Essay1; why were the major cities of Britain bombed by the Germans in 1940-41?
On Saturday 7th September 1940 at 4:50pm air-raid sirens spewed their unyielding call into the air. The citizens of the city not knowing whether this was a practice or the real thing scuttled and scrambled towards there pre-defined shelters, then suddenly the silence of the city was shattered by the rhythmic sound of heavy anti-aircraft fire, the heavy, unceasing and the unmistaken drone of massed aircraft engines, and then the eerie sound of bombs falling left no one in doubt, The Blitz had started. This first raid on London was supposed to have been aimed at the docks, warehouses and factories along the Thames but the Germans ended up dropping 85% of there ordnance on the densely populated East-end. By the morning of 8th September 430 people had been killed and a further 1600 had been wounded.
In the following essay I am going to explore the German high commands reasoning behind their decision to start the Blitz. The Blitz would stretch from September 1940 to May 1941. The Germans would launch 71 major raids on London in these months also 56 major raids would occur on other of the United Kingdoms cities.
In August of 1940 the Germans started the Battle of Britain hoping to cripple the R.A.F so that they could have air superiority of the English Channel and then they could launch their planned invasion of Great Britain codenamed operation “ SEA-LION”. For the success of operation “SEA-LION” air superiority would be essential because the slow moving barges that the Germans would use to transport there troops would be vulnerable to the British Navy, also with air superiority the German Luftwaffe would be able to dive-bomb the British ships without fear of retaliation from the R.A.F. But just when the German Luftwaffe’s tactics of bombing the airfields into submission was just a couple of days off success an order from Hitler changed all that by ordering the bombing of the cities instead of the airfields and the Blitz started. This order was sent because British bombers had bombed Berlin the night after a couple of German bombers had dropped their bombs on London by mistake and in a propaganda move the whole fate of the war changed. But the Germans also stopped the raids on the airfields because they were losing more ME 110’s and Heinkel 111’s then they could produce. This is because the ME 109’s that the Germans used to protect their bombers only had ten minutes fighting time over England, where as the British Spitfire’s and Hurricane’s had unlimited fuel because when they where low on fuel they could land at a nearby base and refuel and reload. Also with the use of radar the British could tell where the Germans were coming from and their number, this helped as the British knew how many squadrons to scramble and where to send them.
