispers, ‘They have just dive-bombed Buckingham Palace, and hit it three times. The King’s safe.’ The raid continues till about 2.30. There are delayed action bombs in St James’s Park and the whole park-side of the Foreign Office has been evacuated. I cannot find any trains at all running to Kent and I have to give up going home. Another raid begins about 3.45. Bombs are dropping close to us in Howland Street and without warning. We go down to the dug-out. I then go up to the sixth floor and look over London. There is a triumphant double-rainbow circling the city and basing itself upon St Paul’s which shines in the evening sun. At 9.15 the sirens start to yell again. It is a wonderful night with a full moon. When I get back to the M of I, I start typing this and as I do so, the guns boom.
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Squadron Leader Sandy Johnstone
We feared they were going to use gas. They never did, hut it seemed a thing they might do — wait until there was a good, strong wind, let off a gas attack and then follow it up with an invasion. We carried our gas masks and had them on quite often, and we had these little anti-gas panels. They were yellow and if any chlorine gas came over, their colour was supposed to change, to red I think. They were on buildings, poles, everywhere. We used to look at them all the time. I even had one on the bonnet of my car, where I could see it through the windscreen.
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War Cabinet
Chiefs of Staff Committee, 14 September
The Committee had before them a memorandum by the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee on the possibility of the isolation of London and the paralysing of the central machinery of government by enemy airborne troops. General Sergison Brooks said that in addition to his central reserve of regular battalions, he had a number of mobile detachments of approximately 250 men round London. Their primary task was to deal with airborne landings. Of the Home Guard in London, approximately 80,000 were available and not required for guarding vulnerable points ... He mentioned that he had only twelve guns of various
types.
General Paget said that Home Force would endeavour to allocate more artillery to the London area.
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War Cabinet Memorandum
Lord President of the Council, 14 September
Serious damage has been done to particular installations, including four electricity supply stations and the Beckton plant of the Gas, Light and Coke Company. As regards both water and gas, the damage to the mains has been more serious than the damage to central installations, water mains in particular having proved more vulnerable than was expected ... Up to the present, while serious damage has been sustained by individual installations or services, nothing has happened which points to a continued impairment of essential services. But everything turns on whether we get a breathing space to repair the damage already done, or whether the rate of damage is intensified.
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Mollie Panter-Downes
London War Notes, 14 September
For Londoners, there are no longer such things as good nights; there are only bad nights, worse nights, and better nights. Hardly anyone has slept at all in the past week. The sirens go off at approximately the same time every evening, and in the poorer districts, queues of people carrying blankets, thermos flasks, and babies begin to form quite early outside air-raid shelters. The Blitzkrieg continues to be directed against such military objectives as the tired shopgirl, the red-eyed clerk, and the thousands of dazed and weary families patiently trundling their few belongings in perambulators away from the wreckage of their homes. After a few of these nights, sleep of a kind comes from complete exhaustion. The amazing part of it is the cheerfulness and fortitude with which ordinary individuals are doing their jobs under nerve-racking conditions. Girls who have taken twice the usual time to get to work look worn when they arrive, but their faces are nicely made up and they bring you a cup of tea or sell you a hat as chirpily as ever. Little shopkeepers whose windows have been blown out paste up ‘Business as Usual’ stickers and exchange cracks with their customers.
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Ralph Ingersoll
One is not in London forty-eight hours before being extremely conscious of the fact that one is living with a people who are fighting for their lives — whether they fight by sleeping uncomfortably in a shelter so that they may work again tomorrow, or fight by putting out fires or by sucking oxygen out of a mask so that they do not lose their depth perception when aiming machine-guns at high altitudes. And one feels there is a quality of indecency in the eagerness of one’s curiosity, an intrusion on something extremely personal and intimate of which one is not really a part.
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War Cabinet Minutes
ESTIMATE OF CASUALTIES IN RAIDS ON LONDON
September
Killed
Injured
7-8 Saturday-Sunday
306
1337
8-9 Sunday-Monday
286
1400
9-10 Monday-Tuesday
370
1400
10-11 Tuesday-Wednesday
18
280
11-12 Wednesday-Thursday
235
1000
12-13 Thursday-Friday
40
58
13-14 Friday-Saturday
31
224
Total
1286
5699
These figures must be regarded as approximate.
Winston Churchill
We cannot tell when they will try to come. We cannot be sure that in fact they will try at all. But no one should blind himself to the fact that a heavy full-scale invasion of this island is being prepared with all the usual German thoroughness and method, and that it may be launched at any time now — upon England, upon Scotland, or upon Ireland, or upon all three.
If this invasion is going to be tried at all, it does not seem that it can be long delayed. The weather may break at any time. Besides this, it is difficult for the enemy to keep these gatherings of ships waiting about indefinitely, while they are bombed every night by our bombers, and very often shelled by our warships which are waiting for them outside.
Therefore, we must regard the next week or so as a very important week for us in our history. It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon’s Grand Army at Boulogne. We have read all about this in the history books; but what is happening now is on a far greater scale and of far more consequence to the life and future of the world and its civilization than these brave old days of the past. Every man and woman will, therefore, prepare himself to do his duty, whatever it may be, with special pride and care.
These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler’s invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorize and cow the people of this mighty imperial city, and make them a burden and an anxiety to the Government and thus distract our attention unduly from the ferocious onslaught he is preparing. Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough moral fibre of the Londoners, whose forebears played a leading part in the establishment of Parliamentary institutions and who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives.
This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. What he has done is kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe, and until the Old World — and the New — can join hands to rebuild the temples of man’s freedom and man’s honour, upon foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown. This is the time for everyone to stand together, and hold firm, as they are doing ... We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival, and of a victory won not only for our own times, but for the long and better days that are to come. There was a touch of mist in the air over southern England on the morning of 15 September. But it cleared quickly and the sun shone through clear and bright. It was excellent bombing weather.
For more than a week, the Luftwaffe had pounded London and other British cities. It seemed certain the German raiders would be over again before the day was out. News rapidly circulated of the horrifying deaths the evening before of women and children sheltering in a church which had been hit by a bomb in London’s Chelsea district. No one could doubt there was much grief and devastation yet to come.
An air of expectancy again closed in over Flight Command airfields that morning. Pilots waited at dispersal, their Mae Wests on, their planes primed for take-off by the ground crew. Patrols had gone up from first light and had come down with little to report. Given the fine weather and tense atmosphere, that seemed ominous rather than reassuring. At around 11.00 a.m., coastal radar stations began picking up masses of German planes forming up over their airfields on the far side of the Channel. Thus began the activity on what has come to be known as ‘Battle of Britain Day’.
The raiders came over in vast numbers, wave after wave of them. Their mission was finally to deliver the devastating blow against Britain that Goring had repeatedly assured Hitler the Luftwaffe could administer.
*
Winston Churchill
The [11] Group Operations Room [which he visited on 15 September] was like a small theatre, about sixty feet across and with two storeys. We took our seats in the Dress Circle. Below us was the large-scale map-table, around which perhaps twenty highly trained young men and women, with their telephone assistants, were assembled. Opposite to us, covering the entire wall, where the theatre curtain would be, was a gigantic blackboar
d divided into six columns with electric bulbs, for the six [11 Group] fighter stations, each of their squadrons having a sub-column of its own, and also divided by lateral lines. Thus the lowest row of bulbs showed as they were lighted the squadrons which were ‘standing by’ ... the next row those at ‘readiness’ ... then at ‘available’ ... then those which had taken off, the next row those which had reported having seen the enemy, the next — with red lights — those which were in action, and the top row those which were returning home ...
‘I don’t know,’ said Park, as we went down, ‘whether anything will happen today. At present all is quiet.’ However, after a quarter of an hour the raid-plotters began to move about. An attack of ‘forty plus’ was reported to be coming from the German stations in the Dieppe area. The bulbs along the bottom of a wall display-panel began to glow as various squadrons came to standby. Then in quick succession twenty plus, forty plus signals were received and in another ten minutes it was evident that a serious battle impended.
One after another signals came in, forty plus, sixty plus; there was even an eighty plus. On the floor-table below us, the movement of all the waves of attack was marked by pushing discs forward from minute to minute along different lines of approach, while on the blackboard facing us the rising lights showed our fighter squadrons getting into the air, till there were only four or five left at readiness. These air battles, on which so much depended, lasted little more than an hour from the first encounter. The enemy had ample strength to send out new waves of attack, and our squadrons, having gone all out to gain the upper air, would have to refuel after seventy or eighty minutes, or land to re-arm after a five minute engagement. If at this moment of refuelling or re-arming the enemy were able to arrive with fresh unchallenged squadrons, some of our fighters could be destroyed on the ground ... Presently the red bulbs showed that the majority of our squadrons were engaged.
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Sergeant Tom Naylor
On 15 September, the plotting table [at Hornchurch Sector Station] was in such a mess that it hardly meant anything to anybody. The raids were coming in so quickly and in such large numbers that the whole flippin’ system broke down. There was no contact after a squadron took off because most of the pilots just put the switch over and cut their radio right out. They had to concentrate on what was happening around them. They didn’t want some Controller on the ground telling them there was a raid over Maidstone when they had three 109s on their tails over Manston. In one way, cutting off those telephones was a good thing because the language that usually came over the loudspeaker from the pilots could be awful, though the WAAFs didn’t take a bit of notice.