5 ms·

this is mind-boggling. I struggle to imagine how the city must have looked.

hedgehog 2y ago
There are a lot of photos, really bad. You'd think people would have learned but in current events Gaza has had 4x the ordnance dropped on it (in about 1/5 the land area). Edit: The easiest way I found to see photos and video is in Getty's archive: https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?family=editorial&phrase=london%20blitz&recommendconfig=none&sort=best https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?family=editorial&...
- PrussianCitizen 2y ago
  [flagged]
pmalynin 2y ago
You don’t have to struggle. There are plenty of videos and photos of that time that you can check out. Also if you visit London you can go around and see a bunch of buildings they haven’t rebuilt and just left them in semi destroyed state as monuments
- Dansvidania 2y ago
  I have been in London a few times but never noticed.
- mattlondon 2y ago
  What? Where are these semi-destroyed buildings left as monuments? I am not aware of any in London.
  - buildsjets 2y ago
    Mostly churches, it seems. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-ruins-of-st-dunstan-in-the-east-london-england https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-ruins-of-st-dunstan-... https://flickeringlamps.com/2015/03/06/the-ruins-of-christ-church-greyfriars-and-the-grave-of-a-she-wolf/ https://flickeringlamps.com/2015/03/06/the-ruins-of-christ-c... https://beyondthepoint.co.uk/st-clements-church-blitz-damage/ https://beyondthepoint.co.uk/st-clements-church-blitz-damage...
    - pmalynin 2y ago
      Yeah sorry I was specifically referring to Christchurch Greyfriars. Basically it was as the article said, I was staying in the area (near uh a pub Samuel Pepys I believe) and was walking around and that was definitely one of the things that caught my eye. Maybe such things aren’t as common as I thought
      - buildsjets 2y ago
        I spent a bit of time in Budapest, something like 80% of the buildings were damaged during WWII and neglected behind the iron curtain afterwards. Even walking around today it is very common for a building to have a restored facade but a lot of historical damage on the sides.
- louthy 2y ago
  > Also if you visit London you can go around and see a bunch of buildings they haven’t rebuilt and just left them in semi destroyed state as monuments I lived in London for 20 years and never knew or saw anything like that? The main thing you notice when you walk around London is the old/new mix. If you see a concrete monstrosity, nestled next to a Victorian/Edwardian/Elizabethan building, you're probably guaranteed that the newer building was built on top of a bomb site.
- pjc50 2y ago
  London bomb sites used to be frequent enough that they were backgrounds in 50s - 60s TV, such as The Professionals, but current economic success conditions have meant they've all been built over.
dylan604 2y ago
I can't imagine the record keeping to provide the data for this. And of course, they have weasel words at the bottom: "The National Archives give no warranty to the accuracy, completeness or fitness for purpose of the information provided"
- PrussianCitizen 2y ago
  [flagged]
- louthy 2y ago
  In other words: "if you get blown up by a bomb that we haven't listed here, it's not our fault!"
ggm 2y ago
My mum and dad were teenagers during the war and did fire-watching, notoriously avoided if at all possible (they said) so given to anyone biddable or old. It got a bit hair-raising according to my dad, he stood in a doorway near Imperial College watching a plate glass sheet decide if it was going to fall on him or into the building. Walking through labs with bombs dropping was .. intense. If you had an "anderson shelter" in your garden you were lucky. Many poor working class families got a "morrison shelter" which was basically a steel table you could use in a dining room or kitchen and then hide under. In some ways more convenient I guess? (Anderson shelters got cold and damp) He was bombed out of a house in Stepney. They lost everything. I can't decide if he missed more the entire collection of the first 50 penguin books, or a lump of melted glass he scavanged from the fire of crystal palace in the 1930s: these are the two things he remembered in the 60s and 70s talking about it. He was studying electrical engineering and maths at university by the end of the war and so not called up. He said they trained in how to manage live power cables with wooden "tongs" and were part of rescue crews when buildings collapsed. My mum was tracing maps for D-Day, and packing munitions and my Aunt did technical drawing on the "mulberry harbour" concrete caissons floated over to the beaches for D-Day. A good read on the blitz would be "the people's war" by Angus Calder, which in large part is made up from "mass observation" recruited/organised diaries kept during the period, and donated to the University of Sussex. My mum kept one of them. A standing joke in Architecture circles is that the greater london council destroyed more Wren churches in London than the Blitz. UCL used to say the basements where compsci was sited were kindly dug by the Germans. Postwar housing was a mess. My aunt lived in a 5 story block of flats in Paddington she got on a long lease as bomb damaged property, my Uncle bought into commercial premises around Farringdon in a deal which demanded he do structural repairs immediately. There was a huge housing shortage and for years you could still see the pre-fabricated houses around Lambeth Palace which were a godsend of temporary housing but persisted into the 60s. Stepney where my dad grew up was a wreck, anywhere around the docks basically. It was a patchwork. The pseudo-documentary film "Fires were started" by Humphrey Jennings has some iconic footage of the dock firestorm (not to be compared with Dresden, but it was severe) You would recognise the shots of the fronts of builings collapsing and firemen holding hoses wearing brodie helmets. Comparisons are evil. Coventry was really badly affected and the modern day cathedral stands next to the wreck of the original gothic one. It's like the Kaiser Wilheim spire in Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, a very pale shadow of the reality at the time. Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, Rotterdam were all significantly worse affected than London in the end, but to anyone in London I doubt it felt like it. The bombing in Japan was on an altogether different scale.
virtue3 2y ago
Prague is a really good example of a major European city that was relatively untouched in the war. And it shows. Lots and LOTS of historical buildings and a very "old European" feel through a lot of the city. It's quite beautiful.
- PrussianCitizen 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - low_common 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - PrussiaCitizen 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - PrussiaCitizen 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      Imagine earnestly believing Hitler did the whole London bombing thing, which utterly crippled the Luftwaffe and seriously hurt how useful they were in the rest of the war, out of military necessity. Also the bombing of Dresden being out of the ordinary for the war is Russian fiction. Stalin begged for Dresden to be bombed, we have the letters to the Americans to back that up.
- fennecfoxy 2y ago
  Same thing with York in England, narrow medieval streets and buildings. Vs Plymouth wide large buildings since it was completely rebuilt.
PrussianCitizen 2y ago
[flagged]

There are a lot of photos, really bad. You'd think people would have learned but in current events Gaza has had 4x the ordnance dropped on it (in about 1/5 the land area). Edit: The easiest way I found to see photos and video is in Getty's archive: https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?family=editorial&phrase=london%20blitz&recommendconfig=none&sort=best https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?family=editorial&...

PrussianCitizen 2y ago
[flagged]

pmalynin 2y ago

You don’t have to struggle. There are plenty of videos and photos of that time that you can check out. Also if you visit London you can go around and see a bunch of buildings they haven’t rebuilt and just left them in semi destroyed state as monuments

Dansvidania 2y ago
I have been in London a few times but never noticed.
mattlondon 2y ago
What? Where are these semi-destroyed buildings left as monuments? I am not aware of any in London.
- buildsjets 2y ago
  Mostly churches, it seems. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-ruins-of-st-dunstan-in-the-east-london-england https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-ruins-of-st-dunstan-... https://flickeringlamps.com/2015/03/06/the-ruins-of-christ-church-greyfriars-and-the-grave-of-a-she-wolf/ https://flickeringlamps.com/2015/03/06/the-ruins-of-christ-c... https://beyondthepoint.co.uk/st-clements-church-blitz-damage/ https://beyondthepoint.co.uk/st-clements-church-blitz-damage...
  - pmalynin 2y ago
    Yeah sorry I was specifically referring to Christchurch Greyfriars. Basically it was as the article said, I was staying in the area (near uh a pub Samuel Pepys I believe) and was walking around and that was definitely one of the things that caught my eye. Maybe such things aren’t as common as I thought
    - buildsjets 2y ago
      I spent a bit of time in Budapest, something like 80% of the buildings were damaged during WWII and neglected behind the iron curtain afterwards. Even walking around today it is very common for a building to have a restored facade but a lot of historical damage on the sides.
louthy 2y ago
> Also if you visit London you can go around and see a bunch of buildings they haven’t rebuilt and just left them in semi destroyed state as monuments I lived in London for 20 years and never knew or saw anything like that? The main thing you notice when you walk around London is the old/new mix. If you see a concrete monstrosity, nestled next to a Victorian/Edwardian/Elizabethan building, you're probably guaranteed that the newer building was built on top of a bomb site.
pjc50 2y ago
London bomb sites used to be frequent enough that they were backgrounds in 50s - 60s TV, such as The Professionals, but current economic success conditions have meant they've all been built over.

dylan604 2y ago

I can't imagine the record keeping to provide the data for this. And of course, they have weasel words at the bottom: "The National Archives give no warranty to the accuracy, completeness or fitness for purpose of the information provided"

PrussianCitizen 2y ago
[flagged]
louthy 2y ago
In other words: "if you get blown up by a bomb that we haven't listed here, it's not our fault!"

ggm 2y ago

My mum and dad were teenagers during the war and did fire-watching, notoriously avoided if at all possible (they said) so given to anyone biddable or old. It got a bit hair-raising according to my dad, he stood in a doorway near Imperial College watching a plate glass sheet decide if it was going to fall on him or into the building. Walking through labs with bombs dropping was .. intense. If you had an "anderson shelter" in your garden you were lucky. Many poor working class families got a "morrison shelter" which was basically a steel table you could use in a dining room or kitchen and then hide under. In some ways more convenient I guess? (Anderson shelters got cold and damp) He was bombed out of a house in Stepney. They lost everything. I can't decide if he missed more the entire collection of the first 50 penguin books, or a lump of melted glass he scavanged from the fire of crystal palace in the 1930s: these are the two things he remembered in the 60s and 70s talking about it. He was studying electrical engineering and maths at university by the end of the war and so not called up. He said they trained in how to manage live power cables with wooden "tongs" and were part of rescue crews when buildings collapsed. My mum was tracing maps for D-Day, and packing munitions and my Aunt did technical drawing on the "mulberry harbour" concrete caissons floated over to the beaches for D-Day. A good read on the blitz would be "the people's war" by Angus Calder, which in large part is made up from "mass observation" recruited/organised diaries kept during the period, and donated to the University of Sussex. My mum kept one of them. A standing joke in Architecture circles is that the greater london council destroyed more Wren churches in London than the Blitz. UCL used to say the basements where compsci was sited were kindly dug by the Germans. Postwar housing was a mess. My aunt lived in a 5 story block of flats in Paddington she got on a long lease as bomb damaged property, my Uncle bought into commercial premises around Farringdon in a deal which demanded he do structural repairs immediately. There was a huge housing shortage and for years you could still see the pre-fabricated houses around Lambeth Palace which were a godsend of temporary housing but persisted into the 60s. Stepney where my dad grew up was a wreck, anywhere around the docks basically. It was a patchwork. The pseudo-documentary film "Fires were started" by Humphrey Jennings has some iconic footage of the dock firestorm (not to be compared with Dresden, but it was severe) You would recognise the shots of the fronts of builings collapsing and firemen holding hoses wearing brodie helmets. Comparisons are evil. Coventry was really badly affected and the modern day cathedral stands next to the wreck of the original gothic one. It's like the Kaiser Wilheim spire in Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, a very pale shadow of the reality at the time. Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, Rotterdam were all significantly worse affected than London in the end, but to anyone in London I doubt it felt like it. The bombing in Japan was on an altogether different scale.

virtue3 2y ago

Prague is a really good example of a major European city that was relatively untouched in the war. And it shows. Lots and LOTS of historical buildings and a very "old European" feel through a lot of the city. It's quite beautiful.

PrussianCitizen 2y ago
[flagged]
- low_common 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - PrussiaCitizen 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - PrussiaCitizen 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Imagine earnestly believing Hitler did the whole London bombing thing, which utterly crippled the Luftwaffe and seriously hurt how useful they were in the rest of the war, out of military necessity. Also the bombing of Dresden being out of the ordinary for the war is Russian fiction. Stalin begged for Dresden to be bombed, we have the letters to the Americans to back that up.
fennecfoxy 2y ago
Same thing with York in England, narrow medieval streets and buildings. Vs Plymouth wide large buildings since it was completely rebuilt.

PrussianCitizen 2y ago

[flagged]