Westminster's Monuments to War

As regular readers of this blog will no doubt be aware, I have accumulated over the years a fairly vast collection of photographs recording London's 'footprints' of her wartime past. These take the form of signs for air raid shelters, emergency water supplies and occasionally the shelters themselves and other surviving wartime relics, such as shrapnel scarred buildings and wartime graffiti. Back in May 2013 I ran a short series of articles on this blog running through to August of the same year which detailed many of these and hopefully many Londoners and visitors to the capital have managed to discover at least some of these, perhaps by coming on one of our walks, or by exploring for themselves. The City of Westminster is home to some of these and walkers will have an opportunity to see some of them on September 18th 2016 when I shall be guiding a walk around the area's wartime past - booking details can be found on the main website.

Eagle Squadrons Memorial in Grosvenor Square (author's photo)

There are also many memorials and plaques to notable wartime events and personalites located across London. Many of these are sited in high profile locations and are probably well known to both Londoners and visitors alike but there are also many that are tucked away in lesser known places and today, we are going to explore some examples of both types of these.

St Clement Danes Church is well known today as the Central Church of the Royal Air Force, although it could be argued that the building itself is a monument to the Blitz, as it was destroyed in an air raid on the night of 10/11 May 1941. It certainly carries it's own 'honourable scars' in the form of some heavy duty shrapnel marks in the masonry at the Law Courts side of the building.

Shrapnel scars at St Clement Danes (author's photo)

In addition to the shrapnel scars, there are two statues commemorating key figures in the RAF's history standing guard outside the church. The first is of Air Chief Marshal Baron Dowding of Bentley Priory, who as Sir Hugh Dowding was one of the architects of British victory in the Battle of Britain in 1940, the first German defeat of the war and one which ensured that the RAF retained control of the skies over the British Isles, thus avoiding any serious prospect of a German invasion of this country. Born in 1882, Dowding who was nicknamed 'Stuffy' as a result of his seemingly somewhat aloof manner (in reality more down to shyness), was the first Air Officer Commanding of RAF Fighter Command and oversaw the introduction of an integrated system of radar backed up by human observers, raid plotting, radio vectoring of fighters, interlocking groups and sectors designed to reinforce one another as well as ensuring the introduction of modern, eight gun fighters in the form of the Spitfire and Hurricane. He also saw off challenges from others who tried to foist upon him  inferior aircraft such as the Defiant, making himself somewhat unpopular with some of his contemporary senior officers in the service. He was coming towards the end of his tenure at Fighter Command on the outbreak of war but fortunately for the country, was given an extension of service until late 1940, which ensured the British victory. His service rivals finally ensured that he was dismissed in November 1940 and after a brief and unhappy appointment to the USA on behalf of the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the production of a study into RAF manpower, he retired from the service in July 1942.

Baron Dowding's statue at RAF St Clement Danes (author's photo)

The other 'gate guardian' at St Clement Danes is an altogether more controversial figure and remains so to this day. Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, known to his friends as 'Bert', to his Bomber Command crews as 'Butch' (short for Butcher) and to the wider world as 'Bomber' was the Air Officer Commanding of RAF Bomber Command from 1942 until 1945 and as such, oversaw the area bombing campaign of German cities. A long time proponent of aerial bombing, Harris was at first given command of 5 Group in September 1939 and took command of Bomber Command in February 1942 when it was at a low ebb. Early attempts at daylight, unescorted precision bombing had been disastrous and having switched to night bombing, navigation was found to be lacking, with only one in three aircraft getting within five miles of their intended targets. Harris reinvigorated his new command, placing greater emphasis on night flying techniques and pushed for the introduction of electronic navigation aids such as 'Gee' and 'Oboe' as well as improved radars. Harris also recognised that precision bombing at night was next to impossible, so resorted to Area Bombing of large cities, starting with a trial run on Lubeck in March 1942 and achieving a major publicity coup in May 1942 with Operation Millenium, a huge 1,000 bomber raid upon Cologne, in which he successfully gambled the entire force at his disposal to demonstrate his area bombing techniques. These culminated in Operation Gomorrah, a series of raids over seven days and nights in which the city of Hamburg was more or less erased from the map, with the loss of some 42,000 civilian lives. The destruction of Dresden in February 1945 with the loss of a further 25,000 lives was arguably the most controversial raid of the war and saw Churchill attempting to distance himself from the policy of area bombing, even though he had ordered the raid himself in order to assist the Russians in their advance from the east. Harris remained unapologetic about the policy and rightly considered the post war government's refusal to issue a campaign medal to his 'old lags' as he called his men, an outrage and refused to accept any peerage or higher honour himself as a protest. Bomber Command lost 55,573 men during the Second World War, the highest losses for any arm of the British Armed Forces. Harris was fiercely loyal to his men and despite the losses, they reciprocated the loyalty with interest. The controvery surrounding Harris continues to this day and when his statue was unveiled in 1992 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, it was vandalised within a day or so by someone throwing red paint over it. The statue has been defaced several times since but thankfully in more recent years, it has remained untouched.

Sir Arthur Harris's statue outside RAF St Clement Danes (author's photo)

There is also another figure from the wartime RAF commemorated not too far from St Clement Danes, who whilst not as controversial a figure today, certainly divided opinion within the Service at the time, although today almost all historians now believe his tactics were correct and indeed Lord Tedder, a former Chief of the Air Staff stated "If any one man won the Battle of Britain, it was him."

The "him" in question was Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, AOC of 11 Group, RAF Fighter Command for the whole of the Battle of Britain. A New Zealander, Park was much beloved by his subordinates, having no 'side' to him at all, but was perhaps less loved by some of his contemporary senior officers. Maybe this was down to his being seen as a mere 'colonial' and maybe it was Park's straight talking and inability to suffer fools that caused this friction but there is no doubt that he did not see eye-to-eye with his counterpart in neighbouring 12 Group, Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory. The two men had diametrically opposite views on fighter tactics; Park believed in intercepting enemy formations as far forward as possible, using relatively small formations of fighters, whilst Leigh Mallory, encouraged by subordinates like Douglas Bader, was an advocate of the so-called 'Big Wing' in which as many as seven or eight squadrons would be formated together to attack in large numbers. Park had already experimented with large formations during the Dunkirk operations and had found them to be unwieldy. It took time to gather together such a large number of aircraft and by the time they had done so, the attacking bombers had often discharged their loads and were on the way home. Furthermore Bader, although undoubtedly a brave man, was something of a loose cannon and would often ignore instructions given to him by the ground controllers, preferring instead to look for the enemy where his 'gut instinct' told him they would be. Thus, when Park called upon 12 Group for assistance, as was their function, they would often not be in the right place, or sometimes not turn up at all. As a result of this, Park didn't trust Leigh Mallory, told him so and more importantly told Dowding so into the bargain.

Unfortunately for Park, Leigh Mallory was also jealous for control of 11 Group and his friend Sholto Douglas had envious eyes towards Dowding's position. Sholto Douglas was also used to the machinations of the Whitehall machine and used his political connections to make sure that the two men got their own way, with the result that with the Battle of Britain won, Park's reward was to be effectively sacked and relegated to Training Command. His replacement was Leigh Mallory, with Douglas manouvering himself into the top job upon Dowding's enforced retirement. Park was later moved to Malta, where using the same tactics as he used in the Battle of Britain, transformed the situation and stopped the air raids on the beseiged island within weeks of his arrival and later still in the war, commanded the Allied Air Forces in the Far East, replacing Leigh Mallory who had been killed in an air crash.

Sir Keith Park's statue in Waterloo Place (author's photo)

We continue the Royal Air Force theme for the moment and now look at a memorial that will only be seen by cricket lovers, located as it is at Lord's Cricket Ground but even so, it may be that many visitors to the Home of Cricket will have passed by without the unobtrusive bronze plaque on the famous Lord's Pavilion that tells us the ground was used by the Service as an Air Crew Reception Centre during the Second World War. Many of these men subsequently gave their life on operational service and the simple plaque reminds us that our continued enjoyment of cricket reflects their sacrifices.

Plaque outside the Lord's Pavilion (author's photo)

The Senior Service is also well represented in London and one of the most impressive reminders of their sacrifice is the Submariners' Memorial located on the Victoria Embankment. This takes the form of a large bas-relief which depicts the interior of a submarine, on either side of which is a plaque, one of which lists the submarines lost in the First World War and the other which lists those lost in the 1939-45 conflict. Submariners are a special breed and in wartime especially, worked and fought in incredibly difficult circumstances with little chance of escape should their vessel be sunk. Perhaps in recognition of this, the submariners hold their own special Memorial Walk and wreath laying service on the Sunday preceeding the country's main Remembrance ceremonies.

The Second World War panel on the Submariners' Memorial (author's photo)

Close to the Submariners' Memorial is another reminder of the Second World War, in the form of HQS Wellington, formerly His Majesty's Ship of the same name. Now the floating livery hall for the Honourable Company of Master Mariners, HMS Wellington was launched in 1934 at Devonport Dockyard as a Grimsby Class Sloop and during the War escorted many Atlantic and Gibraltar convoys, sharing in the destruction of a single U-Boat, as well as assisting in the evacuation of Allied troops from Le Havre in June 1940. Decommissioned following the end of the War, she was converted for her new role at Chatham Dockyard, which included the removal of all her machinery spaces, which were converted into the main livery hall area of the vessel. A drydocking and refurbishment in 1991 means that her existence should be assured for the forseeable future and we can only but wonder how many people driving, cycling or jogging past the smart, white painted ship realise that they are passing a veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic.

HQS Wellington at her berth on Victoria Embankment (author's photo)

Just downstream from HQS Wellington there was until quite recently, another veteran from the war at sea, this time from the previous conflict, in the shape of HMS President, formerly known as HMS Saxifrage, a Flower class sloop dating from January 1918 and which saw active service escorting Atlantic Convoys. She was also known as a 'Q Ship', and was superficially disguised to look like a merchant ship, with her guns hidden from view. The idea was that German U-Boats would surface to engage with guns what was thought to be an easy target, only for the Q Ship to then reveal her true identity and use her overwhelming fire power to sink the submarine. In this guise, the ship's log of the Saxifrage records that she engaged nine U-Boats in her wartime career. Being completed right at the end of the war, HMS Saxifrage's service was brief and she was of little use to the peacetime Royal Navy. In 1922, she was moored permanently on the Victoria Embankment, renamed President and used as the Drill Ship for the London Division, Royal Navy Reserve, a role which she fulfilled until 1988, when she was decommissioned upon the opening of a shore establishment by the same name located slightly further downstream at St Katherine's Dock. The vessel was until recently used as a wedding and corporate venue, being latterly painted in a frankly awful approximation of a wartime 'dazzle' camouflage scheme but earlier this year, she was towed down to Chatham Dockyard pending a refurbishment which will hopefully see her return to a berth in the capital in time for her centenary in 2018 and also we must hope, in a more appropriate colour scheme.

HMS President at her former berth on Victoria Embankment (author's photo)

Apart from the Senior and Junior Services, the British Army is also well represented in Westminster in the form of numerous plaques and statues, covering all aspects of the service from the early days of defeat and evacuations, through to the winning years of 1944-45.

Lord Gort's Blue Plaque at 34 Belgrave Square (author's photo)

John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, perhaps better known as Lord Gort, was the Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1939-40. He was undoubtedly a brave man, as the award of a Victoria Cross at the Battle of Canal Nord in 1918 testifies but as a commander, he was not possessed of the greatest brain power. Gort had reached the pinnacle of the British Army, being appointed it's professional head, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in late 1937. In normal times of peace, it would have been his final appointment before an honourable retirement but on the outbreak of war in 1939 and the formation of an Expeditionary Force to fight alongside the French, as was the custom, the command of this formation went to the CIGS. Gort's command position was not the easiest, being under the orders of the numerically superior French but in time of crisis, still having the latitude to act as he thought best in accordance with the British national interest. This came to a head in May 1940, when the French Army and political leadership, largely paralysed through defeatism, seemed incapable of mounting a counter attack. The truth was that both armies were largely living in the past and seemed to think that the war in 1940 would take a similar shape to the previous conflict. Nevertheless, Gort displayed great moral courage in ordering a withdrawal to the sea and aided by skillful generalship and cool heads from the likes of Generals Brooke, Montgomery and Alexander, as well as other up and coming younger Generals, the BEF were able to extricate the majority of it's manpower (although not much of it's equipment) through Dunkirk and the other Channel ports in a series of evacuations. Gort was never given another field command after Dunkirk; Churchill tentatively put his name forward as Auchinleck's successor in North Africa but the CIGS, by now General Alan Brooke and who had served under Gort in France, was having none of it and vetoed the idea. Instead a succession of Governorships followed, first Gibraltar from 1941-42, then Malta from 1942-44 where his leadership during the siege made a great impression on the Maltese people. His final appointment was as High Commissioner for Palestine and Transjordan. It was during this tenure that he first displayed symptoms of an illness which turned out to be liver cancer. It was not diagnosed correctly on a visit to the UK in early 1945 and it was not until he returned to England permanently that he was admitted to Guy's Hospital, where his condition was finally diagnosed, by which time it had become inoperable. He died at Guy's on 31 March 1946. The English Heritage Blue Plaque pictured above is located at his former home at 34 Belgrave Square in London SW1.

The Guards Memorial with it's 'honourable scars' in Horse Guards Parade (author's photo)

A more general memorial exists in Horse Guards Parade, where it must have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people since it's unveiling in 1926. The 'cenotaph' feature was designed by H Chalton Bradshaw, whilst the bronze figures of Guardsmen were designed by Gilbert Ledward. Each figure represents one of the Guards Regiments, the Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards and each figure was modelled on a serving guardsman of the time. So from left to right we have Sgt R Bradshaw MM of the Grenadiers, Lance Cpl JS Richardson of the Coldstream, Guardsman J McDonald of the Scots, Guardsman Simon McCarthy of the Irish and Guardsman A Conley of the Welsh Guards. There are some who think that the Household Division are merely ceremonial troops but the memorial serves to remind us that they were and remain an integral part of the fighting strength of the British Army and their losses in two World Wars as well as subsequent conflicts upto and including Afghanistan are due testament to that fact. The memorial itself has it's own 'Honourable Scars' inflicted by shrapnel damage from a High Explosive bomb falling nearby in October 1940 which are clearly visible to this day.

As we might expect, our Allies during the Second World War are also well represented in London. General Wladyslaw Sikorski had been an integral part in the formation of a free and independent Poland during the Polish-Soviet war of 1918-1921 and had become an almost legendary figure amongst the Polish people for his exploits during that conflict. He had subsequently briefly been Primer Minister in 1922-23 and had also played a large part in the organisation of the Polish Army. Following the coup organised by Josef Pilsudski in 1926, Sikorski declared his opposition and was susbequently relieved of his Army command in 1928 and went into retirement and semi-exile in Paris. Following the German invasion in September 1939, Sikorski pressed unsuccessfully for a command and escaped back to Paris via Romania, where he formed a Government in Exile with Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz as President and Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. Sikorski was invited by the President to become Prime Minister. Despite their defeat, the Poles still commanded considerable forces that had escaped to France and Great Britain. Almost the entire Polish Navy had escaped, as had large numbers of airman and several divisions of the Polish Army. Following the fall of France in June 1940, Sikorski rejected a proposal by Marshal Petain that Poland should capitulate along with the French and the Government in Exile, followed by many thousands of Polish servicemen, escaped to Great Britain. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, tens of thousands of Polish prisoners were released and made their way to British controlled North Africa, where they fought with great distinction. The Soviet change of heart came too late for the 20,000 Polish Army officers who had been murdered by the Soviets and buried in the Katyn Forest. This atrocity by the Soviets would weigh heavily on Sikorski's heart as well as upon future Soviet-Polish relations. Sikorski himself died in an air accident when his Liberator bomber crashed on take off from Gibraltar. He had been returning from an inspection of his troops in North Africa and his death remains controversial to this day; the Soviets had broken off diplomatic relations with Sikorski's Government in Exile and conspiracy theories abound about his possible assassination by the Soviets. Nothing was ever proved although his death had a profound effect on Allied-Polish relations, with no subsequent Polish leader having anything like Sikorski's influence with the Americans and British. Sikorski was buried at the Polish War Cemetery at Newark on Trent, although with the formation of a free and democratic Poland following the collapse of the Soviet Union, his remains were exhumed and transported to a new grave at Wawel Castle in Kracow. His statue pictured below is in Portland Place and was unveiled in 2000.

General Sikorski's statue in Portland Place (author's photo)

No collection of War Memorials in Westminster would be complete without mention of our American Allies. There are too many to mention here but one of note is located outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Many readers will be aware that the embassy is scheduled to move to a new location at Nine Elms, south of the Thames at some point in 2017 and it is unclear whether the various memorials outside the current embassy, including statues of President Franklin D Roosevelt and General Dwight D Eisenhower, will move with the embassy. The one pictured at the top of the page is that to the American Eagle Squadrons, formed in 1940 in Great Britain. This was prior to America's entry into the war and although too late to serve in the Battle of Britain, they served with great distinction as part of the RAF until formally turned over to American control in September 1942. Only 244 Americans actually served with the Eagle Squadrons and although they never renounced their American citizenship, they wore RAF uniform and rank insignia with an Eagle Squadron emblem proudly displayed. Some of the recruits had already been rejected by the USAAF as unsuitable for flying duties and took great pleasure in proving this decision wrong, whilst others had intended to initially fight for the Finns against the Soviets or for the French against the Nazis. They all eventually gravitated to England and some of the stories of how they reached this country were quite epic in their own right.

Eagle Squadron insignia (author's collection)

71 Squadron was the first of the Eagle Squadrons to be formed, in September 1940 but was not declared operational until February 1941 at RAF Church Fenton. The second unit was 121 Squadron at RAF Kirton-in-Lindsay in February 1941, with the final one, 133 Squadron being formed in July 1941 at RAF Coltishall. Upon transfer to the American Eigth Air Force in September 1942, the squadrons were re-numbered as the 334th, 335th and 336th Fighter Squadrons respectively, initially retaining their Spitfires until re-equipped with P-47 Thunderbolts in January 1943. During their time with the RAF, they had earned twelve Distinguished Flying Crosses and one Distinguished Flying Order. At the insistence of the men themselves, all of the original RAF Eagle Squadron pilots continued to wear their RAF pilot's 'wings' alongside their new American insignia. Of the original thirty four pilots from 1940, only four of them were able to transfer to American control. The remainder had either been killed or captured.

There are many other statues and memorials in Westminster commemorating our other staunch allies, including the Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders as well as the French and the Dutch, as well as many memorials to our own various arms of the Civil Defence Services. There are also many others outside Westminster and in our next article will try to cover some more of these.

 

Published Sources:

 

Bomber Harris: His Life and Times - Henry Probert, Greenhill Books 2003

Dowding of Fighter Command - Vincent Orange, Grub Street 2008

Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man - High Sebag-Montefiore, Viking 2006

Park - Vincent Orange, Grub Street 2001 

Sloops 1926-1946 - Arnold Hague, World Ship Society 1993

War Diaries 1939-1945; Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke - editors Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman - Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2001

Parallel Cities: The Second Great Fire of London, Bomber Harris and Operation Gomorrah

Hafenbunker at Hamburg (author's photo)

Following another of my regular visits to Hamburg, it seems a good time to repeat below a post first written in 2011 about the connections in war and peace between London and the great port city on the River Elbe.

This writer was lucky enough recently to pay a visit to Hamburg, the great Hanseatic port located on the River Elbe, the second largest city in Germany and the second largest port in Europe after Rotterdam. I’ve visited this city many times over the past twenty years or so and have often been struck by the many similarities between Hamburg and London. Some are perhaps not so evident these days now that many aspects of working London have been reduced to museum status but both cities have a thriving port, even though the main Port of London is located downriver at Tilbury and both cities are centres of transport, media, culture and sport

At the outbreak of the Second World War, the similarities were much more noticeable. Hamburg was known as ‘The English City’ due to the Hanseatic League’s trading connections with London going back to the Thirteenth Century. Both cities had been ravaged by fire in the past – London in 1666 and Hamburg no fewer than four times, in 1284, 1684, 1711 and 1713. Both cities rebuilt after these fires and seemed to grow stronger as a result consequently becoming amongst the wealthiest in Europe. Sadly, during the Second World War both cities were to suffer from further fires and especially in the case of Hamburg, would suffer catastrophic loss of life as a result. The picture above shows the Hafenbunker, one of Hamburg's surviving air raid shelters.

In 1940, London and many other towns and cities in the United Kingdom began to suffer from the onslaught of the Luftwaffe in what was quickly christened The Blitz. One of the heaviest raids on London was on Sunday 29th December 1940, when large parts of the City of London were destroyed in what was to become known as ‘The Second Great Fire of London’. Caused by a combination of a lack of Firewatchers due to the Christmas holiday period, the narrow streets and alleys of The Square Mile and an exceptionally low tide in the River Thames, this raid caused the huge fires started in Gresham Street, Moorgate, Queen Victoria Street and around St Paul’s Cathedral to join up and devastate vest swathes of the City, some areas of which were not fully rebuilt until the 1980s. Over three hundred incendiary bombs a minute were falling at times and the area around the Cathedral became the scene of the heaviest of the fires, causing Winston Churchill to instruct that Wren’s masterpiece was to be saved at all costs. This was achieved, somewhat against the odds in a story that we shall tell in a future article. Suffice to say, the survival of St Paul’s, with the help of Herbert Mason’s iconic photograph flashed around the World, seemed to personify British defiance against Nazi aggression.

One of Hamburg's two Flak Towers - this one at Heiligengeistfeld (author's photo)

It was also on this night when a senior RAF officer, who was as yet little known outside his own service, called Arthur Travers Harris stood on the roof of the Air Ministry in Holborn watching the fires raging with his service chief, Air Chief Marshall Charles Portal. As the two men silently gazed at the huge fires burning the heart out of the City of London, Harris suddenly felt vengeful and remarked quietly to Portal “They have sown the wind, now they shall reap the whirlwind.” Harris was a career airman and had made the study and practice of bombing his life’s work. He was one of those airmen who felt that future wars would be fought and won solely through the use of air power and that armies and navies would be rendered redundant through the use of air forces.

In February 1942, Harris was to get his chance of vengeance when he was appointed as Air Officer Commanding RAF Bomber Command. When he took over, the bomber arm of the RAF was at low ebb in its fortunes. Apart from some heroic attempts at raiding Wilhelmshaven, targets in the Ruhr and strikes against the gathering fleet of German invasion barges, all of which were achieved at high cost in casualties and with questionable accuracy, much of Bomber Command’s efforts had been spent in dropping leaflets on German cities, all of which left the personnel of Harris’s new command somewhat demoralized. Shortly before Harris’s appointment, the Air Ministry issued the Area Bombing Directive, which decreed that the focus of Bomber Command’s attention should be switched to undermining the morale of the German civil population, especially the industrial workers. As such, the cities of Cologne, Duisburg, Dusseldorf and Essen were allocated as priority targets with other cities such as Hamburg and Bremen being designated as secondary targets.

Harris built up his forces, replacing the obsolete Whitley and Hampden bombers with the new four engine Halifax and Lancaster aircraft, the latter of which was to become the mainstay of the RAF’s bomber force. On the night of 30th/31st May 1942, Harris took a major gamble when he committed the entire force of his command into the first ever thousand bomber raid, codenamed Operation Millennium, in which the city of Cologne was devastated. The huge numbers of aircraft attacking the city overwhelmed the defences and coupled with the element of surprise achieved, ensured that from a British viewpoint at least, the raid was an overwhelming success. Although the death toll was mercifully light – some 486 people were killed – the effect on the population gave the Nazi authorities food for thought. Out of a population of some 700,000 approximately 135,000 fled the city and some 45,000 were ‘bombed out’ of their houses. This was all achieved for the loss of 43 RAF bombers, some 3 percent of the bomber force. Ironically, Hamburg had had a close escape from destruction that night; it was the primary target for Operation Millennium and had only avoided the fate eventually meted out to Cologne by having the good fortune to be shrouded from the bombers by bad weather.

However, Hamburg’s good luck was not to continue as in 1943 Harris selected it for a series of raids prophetically called Operation Gomorrah. The object was to attack the city during the summer months, when the city would be tinder dry with the objective of starting uncontrollable fires with incendiary bombs whilst keeping the fire fighters at bay by dropping high explosive bombs simultaneously.

Inmates from Neuengamme Concentration Camp removing a victim of the raid (author's collection)

The first raid took place on the night of 24th July 1943 when 792 heavy bombers of RAF Bomber Command attacked the city. Some of the RAF bombers dropped propaganda leaflets on other German towns and cities along the way. These leaflets mocked Hitler’s own bombast by stating ‘Die Festung Europa hat kein Dach’ which translated means ‘Fortress Europe has no roof’. This raid marked the first use of another of the RAF’s secret weapons; thin strips of aluminium foil, known as ‘Window’ were dropped from the bombers. Cut to the same length as the German radar wavelength, these strips caused the radar picture to be jammed with hundreds of false reflections, effectively blinding the defenders. Once the pathfinders dropped their Target Indicator (TI) flares over the western part of the city, there was an element of 'creepback' from the following waves and the bombs seemed to fall in four main areas of the city; near Grasbrook, in Wandsbeker Chausee, Hasselbrook and in the Altona area. The destruction was bad enough but although the city centre had been spared, worse, much worse was to come.

On the 25th July, the Americans joined the party with the USAAF taking part in a daylight raid, which fell mainly on the Neuhof area around the power station, the MAN engine works and the Blohm & Voss and Howaldswerfte shipyards. On the 26^th July the Americans again bombed in daylight and to ensure that the populace stayed in a constant state of tension, the RAF staged 'nuisance' raids on both of these nights with small numbers of Mosquito aircraft which kept the citizens of Hamburg awake even though the number of bombs dropped in these raids was miniscule.

Hamburg was by now a city in a state of shock; the daylight raids especially had shaken the populace and the first night raid had seemed to be bigger than anything they had ever thought possible. They had never seen an enemy air raid in daylight since the war began and some began to think privately that perhaps their enemies were stronger than Dr Goebbel's propaganda had led them to believe. By the 27th July 1943, some of the fires started by the earlier raids were still burning but concern for Hamburg’s fire fighters was not on Harris's agenda and at 2340, the sirens sounded again.

During this raid some 787 RAF bombers attacked the city and this time, the weather and visibility was perfect for the attackers. The first Pathfinders dropped their TI flares over the eastern suburb of Hammerbrook and unlike the first raid, when the second wave of Pathfinders arrived they dropped their flares over the same location. This meant that the raid would be unusually concentrated and when the main force arrived, they dropped their bombs - some 2,300 tons of them – inside just fifty minutes. On the ground, the devastation and death was appalling; the fires were spreading out of control into the district of Hamm and the masses of individual fires were joining up into one huge conflagration. It was London all over again but on a much larger and altogether more terrifying scale. The firestorm had begun.

A firestorm occurs when a fire becomes so large that it sucks in air from all around and generates its own winds and energy. It becomes almost a living thing and when unchecked, can move at a frighteningly fast pace and can reach temperatures of as much as 800 degrees Celsius. In Hamburg on the night of 27th/28th July 1943, the fires were reaching staggering proportions, so much so that even the crews of the attacking bombers could smell the smoke and stench of burning flesh at 17,000 feet. On the ground, asphalt roads spontaneously combusted, fuel from ruptured oil tanks and from damaged ships spilled onto the surface of the River Elbe and the many waterways and also caught fire; people were suffocated inside seemingly safe air raid shelters and perhaps most horrifically of all, people who remained on the streets were swept off their feet by the huge winds generated by the firestorm and sucked into the flames. Operation Gomorrah had been named a little too accurately.

Following this appalling loss of life, the authorities ordered an evacuation of the city and some one million people tried to leave the city, although with the rail network shattered and many of the roads reduced to ruins, this was easier said than done. Coupled to this, the bombing still wasn’t over – another nuisance raid on the night of the 28th July kept people in a state of panic and the following night, 777 bombers of the RAF started a second firestorm in the suburb of Barmbek and wreaked further damage over the already shattered city. A final raid on the night of 2nd/3rd August was disrupted by a mixture of high winds over the North Sea and a huge thunderstorm raging over Hamburg itself. Mercifully for those remaining in the city, few bombs fell and when the battered RAF force returned to their bases, the operation was at last brought to an end.

Operation Gomorrah had caused the deaths of some 45,000 Germans, mainly civilians and left some 37,500 wounded. Somewhere in the region of a million people had fled the city. The RAF and USAAF had deployed in the region of 3,000 aircraft with a loss of some 118 with their crews killed or captured for the most part.

Perhaps it should also be mentioned that the Neuengamme Concentration Camp was located in the Bergedorf district of the City of Hamburg and was responsible for the deaths of something in the region of 55,000 of its inmates during the war. Ironically, although the camp was spared any bombing, many of the inmates were used by the authorities for the recovery of victims of the bombing from fire ravaged buildings as well as for 'bomb disposal' duties.

Neuengamme inmates on Bomb Disposal duties (author's collection)

To put matters further into perspective, we should remember a visit to London in late 1945 by a senior officer of the Hamburg Fire Brigade. He was shown around the bombed out areas of the City of London by Cyril Demarne, a senior London Fire Brigade officer. As he was being shown the pulverised areas beyond Aldersgate Street (the site of today’s Barbican Estate) to the wastes of Paternoster Row, the German fireman showed no signs of emotion. When finally they arrived at St Paul’s at the end of their tour, he asked Demarne: “Is this the worst?” When Demarne replied that the area he had shown him was as bad as anything in London, the German official simply replied “But it is nothing.” At first, Demarne had some reservations about that comment but a subsequent return visit to Hamburg revealed that the German fire chief had not been exaggerating.

It is a sobering thought indeed to reflect that during the entire six years of the war, London lost 30,000 civilians due to enemy air attacks. Hamburg lost half as many again in eight days, most of them during the firestorm night of 27th/28th July 1943. The Germans had indeed reaped the whirlwind on the most horrendous possible scale and as always in modern warfare, it was the civilians who had suffered the most.

In the next post, we shall take another look at the Hamburg raids and what evidence can still be found in the City today.

Published Sources:

Bomber Boys - Patrick Bishop, Harper Press 2007
Bomber Harris, His Life & Times - Henry Probert, Greenhill Press 2001
Inferno, The Devastation of Hamburg 1943 - Keith Lowe, Viking 2007
The London Blitz: A Fireman's Tale - Cyril Demarne OBE - After The Battle 1991

More from Mahnmal St Nikolai

Mahnmal St Nikolai (author's photo)

Following the last article on the Mahnmal St Nikolai in Hamburg, this week has seen several requests to see some more of the exhibition, so this week, I am happy to include some more photographs taken during our visit, although as the lighting in parts of the museum is somewhat subdued, some of the photographs taken are not of the highest quality.

As mentioned in the original piece, the museum takes an admirably anti-war stance and is quick to recognise that before Hamburg was destroyed by air power in 1943, the Luftwaffe had been meting out plenty of devastation itself. One city that was particularly on the receiving end was Coventry, Blitzed on 14th November 1940. So widespread was the damage that a new word entered the German language, which was to "Coventrate", in other words to devastate a particular target by bombing. 

Not long after this, on 29th December 1940, whilst watching the 'Coventration' of the City of London during the Luftwaffe's great fire raid, Sir Arthur Harris, soon to become C in C of RAF Bomber Command, uttered his now famous phrase "The Germans have sewn the wind, now they shall reap the whirlwind." After the War, Harris mentioned that it was the only time that he had felt truly vengeful and although it was originally a private comment spoken in the heat of the moment, there was no doubt that Harris, as the RAF's leading exponent of area bombing meant what he said.

It is therefore fitting that one of the first exhibits that the visitor sees in the museum is a cross of nails, taken from the ruined Coventry Cathedral and presented to another destroyed place of worship as an act of reconciliation.

Cross of Nails from Coventry Cathedral (author's photo)

The exhibition also pulls no punches when it comes to the twisted philosophy of the Nazi regime in apportioning blame for the war and shows a film poster for a movie shown in Hamburg and indeed across Germany during the war called 'Der Jude ist schulde am Krieg!' ('The Jew is guilty for the War') and posters such as this highlight the uneasy position that the church filled during the Nazi years in Germany.

Film poster (author's photo taken at the exhibition)

Another exhibit shows a truly bizarre board game, unbelievably aimed at German children, called 'Luftschutz tut not!' - which loosely means 'Air Raid Precautions are essential!' which was presumably meant to impress upon children what could be expected if or when Germany found itself at war.

Luftshutz tut not! (author's photograph taken at the exhibition)

On a more practical level, is a poster listing which items members of the public should pack into an 'Emergency Suitcase' in case they were unfortunate enough to be bombed out of their homes but lucky enough to survive. Similar posters were produced in this country and the packing list includes common sense items such as washing kit, toothbrushes, shoes, socks, towels, blankets, knives and forks and so on.

Emergency Packing List (author's photo taken at the exhibition)

It is a common misconception about the Second World War that the Germans were superbly organised and geared up for war, whilst the British were woefully ill-prepared and for the early years of the War, content to muddle through and improvise. As with all stereotypes, this theory does not always stand closer examination and the exhibition is very quick to point out that Hamburg, although Germany's second city and largest port, was an obvious target for the RAF in any future war, almost no effort had been made prior to the outbreak of war to provide any sort of protection for the civilian population against air raids. Perhaps this was borne of Nazi arrogance, that in any future war, no enemy would get close to bombing the Fatherland but faced with such staggering complacency, it is perhaps no wonder that the death toll from the Gomorrah raids was so high. Even by 1st April 1940, fewer than 3 percent of the Hamburg population had access to a safe air raid shelter and even by the summer of 1943, shortly before Gomorrah, this figure had only risen to 22 percent. For all their bluster, the Nazis had little regard for their own civilian population.

In contrast, the British, although still under-prepared, had at least started a massive expansion of the Civil Defence services in 1938 and had made a serious attempt to provide every household with either an Anderson Shelter for those that had gardens, or a Morrison Shelter for those that had not, or at the very least access to trench shelters. They had also instigated a mass evacuation of children and other vulnerable people and although the British authorities were to get some things seriously wrong, such as initially not allowing public access to the London Underground for shelter purposes, they quickly learned from their mistakes and were infinitely better prepared than the Germans when it came to protecting their civilian population.

As well as the precautions (or lack thereof),  the exhibition also shows us some of the hardware of destruction, both in archive photos and in reality. We see the main instrument of Hamburg's demise being loaded aboard a British bomber - the 4lb incendiary bomb. These were the bread and butter of the RAF's firebombing armoury and although larger incendiaries were available, it was these 4 pounders which rained death by fire upon German cities. Incredibly, the RAF dropped some 4,000,000 of these on Germany during the war.

RAF Ground Crew preparing 4lb incendiaries (author's photo taken at exhibition)

Also visible for real in the museum is the real thing, firstly an unexploded 250 lb bomb, obviously now made safe! 

Unexploded RAF 250 lb bomb (author's photo)

Although seemingly big enough, the 250 lb was an average sized High Explosive weapon and it is a sobering thought indeed when one considers that many of the Lancaster bombers on the raid carried a 4,000 lb 'Cookie' or blast bomb in addition to their load of incendiaries. The theory and practice of the RAF's bombing technique is explained at the exhibition, which put very basically was that the High Explosive bombs would initially blast off roofs and create openings in buildings, after which the incendiaries could be dropped into openings, thus allowing the fires to get a good hold. All of the while, further bombs would be dropping, forcing the firefighters to continue to take cover.

Some of the deadly debris of the raids is also on show in the shape of shrapnel; lethal bomb fragments which could cause havoc amongst anyone still out in the open. Also on display are normal household objects such as bottles and eating implements twisted into fantastic shapes by the tremendous heat generated by the firestorm.

Bomb fragments and other items (author's photo)

The exhibition also concentrates on the aftermath of the raids, both immediate and longer term. In the previous piece, we learned how inmates of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp were put to work in clearing rubble, removing bodies and most awfully of all, bomb disposal but one of their other tasks was to effectively seal off some areas of the ruined city until they could either be made safe, or in the longer term, rebuilt.

Gothenstrasse in Hammerbrook sealed off as a restricted zone (author's photo taken at exhibition)

In the immediate post-war era, we see how many families were literally living amongst the ruins in incredibly primitive conditions.

Living amongst the ruins early post-war (author's photo taken at exhibition)

Despite the appalling death toll, massive destruction and terrible privations suffered by the survivors, Hamburg rose again to once again become one of the premier ports and trading cities of post-war Europe and a visit to the wonderful viewing platform shows us the true extent of Hamburg's recovery. 

When in Hamburg, please visit the Mahnmal St Nikolai for it is a sobering experience and a lasting monument to the horrors and injustices of war.

Published Sources:

Gomorrah 1943: Hamburg's destruction through aerial warfare - Mahnmal St Nikolai, 2013

http://english.mahnmal-st-nikolai.de/

More from The Hamburg Bunker

The Heiligengeistfeld Flakturm (All images author's photos)

Following the last edition of the blog which covered the Hamburg Air Raid Shelter Museum, this week's edition is mainly a pictorial effort in order to share some more photographs taken during my recent visit to the Hanseatic port on the River Elbe.

The first picture shows one of the remaining Flakturm or Flak Towers, of which numerous examples survive across Germany, mainly by dint of the their sound concrete construction. This particular tower is a Flakturm IV, dating from 1942 and can be found on the Heiligengeistfeld, adjacent to St Pauli FC's Millerntor Stadion. The concrete walls are 3.5 metres thick and were designed to be able to withstand anything that the RAF and USAAF had in their arsenal at the time. The RAF's 22,000 lb Grand Slam bomb, introduced in 1944, could undoubtedly have penetrated the bunkers but these bombs were never used in area bombing and instead were used on precision military targets such as railway viaducts and U-Boats pens; indeed Hamburg was the target for some of these massive bombs, when right at the end of the war, on 9th April 1945, they were used to successfully destroy the U-Boat Pens at the Blohm & Voss Shipyard.

The Light gun platform on the Flakturm

Going back to the Flakturm, they were designed to carry four heavy anti aircraft guns - usually 88mm or 128mm pieces on each corner, with smaller guns, usually 37mm or 20mm - on the surrounding gallery. Inside, each tower was designed as an air raid shelter, with space for upto 10,000 civilians in reasonable comfort, also including a hospital. During the Operation Gomorrah raids on Hamburg in the summer of 1943, space in these towers would have been much sought after. The similar towers in Berlin became extremely overcrowded during the final days of Nazi rule over that city in April and May 1945, when some 30,000 civilians crowded into each shelter as the Red Army encroached upon the city. Needless to say, with those number crammed into the towers, conditions rapidly deteriorated and soon the towers soon became scenes of unimaginable squalor.

Today, the Hamburg Flakturm sees a much more peaceful usage, being used as a nightclub, music school and a music store, as well as benignly overlooking the Hamburger Dom funfair three times a year as well as numerous exhibitions and circuses and the fortnightly football crowds visiting St Pauli FC's Millerntor Stadion. There is also a second Flakturm in Hamburg, on the southern side of the River Elbe, in the Wilhelmsburg district which I have yet to visit but will hopefully do so on my next trip to the city. Due to their immensely strong construction, these towers have often proved difficult to demolish; indeed, one local informed me that if explosives were used to destroy the Heiligengeistfeld tower, half of neighbouring St Pauli would be taken out with it!

The Baumwall Shelter

Nazi Eagle over entrance

The other bunker that I photographed in Hamburg was an example of a Rundturm or Round Tower, of which there are several surviving examples, usually located adjacent to a convenient S-Bahn station. The example shown here is located at Baumwall, close to the Landungsbrucken Station as well as the Baumwall U-Bahn Station. These shelters were somewhat more aesthetically pleasing to the eye, being brick clad and having a conical shape roof. This roof, despite it's pleasing shape, actually had a practical use, being reinforced to allow incendiary bombs to bounce off harmlessly onto the ground. Inside, these shelters were of smaller capacity than the Flakturm, being normally able to accommodate 600, although during the 1943 raids, no doubt a much larger number managed to squeeze inside. These towers were completed very quickly during the early months of 1940, but despite the rapidity of their construction, they proved very sturdy and in Hamburg alone, some twelve of these Rundturn survive to this day, their modern day usage varying from a Portuguese restaurant in the Baumwall shelter, to that of a bar and also for industrial storage. One detail that has survived almost intact on all of these shelters, is the large Nazi Eagle over the entrance. Almost intact except for one detail; the Swastika has been chiselled off or cemented over in every instance.

So, to return to the Air Raid Shelter Museum in Hamm. In the previous edition of this blog, we described the Museum in some detail as well as some background information concerning the Operation Gomorrah raids of July and August 1943 but space precluded the inclusion of all of my photographs, so in answer to various requests to see some more, here goes.

An Air-Raid Siren on display in the museum

Luftschutz helmets

Some of our group examining the artefacts on display

Warped bottle and head of British 4lb incendiary bomb

The first shot shows an air raid siren on display - obviously, in wartime, these were located all across the city in various locations, usually on top of public buildings where the sound could be easily projected across the city. The second shot shows steel helmets used by the Luftschutz - the German equivalent of the ARP or Civil Defence Wardens. Like their British equivalents, these wardens were largely volunteers and could be male or female. The next shot shows some of the members of our group examining some of the various artefacts on display within one of the shelter tunnels, whilst finally in this series of four images, we see another of the bottles discovered outside warped into an odd shape by the incredible temperatures generated in the firestorm of 27th July 1943, whilst alongside it we see the remnants of one of the approximately 350,000 British 4lb incendiary bombs dropped on Hamburg and which were largely responsible for the conflagration.

'Public Air Raid Shelter This Way'

Child's Gas Mask

No Smoking!

The next series of three photographs show a sign that would have been prominent across all towns and cities across Germany and basically is a direction sign that say 'For Public Air Raid Shelter' with a large arrow pointing in the direction of safety. Next we see an example of a child's gas mask. In the Second World War, both sides feared a repetition of the horror of the First World War's use of poison gas and equipped their civilian populations and armed forces with gas masks. Indeed both Allied and Axis powers did have stockpiles of Mustard Gas as well as other gasses but mercifully, neither side ever used them. Finally, in this series, we see a 'No Smoking' sign still extant on one of the tunnel walls.

Luftschutz members at work

Cutlery twisted by the Firestorm

Diagram of a British 500lb High Explosive Bomb

Our final set of three photos show female Luftschutz wardens disposing of British incendiary bombs in an article taken from a contemporary publication. The second image is another view of some cutlery twisted into fantastic shapes by the intense heat of the Firestorm - these items were found buried in the ground surrounding the bunker, whilst the final shot is a diagram of a British 500 lb High Explosive bomb, from one of which the large piece of shrapnel on display inside the museum is taken.

On my next visit to Hamburg, I will visit the Museum again in order to purchase some more archive images so as to produce some 'then and now' comparisons from the neighbourhood to show just how the area was altered almost beyond recognition by the Firestorm.

In the meantime, thanks again to Gunnar Wulf for guiding our group around this excellent museum and for ensuring that the people of Hamburg remain aware of this terrible page in their past history.

Published Sources:

Inferno: The Destruction of Hamburg 1943 - Keith Lowe, Penguin Viking 2007