OT: Bombsight

FoldingJoe

Anybody checked out the website yet that shows where bombs where dropped in London during the Blitz?

http://bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900

Site seems to be having a few problems at the minute, but all interesting stuff.

nicklouse

yep got on it a while ago.

rjsterry

Hadn't quite realised the sheer quantity of bombs dropped.

veronese68

rjsterry wrote:

Hadn't quite realised the sheer quantity of bombs dropped.

Indeed, and that's only during the blitz. I was looking at it thinking there are places I know were bombed that were not on that map. Then I looked at the dates, October 1940 to June 1941. I don't know how many fell outside the blitz but there were the V1s and V2s at least. There's a little memorial near my place for the last one to fall during the war. Can't remember the date, or even wether it was the last V1 or V2. I must go and give a look.

el_presidente

There's a customised gmap link out there somewhere with links to all the V2 impacts - sobering stuff. Apparently the craters are still extant at several sites. I'l see if I can hunt down the link later.

daddy0

Well, the two places that I know got direct hits during the blitz, my grandparents house and the old family church, don't have red dots on them....

cornerblock

Where I lived as a child does show two direct hits. Luckily I wasn't born at the time, otherwise I'd probably be dead now. :?

It reminds me of one of Paul Merton's first jokes,

During the Blitz in the Second World War, my dad used to say that the only bombs you’ve got to worry about are the ones with your name on them. Which used to really worry our next-door neighbours… Mr and Mrs Doodlebug.

Kieran_Burns

We only had the one explosion around here.

It was a fairly big one though:

Anonymous

What was odd is that they landed in an almost perfect random (Poisson) distribution (I remember hearing this once) which means that the drop on St Pauls was accidental and a bomb landing on your neighbour was as likely as the Palace, but of course everyone assumed that the Germans wouldn't dare hit the palace for fear of pissing us all off!

cornerblock

coriordan wrote:

but of course everyone assumed that the Germans wouldn't dare hit the palace for fear of pissing us all off!

No they just didn't want to kill fellow Germans.

centimani

Looking at that map, my first reaction was an out loud...'Kin Ell :shock: '
But with hindsight...i'm not surprised.
My dad who was born in 1930 told me he used to hear and shelter from the bombings in Bristol. He described an attack as a crescendo of noise, slowly building up, then quickly intensifying, then when you thought it couldnt get any louder...it did, you can't convey the deafening noise .
Then, almost as quickly as it all started, the noise suddenly fell away...and that was it.

Cleat Eastwood

Some one in fore street, hatfield must have annoyed hitler quite a bit