Continuing with the information on London in the Blitz as covered on our historic City of London walks, we begin by looking at the role played in protecting Londoners by the Underground Stations.
Many of our London walks begin outside London Underground Stations and few people who use these stations on a daily basis spare a thought for the fact that, during the Second World War, whole communities would move into the stations seeking the safety that they hoped they would afford.
However, as we show on our East London walks, sometimes this seeming protection was illusory.
In Ministry of Information propaganda films much was made of the shelter provided by underground stations. There are films showing happy Londoners settling down to sleep on tube platforms being serenaded by travelling concert parties.
The reality was somewhat different. When the Blitz began the government ordered the closure of the tube stations and troops prevented large crowds at Liverpool Street Station from entering.
There were two reasons for this: fear of typhus spread through inevitable lice that would be acquired by masses sleeping in such conditions, and the knowledge that, appearances to the contrary, many stations were not at all deep and would provide little protection. However, popular pressure (and near riots) forced the government to climb down and open the stations, though these only provided accommodation for seven per cent of the London population.
The government’s fears about the safety of the stations were tragically confirmed when a high explosive bomb hit Balham Underground Station causing the collapse of the tunnel roof, which fractured a water main and drowned 180 people on the platform in a sea of mud.
Ever since the bombing of Berlin in August 1940, Hitler and Goering had been contemplating a raid on London that would obliterate its historic and commercial centre, the City of London — the ’square mile’ around St Paul’s — and the Bank of England.
As yet there were no means to secure the precise concentration of bombs on such an area to ensure its complete destruction, but a means was soon to be available — the X apparatus. The X apparatus or ‘Anton Beam’ was a system of radio beacon beams which provided cockpit guidance on to targets. The beams were projected from three points on the Channel coast — the primary beam, ‘Anton’, from Station Anton on the Cherbourg peninsula, secondary beams from Station Cicero at Fecamp, Normandy, and Station Bertha in the Pas de Calais.
Bombers would fly along the primary beam (which could be varied in direction) until the secondary beams intersected with it. At the first intersec¬tion a signal would be emitted from the receiving apparatus indicating ‘ten miles to target’; the second intersection indicated ‘over target’. In early November Kampfgeschwader 100, the ‘Fire Raisers’ were equipped with the new device and acted as pathfinder squadron for the famous raid on Coventry on 12 November 1940 with devastating success.
The success of the Coventry raid led to the planning of an attack on the City of London, which Goering boasted he would ‘Coventryize’. Several factors were required for the London raid to have maximum effect: low spring tide in the Thames, low cloud cover, the raid needed to take place on Sunday.
Why low tide? The Thames is tidal throughout the London region with two high tides and two low tides a day; the rise and fall varies between fifteen to twenty-six feet at London Bridge, and once a month the low tide is such that the river is reduced to a stream about ten feet wide at London Bridge. The Luftwaffe knew that their high explosive bombs would soon fracture the City water mains and leave only the river as a fall-back for the Fire Brigade. Low cloud at about 5,000 feet was required as a shield against anti-aircraft fire since KG 100 would lead the raid at 6,000 feet, thereby ensuring maximum accuracy of bomb placement. Sunday was the day on which the City would be virtually deserted, office workers at home in the suburbs, and consequently no key-holders in the office buildings.
This would leave the Fire Brigade forced to break into buildings set alight by incendiary bombs which would have generated intense fire by the time this had been achieved. All these factors came together on Sunday 29 December 1940.
Our Historic City and Fleet Street London walks take you through the area that was virtually razed on the night of December 29th 1940. In our next London in the Blitz Blog we will take and breathtaking walk through the events of that day.
