A-Z of the Blitz (E)

Evacuation: Why & How? (author's photo)

After a holiday break, we resume our occasional series with a look at the letter 'E' and connections with the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

Perhaps the most obvious 'E' is for Evacuees and when one thinks of this facet of the war in Britain, most people immediately and correctly think towards the mass exodus of children that was instigated two days before the official declaration of war, on September 1st 1939, under the title of 'Operation Pied Piper.'

In a superb piece of organisation, spread over four days, over half a million people were evacuated from London alone, largely using London Transport buses and the main line railways. Children were evacuated to all manner of places in the countryside, some as near to London as High Wycombe and some as far away as Torquay, Newton Abbot and South Wales but all out of the way of the dreaded and expected appearance of huge fleets of German bombers. Apart from children, others evacuated included expectant mothers, blind persons, the mentally ill and hospital patients, the latter so as to free up valuable bed space for the vast numbers of casualties expected to arise when the bombing began. 

"We are not going to win a war by running away." (author's photo)

As can be expected with this massed parting of children from their parents, there were more than a few tears shed both from children and from mothers and although some children came to enjoy the experience and found the country life a great adventure, it has to be said that some frankly hated every moment of it and were quickly brought back to London by mothers who could not bear to be parted from their children, especially when the bombers failed to materialize and Britain entered the period now known as the 'Phoney War.'

Schoolchildren from Woolwich awaiting evacuation at Victoria Station (Greenwich Heritage)

This was unfortunate; whilst the evacuation scheme for children was recommended, it was never mandatory and although the great majority of children stayed away from danger for the duration, the commencement of the Blitz on September 7th 1940, saw more children in London than had been the case exactly one year previously. Needless to say, the bombs falling on London did see a renewed exodus to the countryside.

One scheme that was stopped in it's tracks was the evacuation of children across the Atlantic to the absolute safety of Canada. Unfortunately to reach this safe haven, the vessels being used for the evacuation had to run the gauntlet of U-Boats and German raiders in order to reach safety. On September 27th 1940, the Ellerman liner City of Benares, carrying ninety children was torpedoed by U-48. Only thirteen children were rescued and six of those rescued had to endure a week in an open lifeboat before they were picked up by the destroyer HMS Anthony. One of the childrens' escorts on this voyage, Miss Mary Cornish, a 41 year old music teacher was awarded the George Cross for her efforts in evacuating children from the ship and subsequently caring for them whilst adrift in the lifeboat awaiting rescue.

Evacuees from Charlton Manor School, London at Torquay (Greenwich Heritage)

Another evacuation, strictly outside the scope of this article but worth mentioning nonetheless, was the evacuation that occurred during the onslaught of the so-called 'Terror Weapons', the V-1s and V-2s. Many people, thinking perhaps that the war was as good as won, decided that London was not the place to be in the summer of 1944 and the numbers of 'official' evacuees - i.e. those recorded by their local authorities soared from around 319,000 in March 1944 (which was the lowest number recorded) to an astonishing 1,012,200 by September of that year, which was almost on a par with the peak figures recorded in early 1941. On top of these official figures, it was estimated that a further half million made their own arrangements and left the capital by July 1944. It has to be said that the vast majority of these evacuees were people in the categories mentioned previously and those with war jobs or business in London remained at their posts.

The Daddy of all evacuations was that which occurred at Dunkirk in late May and early June 1944, together with other similar operations from the Channel ports which secured the escape of the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force as well as a sizeable French contingent from under the noses of the advancing German forces. Whilst this evacuation did not directly concern Londoners, it was once again a masterpiece of organisation, combined with not a little good fortune. The magnificent role of the Royal Navy and of the little ships has been well documented but perhaps lesser known is the effort in distributing the evacuated soldiers once they arrived back in England. This was again a stunning piece of logistics, this time on the part of the railway companies, mainly the Southern, who ran some 573 troop trains for evacuees, including ambulance trains for the wounded, many of which passed through London on their way to their various centres where the troops were able to rest and recuperate before returning to their proper units.

Another 'E' synonymous with the Blitz is the Emergency Water Supply, or EWS, with their distinctive signs, some of which still survive in London and other cities as fading reminders of our wartime past. Like many innovations brought about by the necessity of war, the idea of the EWS was a stunningly simple one. It was quickly realized, often through bitter experience that the regular supply of water to the fire services could easily be disrupted by bomb damage as the mains water supply was extremely vulnerable to even the smaller high explosive bombs in the Luftwaffe's arsenal. A simple expedient therefore, was to arrange a supply of emergency reservoirs at strategic points around any built up area. These originally took the form of steel dams which were kept filled and maintained by the local fire services and which could then be used in the event of a failure to the mains supply. They would be refilled by relays of hoses from the nearest source of water or by tanker lorries. Once the Blitz started in earnest, many bombed out buildings were cleared and their basements sealed with concrete or bitumen to create a watertight dam and these were then filled with water. Some of these conversions were official but some were done using local initiative, which sometimes incurred the wrath of the 'dead hand of the uninvolved', no doubt for not filling in the correct paperwork, or some such trifling matter. Bureaucrats and 'jobsworths' thrived even in wartime!

The plaque at the site of the Surrey Music Hall (author's photo)

 

One of these Emergency Water Supplies in London was the scene of one of the tragedies of the Blitz, when on the night of 10th/11th May 1941, the basement of the old Surrey Music Hall at St George's Circus, near the Elephant & Castle, received a direct hit from a High Explosive bomb, killing seventeen London firefighters who were engaged in keeping the water supplies to the already hard pressed firefighters tackling the huge fires burning in the area. Apart from the appalling loss of life, this one bomb cut off the water supply and until fresh water relays could be brought on line, in some cases from the Thames itself, the fires began to burn out of control. Eventually, after some heroic efforts, the water supply was restored using some nine miles of hoses from the Thames and the Surrey Canal and the vast fires began to be brought under control.

Today, a plaque erected by the Firemen Remembered charity marks the spot where these firefighters laid down their lives. 

As mentioned previously, some of these EWS signs survive in London and elsewhere to give a faded footprint into London's wartime past.

Next time, we shall look at the letter 'F' which could stand for Firefighters, First Aid Posts and Firestorms amongst other things.

Published Sources:

The Battle of The Atlantic - John Costello & Terry Hughes, Harper Collins 1977

The Doodlebugs - Norman Longmate, Arrow Books 1986

The London Blitz: A Fireman's Tale - Cyril Demarne OBE, After The Battle 1991

London Transport at War - Charles Graves, Almark Publishing 1974

Return from Dunkirk: Railways to the Rescue, Operation Dynamo 1940 - Peter Tatlow, The Oakwood Press 2010

War on The Line - Bernard Darwin, The Southern Railway Company 1946

D is for Doodlebugs and Divers

The devastation caused by a V-1. This is Shirley Way, Croydon (author's collection)

Seventy years ago exactly, London and the southeast of England was in the midst of another German air offensive. Unlike the First Blitz of 1940/41 and the subsequent, smaller incursions of the Baedecker Raids and the Little Blitz that had petered out earlier in 1944, these attacks were all the more sinister because they were the aircraft involved, and aircraft they surely were, carried no pilot nor any other aircrew, hence the early use of the 'robot' name.

 

Perhaps the Vergeltungswaffe Eins, or V-1s, as they were more correctly known, acquired more nicknames than any other German weapon during the Second World War. At first, the Civil Defence services rather coyly referred to them as 'Pilotless Aircraft' or 'PACs', later re-naming them 'Fly Bombs' or 'FLY' as abbreviated in the Incident Logs themselves. The RAF pilots sent up to intercept them in their Spitfires, Tempests, Mustangs or more rarely, the new Gloster Meteor jet fighters, referred to them as 'Divers' and indeed, their patrols soon became officially known as Anti Diver Patrols. To the long suffering British public as well as the many overseas servicemen and women in the south of England, they became known as 'Buzz Bombs', 'Doodlebugs' or 'Doodles', although some ruder citizens were known to refer to them as 'Farting Furies' due to the distinctive rasping sound made by their pulse-jet engines.

We have examined the V-1s in some detail in an earlier edition of this blog, so rather than repeat things too much, perhaps now is a good time to examine to raw statistics behind the first of Hitler's vengeance weapons.

St Mark's Church, Greenwich South Street (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

The V-1, although a sophisticated piece of technology by 1944 standards, was a remarkably cheap weapon to construct. The contract with Volkswagen, the main suppliers of the Flying Bomb, allowed an average cost of £125 per bomb and indeed the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough estimated after the war, that a British factory, awarded a large scale contract, could have built a similar weapon at a cost of £115 each. When this is compared to the usual quoted price for a Lancaster bomber of around £15,000 plus the cost of training and paying it's crew and supporting ground crew, this appears to be a real bargain basement weapon.

It was estimated that some 9,250 V-1s were launched at targets in Britain, mainly from their fixed, ramp sites in the Pas de Calais area, although some were air launched from converted Heinkel III bombers. These fixed launching sites ensured that most V-1s, far from 'doodling', tended to remain on a fixed course, the only imponderable being how far along this course would the engine cut out. British civilians who lived beneath these fixed routes, especially nearer the coast, tended to be wary, though quite sanguine about the constant stream of Doodlebugs roaring overhead. Those nearer to the intended target of London, became heartily sick of them and very soon certain areas of London, mainly the south and southeastern suburbs, began to resemble a battlefield, with damage far more concentrated than that caused by the earlier Blitz of 1940/41.

Unlike the V-2 rockets which were to follow, effective countermeasures could be taken against the V-1. The British Government set into motion Operation Diver, which entailed moving around 2,500 anti-aircraft guns from their London sites to a coastal ribbon along the Kent and Sussex coasts where the guns could fire at the incoming V-1s without fear of shooting them down over a built up area. The guns ranged from the 'heavy' batteries using the excellent 3.7 inch gun, to the 'light' units equipped with the 40mm Bofors. All were equipped with proximity fuses and assisted by gun laying radars. At first the results were modest, with only 17% of bombs destroyed in the first week of operation. This quickly rose to around 60% by August 1944 and on one day towards the end of the month, an incredible 82% of all V-1s intercepted were shot down by the anti-aircraft guns. Overall, the guns were thought to be responsible for shooting down 1,460 Doodlebugs.

RAF Spitfire toppling a V-1 over Kent (IWM)

Inland of the guns was next deployed a 'layer' of barrage balloons, designed to entangle the onrushing 'Divers' in their steel tethering cables. The balloons were rather less successful than the anti-aircraft guns in bringing down the V-1s, but were still credited with downing around 231.

Further inland still, any surviving divers that made it through, were then fair game for the RAF fighters. Many will have seen the iconic image of a Spitfire seemingly toppling a V-1 by flying alongside it and tipping it's wingtips overs but many were actually shot down rather than toppled. This was no mean feat; flying behind a fast flying one tonne warhead required a special kind of courage. The main RAF aircraft employed on these Anti_Diver duties was the Tempest, which was also the most successful, being credited with 638 'victories' over the V-1s. The next most successful was the Mosquito with 428, then the Griffon engined Spitfire Mk XIV with 303, the Mustang with 232 and all other piston engined types combined 158. An oft-quoted myth is that the new Gloster Meteor jet was responsible for turning the tide against the Robots. This was not so; the Meteors were new into service and like all new aircraft prone to teething troubles, not the least of which was a tendency for their cannon armament to jam at the most important time. Because of this, the Meteors were responsible for the downing of only 13 V-1s, but it was an important chapter in the dawning of the jet age. In total, the fighters were responsible for bringing down 1,772 V-1s.

Perhaps less known than these obvious countermeasures was the part played by deception of British agents. The now celebrated 'Agent Garbo', real name Juan Pujol was thought by the Germans to be working for them and was requested by his German controllers to provide accurate data on the impacts of the V-1s on London. Unknown to the Germans, Pujol was a dedicated anti-Nazi, a loathing formed during the Spanish Civil War and had deliberately set himself up as a double agent to feed the Germans false intelligence with the express aim of harming their war effort. Pujol therefore fed back information which downplayed the impacts to the south of the capital whilst concentration on those impacts to the north and west of London, therefore giving the impression that the V-1s were consistently overshooting their targets. The Germans were unable by this time to perform aerial reconnaissance over London to check the results and so largely believed Pujol's reports and adjusted the ranges of the V-1s accordingly.

Croydon was London's most 'Fly Bombed' borough. This is Zion Road, Thornton Heath (author's collection)

One unwitting downside of this was that the south and south east London boroughs became even more heavily bombed than before and a 'league table' of the most heavily bombed London boroughs reads as follows:

Croydon - 141

Wandsworth - 122

Lewisham - 114

Camberwell - 80

Woolwich - 77

Greenwich - 73

Lambeth - 71

Beckenham - 70

Orpington - 63

West Ham - 58

As can be seen from the above, the only borough in the 'Top Ten' was West Ham, with 58 impacts. The remainder of the league table also showed a distinct bias of impacts to the south of the Thames. Outside London, the story was a similar one. The county of Kent bore the brunt with 1,444 impacts, with Sussex next on 888, with Essex coming in third on 412. There were impacts elsewhere in the country, although these northern V-1s were of the air launched variety rather than those coming from France.

Lest we forget (author's photo)

The monetary cost to the Allies was staggering and it can be argued that this aspect was the most successful for the Germans. It was estimated by the British Government that the cost to the British taxpayer (and to a lesser extent, the American) was in the region of £48 million (at 1944 prices), this was in aircraft and airmen lost, bombs dropped on the V-1 production sites and launching ramps, shells fired and balloons lost, the clearance of damage and lost production. Add to this the estimated (by the Ministry of Health) cost of £25 million  for replacing or repairing lost or damaged housing, then the sum is indeed incredible. Compared to this, the German cost was estimated by the Air Ministry to be in the region of £12.6 million for constructing the launch sites, training the launching crews and the capital outlay for building the missiles.

However, compared with the human cost, the financial outlay is unimportant; it was estimated that some 6,184 civilians and 2,917 Allied servicemen and women were killed in the V-1 campaign, with a further 20,000 seriously injured. This then, was the true cost of the 'Robot war' which was to largely fizzle out when the launch sites were overrun by the Allied armies by early September 1944.

Air launched V-1s continued to be launched right through until late March 1945, although these were mainly only of 'nuisance value' compared to the onslaught of V-2 rockets which was to commence in September 1944 and against which there were no effective countermeasures.

Published Sources:

The Doodlebugs - Norman Longmate, Hutchinson 1981

Most Secret War - RV Jones, Hamish Hamilton 1978

Exploring Wartime Blackheath & Greenwich

The walk starts outside All Saints' Church (all photos courtesy Sam Dorrington, Everlasting Moments)

The spring and summer months, hopefully blessed with better weather, tend to be the busiest time for guiding our Blitz Walks and so far, this year has proved to be our busiest yet. Neil has been actively engaged with his City of London and Mayfair walks, whilst yours truly has been fully occupied with private walks covering Chelsea, Westminster and earlier this month, around my native Greenwich.

Back in the late winter, I was contacted by Janet, who wished to organize a surprise birthday walk for her history loving husband, who also happened to have been born in Blackheath. Our Blackheath & Greenwich walk fitted the bill and the walk was duly booked for 9th June. 

Whilst our clients are always good company, linked through a common interest in our wartime past, it is always one of the joys of guiding to find out exactly how much any particular walker, or groups of walkers know about their subject and I was delighted to discover that my client on this occasion was the legendary DJ, Robbie Vincent. Both Robbie and Janet are passionate about London's history and it's wartime past and were delightful company throughout the walk.

It just so happened that on this particular day, I was being accompanied by my very good friend and professional photographer, Sam Dorrington of Everlasting Moments Photography who had kindly come along to take some shots in order to update our main website, which he also designed. With all of these factors in place, it seemed a good idea to write a short piece for this blog about the day, which will also hopefully give the prospective walker some idea as to what to expect on one of our walks.

The Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich, as it was known during the war, like the rest of our capital, suffered it's share of punishment during the Blitz of 1940-41 and once again during the onslaught of the V-1 and V-2 'Terror Weapons' in 1944-45. Our walk of the area, like all of those that we guide, is designed to commemorate those times and to honour the people that lived through (and all too often did not survive) those dark days. There are still scars to be seen and clues as to what happened all those years ago and thanks to the excellent Greenwich Heritage Centre which has an extensive photographic record of many of the incidents, we are able to bring a 'then and now' perspective to many aspects of the walk.

Our walk started outside All Saints' Church, a well known Blackheath landmark and after setting the scene for the Blitz and it's implications for the area, we set off on our tour. Perhaps fittingly in this, the centenary year of the outbreak of the Great War, our first port of call highlighted the impact of this earlier conflict upon the area. This first stand was the former church hall for All Saints', now the Mary Evans Picture Library. Although a delightful building in it's own right, the reason for it's existence is due to a Zeppelin raid of 1916 which devastated the original terraced housing that once occupied the spot. The Zeppelin raids were an ominous reminder to Londoners that modern warfare was no longer a distant affair that did not affect civilians and that in the 20th Century, the populations of major cities, even those a long way from the front line, were just as much in the firing line as the servicemen directly facing the enemy.

Examining the scene of an earlier conflict

Our next stand took us around the corner to Collins Street, where we examined a now familiar colour scheme for street furniture but discovered how the black and white stripes came into their own during the Blackout. We also learned of the work of the Air Raid Wardens, how our latter day perception of them as being similar to Mr Hodges from the Dad's Army series was originally not too different in 1940 and how this was all to change once the bombs started to fall. It was at this location that the first of my 'props' came out, which as well as the archive photos, really help to bring the experience alive for our walkers.

Steve shows a once-familiar piece of headgear

Moving on from Collins Street, the next stand highlighted our first actual Second World War incident, when we paused at Wemyss Road, the scene of a V-2 Rocket incident dating from March 1945, some two months before the end of the war in Europe, which demonstrated again that the people of London were in the front line almost right until the end of the war.

We then moved around to The Paragon, which despite today being an oasis of peace, was the target of some of the worst of the Blitz on the night of 16th/17th April 1941, a raid so fierce that it became ingrained in London Blitz folklore as 'The Wednesday.' Fortunately, The Paragon and it's adjoining buildings were largely rebuilt after the war and deservedly won a Festival of Britain Award for architecture in 1951 for this work. However, the scars are still there to be seen and with some help from the archive photos and the ARP Incident Log, it is possible to piece together what happened on that night.

Steve explains an incident to Robbie at Paragon House

 

Robbie and Janet spot a 'then and now' similarity at The Paragon

Our walk then moved across Blackheath itself, where we discovered how the heath was the site of anti-aircraft defences in the form of guns, barrage balloons and for a short while, rockets and how before these all appeared, how obstructions appeared on the heath in an effort to thwart any prospective airborne invasion. Once we reached Greenwich Park, we were able to see surviving evidence of Home Guard defences and how they would have tried to exact a heavy price on any German advance into Central London. This evidence takes the form of 'loopholes' or firing positions cut into the wall surrounding the park and whilst most of them have been filled in, there are some survivors. Far from being the buffoons portrayed in Dad's Army, the Home Guard were a brave group of men, mostly of a 'certain age' who despite their early lack of equipment, would have sold their lives dearly in an attempt to halt a German invasion.

Home Guard firing position

Moving away from the traffic's roar of the main A2 trunk road, we moved into the peace and quiet of Greenwich Park and after pausing at the Ranger's House to discuss it's wartime use as an Auxiliary Fire Station, we moved along to the General Wolfe statue, which still bears it's honourable scars caused by shrapnel from a nearby high explosive bomb blast in October 1940. It was here that another of my 'props' appeared, a collection of shrapnel collected from the Thames foreshore at Greenwich by Nicola White of Tideline Art which graphically demonstrates the damage that these lethal chunks of metal can cause. It was at this point many years ago as a small boy, that I can honestly say that my interest in history began and to those of you taking this walk, I will produce photographic evidence of this fact!

 

Robbie & Janet examine General Wolfe's wartime scars

We then walked down to the Park Row gate and exited the Park, pausing on the corner of Park Row to examine the former site of Greenwich Police Station, destroyed by a V-1 Flying Bomb, almost exactly seventy years ago, before entering the Old Royal Naval College and standing in the footsteps of our wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who came to inspect bomb damage here on the second day of the Blitz, 8th September 1940.

Standing in the footsteps of Churchill at the ORNC

Our final stand on this walk was at St Alfege's Church, in the heart of Greenwich Town Centre. This classic piece of Hawksmoor church architecture was laid waste by a German incendiary bomb on the night of 19th March 1941 and although painstakingly restored in the 1950s, is a graphic demonstration that area bombing has no respect for historic buildings. It was at this stage that my final 'prop' appeared in the form of a Defence Medal, the nearest thing to a campaign medal ever issued to the men and women of the Civil Defence services.

The Defence Medal

It was at this point that we bade our farewells to Robbie and Janet, who had to return to their car in Greenwich Park, before Sam and I repaired to the nearest pub for a well deserved pint!

I make no apologies for being deliberately vague about the detail of the walk as well as omitting many of the stands and 'props' used. There are two reasons for this - firstly, if I were to include everything, then this article would be about three times it's current length and secondly, there would be no incentive to come along on the walk if prospective walkers knew everything in advance!

There is nothing like walking the ground, so I hope that from this aperitif, readers of this article will decide to book up on the next Greenwich walk, which is scheduled for Sunday August 31st. Details will appear on the Next Walks page of the main website as well as on my Twitter page @Blitzwalker. As an alternative, our private walks for a small group of friends or family, as with the walk described above, are very popular and won't break the bank.

Thanks are once again due to Robbie and Janet Vincent for being such good company on the walk and to Sam Dorrington for taking such a great set of photos, a mere sample of which have been on display here.

Operation Gambit: Preparing for D-Day.

Gambit: Chess opening in which player sacrifices pawn or piece to secure advantage (Concise Oxford Dictionary)

HMS X-23 (with George Honour amidships) returns after D-Day (www.dday7.channel4.com)

Following on from yesterday's immensely moving commemorations for the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, perhaps today is a good time to remember one of the lesser known but vitally important aspects of the operation; that of marking the beaches and clearly defining the extreme limits of the assault zone for the British and Canadian forces.

The task was given to the Royal Navy's midget submarines, the underwater answer to the British propensity for 'messing around' in small boats, although the missions for the X-Craft, as these cramped vessels were officially known, consisted of anything but messing around. Six months previously, six of these tiny vessels, powered by the same diesel engines normally used to propel London buses, had attacked the German battleship, Tirpitz, at her Norwegian fjord anchorage. The attack was a brilliant success with the giant battleship being crippled until the following April, but the cost was high. Out of the six craft sent into the attack, four had been lost or scuttled by their crews and those that had survived were to spend the remainder of the war in German POW camps. In April 1944, another submarine, X-24, attacked the Laksevag floating dock in Bergen, Norway but mistakenly placed her charges beneath a German merchant vessel, the Barenfels, which was alongside the dock at the time. The charges sank the merchant ship but only caused minor damage to the floating dock, which was capable of docking the Tirpitz and other large German warships. The operation was repeated in September 1944, again by X-24 but with a fresh crew. This time the operation was an unqualified success and the floating dock was sunk. X-24 returned safely, having been undetected by the enemy and survives to this day.

HMS X-24 preserved at Gosport (Geni)

When it came to the meticulous planning for Operation Overlord, as the Normandy invasions were officially named, it was almost inevitable that the X-Craft would be involved in those preparations. Starting in January 1944, X-20, under the commanded by Lieut. KR Hudspeth RANVR, together with Sub Lieut. Enzer RNVR and the Combined Operations Pilotage Party comprising of Lt. Cmdr. Nigel Willmott RN along with two divers, Major Logan and Sergeant Ogden-Smith of the Royal Marines, was tasked with providing sand samples in order to gauge the suitability of the various beaches for landing troops, tanks and the myriad of vehicles required to make a successful invasion. Each night, for four nights, the divers went ashore on what were to become Omaha and Sword beaches to conduct their surveys, literally under the noses of the Germans. The soil and sand samples were meticulously logged, so as to record which part of the beaches they were removed from, placed into condoms and returned to the submarine. X-20 returned with the booty on January 21st 1944 and from the samples obtained and the surveys conducted, two scale models of the beaches were constructed as well as a partial full scale reproduction so as to test the suitability of the beaches. The operation was a hugely risky one; discovery would have compromised the whole Allied plan but it's success was to assist in making Overlord arguably the best planned Allied operation of the entire war. For his actions in gathering this invaluable intelligence, Lieut. Hudspeth was awarded a bar to his already awarded DSC.

When the time came for the invasion proper, Hudspeth and the X-20 was to return to Normandy along with one of her sister vessels, X-23 way ahead of the main invasion fleet in the early hours of June 4th 1944, as part of the ominously named (for those taking part) Operation Gambit, the marking of the extremities of the British and Canadian landing areas. At the time of their sailing, D-Day was planned for June 5th and the prospect of spending the best part of two days submerged in the incredibly cramped and foetid conditions unique to a midget submarine was bad enough, but when X-23 surfaced at 01:00 on June 5th expecting to prepare for her marking duties, her commanding officer, Lieutenant George Honour RNVR, was dismayed to receive a coded radio message informing them that the invasion had been postponed for 24 hours and that he and his four man crew would have to submerge to spend a further day waiting for their task to begin, hoping that they would not be discovered in the meantime. In case of disaster, those manning the two X-Craft were all equipped with falsified French identity papers that would hopefully allow them to get ashore undetected by the Germans, evade capture and link up with the French Resistance.

All this was furthest from Honour's and Hudspeth's minds when they received their orders to wait. Once the word came that the invasion was on, their task was to surface, erect an 18 feet tall telescopic mast to which was attached a flashing searchlight shining seawards to the invasion fleet. If the approaching ships saw a green light, it meant that they were on target, if red, then they were not. Each submarine also carried a radio beacon that would be switched on the moment they surfaced as well as a sonar signal that could be homed onto by the approaching fleet. Furthermore, each submarine was to launch dinghies, each with a man in it which would mark the individual assault beaches. As a final visual aid, each X-Craft was to fly a large yellow flag, which would make them highly visible to the enemy as well as to the Allies!

George Honour was prepared for all of this but in addition to being a target for the enemy, he did not want to become an unwitting target for friendly vessels, so in addition to the yellow flag, he planned that X-23 would fly an extra-large White Ensign, of the size more usually flown by battleships or cruisers.

Aboard X-23, the delay was an opportunity to check and double-check that they were indeed in the correct position. The navigator, Lieut. 'Thin' Lynne took a series of bearings and quickly identified several local landmarks including Ouistreham Lighthouse, the local parish church, as well as the spires of two other churches in Langrune and St. Aubin sur Mer. Lynne's navigation had been faultless and X-23 was almost spot on her allotted position.

After what must have seemed an interminable wait throughout the long daylight hours of June 5th in conditions that were becoming steadily more uncomfortable, the two X-Craft surfaced in the early hours of June 6th to learn that the invasion was on and at 04:30, X-23 erected her mast and prepared to begin sending out her signals to the soon to be approaching armada. At 05:00, her ship's log recorded 'Commenced flashing green light.'

Later that morning, with the invasion successfully under way, the mines swept, bombardment ships in their allotted anchorages and with all manner of craft busily going about their business, the duties of the X-Craft were done. Off Sword Beach, as Lieutenant Honour conned his midget submarine through lines of landing craft streaming inshore in the heavy seas, all that could be discerned from passing vessels was the bizarre sight of what appeared to be two large flags flying apparently unsupported but moving steadily through the water. Honour took the X-23 out to the headquarters ship HMS Largs, there to await a tow back to Portsmouth and after 64 hours submerged off the French coast, no doubt for some breakfast as well as a very welcome shower followed by some equally welcome sleep!

George Honour was awarded the DSC for his part in the operation and after the war, returned to civilian life in Bristol, passing away in 2002 at the age of 84.

The X-Craft were to have one further brilliant success in the Far East, when two further craft, XE1 and XE3 successfully attacked the Japanese heavy cruiser Takao in Singapore Harbour in August 1945. This feat of arms earned Victoria Crosses for Lieutenant Ian Fraser RNR and Leading Seaman James Magennis into the process.

The two midget submarine stars of this story, X-20 and X-23 had a short life; built in late 1943, both were ignominiously scrapped in 1945 and after some brief experimental work, the remaining midget submarines, being essentially a wartime expedient, at least as far as the Royal Navy was concerned, passed into history.

Today, two wartime midget submarines are preserved; XE-8 forms part of the display at Chatham Historic Dockyard in Kent, whilst the battle honoured X-24 is on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport. These survivors are testament to the brave men who fought aboard these vessels, which were once described by the Royal Navy's official wartime historian, Captain Stephen Roskill as being the "direct descendent of the Elizabethan fireship."

Published Sources:

D-Day - Anthony Beevor, Viking 2009
The Longest Day - Cornelius Ryan, Simon & Schuster 1959
The War at Sea - edited by John Winton, Hutchinson 1974
Warships of World War II - HT Lenton & JJ Colledge, Ian Allan 1973

 

A - Z of the Blitz (C)

After a short break, we resume our occasional series with a look at the letter 'C' which amongst other things, stands for Cabs.

At this point, readers might be wondering, not for the first time whether this writer has lost his marbles and what relevance cabs had to the Blitz, apart from providing a means of transport to those with a little more money to spare and one, which like every other mode of transport in London 'carried on' despite the worst that the Luftwaffe could throw at them.

AFS firemen with taxi at Gordonbrock Road (Blitzwalkers)

A glance at our main website helps to provide the answer but for ease of reference, the photo is reproduced here, showing some of the lads of the AFS at Gordonbrock Road School, Brockley proudly standing in front of their 'new' fire engine, which is a requisitioned London cab, complete with roof rack carrying a ladder and also towing a trailer pump. It is not clear from the photograph whether one of the three fire fighters is in fact a taxi driver taking his vehicle to war, but this is quite possible. 

In his excellent book 'London Taxis at War', Bill Eales explains that on many occasions, the cabs arrived at the scene of a fire long before the large fire engines simply because the drivers knew all of the short cuts, which become known to London cab drivers over years of experience and through passing 'The Knowledge', that tough examination that every licensed London cab driver has to pass before he is allowed out on the streets to ply his trade.

Whilst some cabs removed their meter and substituted a small bell in it's place, thus becoming full time 'fire engines', others doubled up and continued their usual duties during the daytime but during a raid, in addition to the ladder and trailer pump, the cabs would carry buckets of sand (for smothering incendiaries) as well as stirrup pumps that could deal with small fires. The drivers would wear a tin hat and except when the bombs were falling from directly overhead, would usually remain with his cab through thick and thin. Other cabs were converted into ambulances, whilst further vehicles were used by the Army as personnel carriers in the event of an invasion.

For those cab drivers still working 'For Hire' the pickings could be rich indeed, for when raids were at their height, they were quite often the only form of public transport still moving. Later in the war, when the American servicemen arrived, they were often accused of hogging the available cabs as they were the only ones who could afford them! 

A slightly apocryphal story perhaps but Americans on leave in London, were very prone to using cabs, although in 1944-45 when the Vengeance Weapons were falling on London, it could be a dangerous form of transport. One group of American airmen were in a cab passing Smithfield Market when a V-2 rocket exploded very adjacently to the taxi. Although all survived unscathed, including the cab, when they eventually arrived back at Liverpool Street Station to catch their train back to their airbase in East Anglia, one of the flyers was heard to comment "Gee, it's much safer up there in the plane! 

One final story relating to flyers, this time RAF boys during the Battle of Britain is worthy of note. One evening in Park Lane, two RAF flyers hailed a cab and asked whether more were available as there were many of the colleagues needing to get back to Biggin Hill after a function at one of the big hotels. Soon, some thirty cabs were lined up waiting and transported the flyers back to Biggin free of charge. The drivers thought that this would be the last they heard of it but a week or so later, some of the same lads who had been driven back to base managed to seek out the drivers and informed them that no less an RAF personage than 'Sailor' Malan had arranged for two RAF trucks to take the cabmen down to Biggin Hill for a 'thank you' celebration at the mess and after a convivial evening, the same trucks brought the drivers back to central London. After that, the boys of Fighter Command could do no wrong!

Cross of Nails from Coventry Cathedral now at the Mahnmal St Nikolai in Hamburg (author's photo)

'C' also stands for Coventry and a new word that was introduced into the vocabulary at this time - 'Koventrieren' was originally used by the Germans but soon entered the English language as to Coventrate, i.e. to devastate a target through the means of heavy bombing.

Although towns and cities other than London had been severely bombed in the Blitz, notably Portsmouth, Plymouth and Liverpool, the bombing of Coventry on November 14th 1940, marked a change in the Luftwaffe's tactics, beginning a concerted effort to attack targets in the industrial Midlands. The raid was carried out by 515 bombers and in it's own way, was a precursor to the RAF attacks on German cities later in the war. An initial small wave of target marking bombers, guided by the Knickebein radio beams, accurately dropped marker flares for the follow up wave of aircraft to drop their high explosive bombs. These rendered many roads temporarily impassible and also ruptured water mains, thus making it nigh on impossible for the fire services to reach the fires and then effectively fight them once they did arrive. A third wave of bombers carried a mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs and started many fires which burned uncontrollably.

The resulting devastation destroyed or seriously damaged twenty one important factories, twelve of them involved in the aircraft industry. Hundreds of shops were destroyed and approximately one third of it's houses were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. More importantly, 554 people were killed. Today, the most tangible sign of the Coventry Blitz is the ruined cathedral, gutted by incendiary bombs and never rebuilt, which still stands as a memorial to those killed and as a mark of reconciliation. 

The damage to Coventry was serious but not terminal. Many of the industries whose factories were devastated that night had already partially relocated to 'shadow' factories carefully located away from the city centre into the relative safety of the suburbs or the countryside unknown to German intelligence. It was one thing to destroy an ancient monument such as Coventry Cathedral and to wreck the shopping centre but the aircraft industry was harder to pin down.

The target marking techniques employed by the Luftwaffe that night were carefully studied by RAF Bomber Command, and in particular by Sir Arthur Harris, at that point commanding No. 5 Group, who had been practicing the concept of target marking for some years. The tactic was tried on a small scale on 16th December 1940 when Mannheim was bombed in retaliation and it could be said that the attack on Coventry precipitated the change in the RAF's tactics from precision attacks on military targets (which had failed dismally) to area bombing of entire cities, a tactic which under Harris's direction, using radio beams to reach their targets and employing target marking techniques, was to reap spectacular, if horrifying, results on almost every major German town and city for the remainder of the war. Our photo shows a cross of nails taken from the gutted Coventry Cathedral, now on display at another devastated place of worship, the St Nikolai Kirche in Hamburg, now like Coventry Cathedral a place of reconciliation and remembrance of the horrors of area bombing.

Sir Winston Churchill (Library of Congress)

Our final 'C' is one who visited Coventry in the immediate aftermath of the raid and is Winston Churchill. From the moment that the first bombs fell on London on 7th September, Britain's Prime Minister was everywhere. Whenever a major incident occurred, the odds were that Churchill would want to inspect the damage, to be seen by the population, partially because he did not want to be thought of as taking refuge safely in a shelter whilst others suffered and partially because he genuinely did care about what was happening. On one occasion whilst visiting the East End of London after a bad raid, Churchill was visibly moved to tears at the plight of the people, having seen the aftermath of a direct hit on a shelter. Seeing Churchill's reaction, one elderly lady was heard to say "You see, he really cares, he's crying." The Prime Minister quickly pulled himself together and continued his breakneck tour of the damage but his reaction was far from untypical of the man.

Churchill was utterly fearless to the point of recklessness. He would frequently sit on the roof of 10 Downing Street during a raid so he could watch what was happening and on another occasion when he did this was informed that the building below was rapidly filling with smoke; it turned out that the Prime Minister had perched himself comfortably sitting on a chimney!

At a time when invasion of this country was a serious proposition, Churchill refused to countenance any possibility that he might be evacuated away from danger - "If at last this long story is to end, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood" - was his response to any suggestions of surrender or evacuation.

Of course, underground accommodation did exist for Churchill in the form of the Cabinet War Rooms, which from 21st October 1940, was the Prime Minister's main base. Referred to as the 'No. 10 Annexe', many Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff meetings were held here, although Churchill continued to hold meetings and to sleep at the 'real' No. 10 whenever possible. A more secure location was also constructed at the disused Tube Station at Down Street, near Piccadilly but this was only used on a handful of occasions.

Despite all of these secure locations from which to sit out the Blitz, Churchill was rarely, if ever, content to do this. On 15th September, the day we now commemorate as Battle of Britain Day, he was at the Uxbridge Headquarters of 11 Group, RAF Fighter Command, watching the battle unfold as Keith Park deployed his forces. Deeply moved after watching this drama, it was in the car returning to Chequers that Churchill began to compose his "Never in the field of human conflict" speech, which still resonates to this day.

Winston Churchill was at this time, at the very beginning of his wartime Premiership and victory could not be assured but fortunately for the British people and for civilisation, an inspirational figure had come to the fore at precisely the right moment.

Printed Sources:

Churchill - Roy Jenkins, Pan 2001

London Taxis at War 1939-1945 - Bill Eales, Privately Published 1985

The Myth of the Blitz - Angus Calder, Pimlico 1992

A - Z of the Blitz (B)

Apart from Blitz, B is for Barrage Balloons. these bulbous, ungainly creatures have become one of the stock images of the Second World War, usually sitting passively as if waiting in vain for something to happen, the balloons actually served as a lethal deterrent to low flying aircraft and indirectly saved many lives during the war. 

The balloon barrage in Eltham, SE London (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

Tethered to the ground by steel cables, the purpose of the balloons was mainly to deter low flying aircraft, especially at the start of the war, the dreaded Stuka dive bombers, which had caused so much havoc during the Blitzkrieg attacks on Poland and later France and the Low Countries. In reality, the Stukas were of little use to the Luftwaffe in attacks over the UK; against determined opposition equipped with modern single engined fighters such as the Spitfire and Hurricane, the Ju-87 Stukas were easy meat and they were soon withdrawn from attacks on the UK during the Battle of Britain and took no part in the Blitz. The balloons however, continued to be useful cogs in the defensive machine. Because the height of the tethering cables could be adjusted, they served a useful purpose, along with the anti-aircraft guns in forcing the German bombers to fly at higher altitudes, thus reducing their accuracy. Barrage balloons could also be mounted in a more mobile role, fixed to trucks which enabled them to be deployed to different areas much more quickly than the conventional, ground tethered variety. Balloons were also used in great numbers at sea and footage of the great Allied invasions such as Salerno and Normandy sees the ubiquitous balloons tethered to landing craft and other vessels in an effort to deter low flying fighters from strafing the Allied vessels. 

Back on land, the balloons once again came to the forefront of British defences during the V-1 Flying Bomb attacks of 1944. Hurriedly redeployed to a ribbon of defences inside the coast, the balloons were ranged at a suitable altitude to bring down the V-1s, which being pilotless, tended to fly at a fixed course and height. They were thought to be responsible for bringing down some 230 Flying Bombs, although the Germans did counter this by fitting wire cutting devices to the leading edges of the V-1's wings. Even so, the balloons in their own small way helped slow the onslaught of these weapons on the capital.

Occasionally, these usually inert monsters broke loose from their moorings and the various Civil Defence incident logs reported damage to chimneys and other property caused by these cables becoming wrapped around protruding brickwork and already partially damaged houses and no doubt causing some light relief for their Army 'crews' from Balloon Command who were responsible for looking after them.

B also stands for Bombs and Bomb Disposal. We shall examine the various types of bombs when their turn comes in the alphabet, suffice to say that the Luftwaffe used high explosive bombs of various sizes, ranging from small 100 kgs, right up to the 1000 kgs 'Hermann', so called by the British because of it's portly appearance, said to be reminiscent of Hermann Goring. They also used the small 1 kg incendiary bomb and the much larger 500 kgs and 1000 kgs Parachute Mine, adapted from naval mines into fearsome airburst weapons.

A German 500kg bomb at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea (author's photo)

Disposal of the large numbers of 'dud' bombs or UXBs as they became known took a special kind of courage and many examples of heroism occurred during the Blitz by various members of the Bomb Disposal teams, many of whom paid the ultimate price. The disposal and defusing of most bombs was the responsibility of the Army's Royal Engineers, whilst the Parachute Mines, with their naval heritage, became the job of the Royal Navy to deal with. Perhaps two of the most famous pieces of bomb disposal came at St Paul's Cathedral in September 1940, which was described in the September 2011 edition of this blog, whilst and example of the Senior Service's efforts was described in June 2010 when we learned of the exploits of Sub Lieut. Jack Easton RNVR and his assistant Ordinary Seaman Bennett Southwell for their part in attempting to defuse a parachute mine in Hoxton, East London in October 1940. Both of these incidents earned the bomb disposal teams well earned George Crosses, in Southwell's case, posthumously.

B is for Blackout and one of the major raisons d'etre of the Air Raid Wardens described in the previous edition of this blog. On the outbreak of war, an immediate blackout was imposed across the whole of the United Kingdom. This effectively meant the extinguishing, or covering of every exterior light, or interior light that could be seen through an unguarded window. Today, even those of us who live in the country and are used to 'proper' darkness without street lighting, cannot really imagine what it is like to have absolutely no lights visible outside, for even in the countryside towns and villages, we are now used to seeing interior lights spilling over into the darkness. In 1939, all this stopped; windows had to be covered with thick blackout curtains, or even painted over; streetlights and traffic lights were extinguished and those few of the latter which were allowed to remain were so hooded as to be almost invisible to those few vehicles still on the road. Vehicle headlamps were masked and covered to such an extent as to almost useless and interiors lights on buses and trains were removed and replaced with tiny blue lights, laughably known as 'reading lamps' which in reality were next to useless. The glazed roofs of railway stations were painted over and lights extinguished, whilst steam trains and electric locomotives and trams equipped with spark arrestors to try and cut down on the tell-tale sparks visible from the air. To add a measure of compensation, kerbstones, traffic bollards, lamp posts and even tree trunks were painted with black and white stripes to try and reflect what little light there was available from either the Moon or from the reduced lighting from the few vehicles on the road. 

ARP Notice & Lighting restrictions (author's photo)

The result of all this was chaos. Before the onset of the Blitz, there were more casualties caused by road traffic accidents than by German bombs and during the so called Phoney War period, the stock of the Air Raid Wardens dipped in the eyes of the British public as the Wardens were quick to pounce on anyone forgetful enough to put in place their Blackout curtains, or to open a door without first extinguishing the light inside the house. The familiar cry of "Put that light out!" now made immortal by Mr Hodges of Dad's Army was not wholly the stuff of comedy fiction. The British public endured the Blackout for 5 long years, until it was replaced on September 17th 1944 by the less stringent 'Dim Out', which recognised that the threat from manned German bombers was all but over but which also acknowledged that the V-1 and V-2 were no respecter of the Blackout

B is also for 'Black Saturday.' This was the name given by Londoners to Saturday, 7th September 1940, which is seen as being the first day of the Blitz on London. Up until this point in time, although London had been brushed by German bombs, these had mainly been in the outskirts of the capital and for the most part incidental to attacks on industrial targets or RAF airfields in the London suburbs. All this began to change when on the night of 24th/25th August, a flight of German bombers, supposedly due to a navigational error, dropped bombs on the north of London and the City, with the first bomb falling in Moorgate at around 12:15 a.m. on the 25th August. Churchill immediately ordered a retaliatory attack on Berlin and although the RAF at that time were ill equipped to launch a meaningful attack on the German capital, the resulting minor damage caused by two raids was sufficient for Hitler to order the Luftwaffe to switch it's attacks from the RAF's airfields to London.

Fires from the burning Surrey Docks - 7th Sept 1940 (National Archives)

When the sirens sounded a little after 4.30 pm on September 7th, it was the precursor of  57 continuous nights of bombing and a Night Blitz that would last, for London, until the night of 10th/11th May 1941. On that first afternoon of the Blitz, the RAF was initially but on this rare occasion, caught off guard and nearly one thousand bombers and fighters found their targets, mainly in the East End but also causing grievous damage to the Woolwich Arsenal and devastating the Surrey Commercial Docks, some parts of which were never fully utilised again. The bombers returned that evening, guided by the fires lit by their earlier sorties. Casualties were high amongst the civilian population, with some four hundred being killed with many more wounded.

Although these initial attacks were focused on the eastern side of the capital, gradually the attacks crept westwards, until eventually no part of London was left untouched.

Next time, we shall look at the letter 'C' including Cabs, Coventry and Churchill.

A - Z of The Blitz (A)

ARP Warden's badge (author's photo)

Today, we start what is intended to be an occasional and by no means exhaustive series looking at the Blitz and Battle of Britain on an alphabetical basis. Today, we look at the letter 'A' to see what we can find.

A is for ARP, or Air Raid Precautions. Today, when we think of ARP, we think perhaps of the eponymous Wardens personified in comedy by Chief Warden Hodges from Dad's Army, played by Bill Pertwee but in reality, ARP was a generic term initiated at the time of the Munich Crisis of 1938, when the possibility of war was first brought home to the majority of the British public.

The 1938 Munich Crisis saw a huge expansion of this country's Civil Defence services and saw the establishment of the ARP Wardens' service, who under local municipal control had responsibility for enforcing the blackout and acting as 'first responders' whilst on patrol during even the heaviest air raids. With the approval of the Government, there was even an Air Raid Precautions set of cigarette cards issued by the Imperial Tobacco Company which detailed such ARP related functions as creating a gas-proofed room within a house, protecting windows against blast, dealing with incendiary bombs, wearing gas masks and the balloon barrage. The card depicting a member of the public dealing with an incendiary bomb using just a garden rake and a dustpan beggars belief!

ARP Cigarette Card book (author's photo)

How to deal with an incendiary bomb (author's photo)

The public perception of the ARP Warden changed almost overnight once the Luftwaffe switched their attentions to bombing British cities. Before the war and during the so-called 'Phoney War' period, the wardens had been seen in much the same way as we see Mr Hodges today, in other words as self-important 'jobsworth' characters whose main function in life was to shout at people to "Put that light out!" or "Cover that window!"

Once the air raids started in earnest however, the view changed and the wardens were widely respected for their courage in patrolling in all conditions and for their selfless attitude. Wardens, both male and female were almost all volunteers and many could be described as being 'of a certain age. An inspection of the accompanying photograph of a group of Lewisham Wardens reveals many of the male wardens to be wearing Great War medal ribbons. 

Members of Lewisham Post G108 (author's collection)

A also stands for Anti-Aircraft.  In London, as in most major British towns and cities, anti-aircraft guns were placed on just about every large piece of parkland or other suitable open space. Therefore, in the capital guns sprouted on places such as Blackheath, Woolwich Common, Southwark Park, Wanstead Flats and even Hyde Park. As with most war materials in Britain, anti-aircraft guns were in desperately short supply at the outset of the war and the situation was hardly improved by the British Expeditionary Force having to leave nearly all of it's anti-aircraft guns behind when they hurriedly evacuated from France in May and June 1940. The respite afforded to British cities by the Battle of Britain allowed stocks to be built up again and by the beginning of the Blitz, a measure of protection could be provided.

3.7" Anti-aircraft guns in Hyde Park (author's collection)

At first, the guns mainly provided a morale booster for the civilians huddled in the shelters. With the Luftwaffe switching to night area bombing and without radar control for the guns, accuracy was poor and the most that could be hoped for, apart from the occasional hit, was to force the German bombers to fly higher. On the basis of 'What goes up, must come down', there was at least as much chance of being hit by shrapnel from spent anti-aircraft shells as by a German bomb but recognising the importance of being seen by the British public to be firing back at the bombers, Churchill ordered General Sir Frederick Pile, commanding Anti Aircraft Command, to "Keep on Blazing Away."

Anti-aircraft rockets on Blackheath (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

The mainstay of Anti Aircraft Command was the excellent 3.7 inch gun, although both heavier and lighter weapons were used, as well as a brief flirtation with rocket projectiles which was not a success. As the war developed, radar control for the guns was developed and improved upon, as was the new proximity shell that detonated within a short distance of it's aerial target without actually having to impact  it. These new developments greatly improved the effectiveness of the anti aircraft guns. These developments, coupled with the Airborne Intercept (AI) Radar equipped night fighter force, demonstrated to the Luftwaffe upon their return to London in 1943/44 how things had changed since the dark days of the Blitz of 1940/41.

Next time, we shall take a look at the letter 'B' to include Barrage Balloons, Bomb Disposal, the Blackout, the BBC and 'Black Saturday.'

Published Sources:

Air Raid Precautions: An Album to contain a series of Cigarette Cards of National Importance - WD & HO Wills, 1938

The Most Dangerous Enemy - Stephen Bungay, Aurum Press, 2001