Blitz: The diary of an air raid
Phase 1
29 December 1940: 4pm
Four days after Christmas, on an icy winter Sunday, London is experiencing a lull in the nightly bombing raids for the first time since the Blitz began. The German planes have struck only twice in the past week.
However, at a German airfield in occupied France, the final preparations are being made for an attack that might change the course of the war. The target is London, and in half an hour, the first planes will be airborne.
That evening, the dean of St Paul's is enjoying the relative calm. After the rush of Christmas services, there is no evensong to conduct, just the nightly ritual of preparing his cathedral for attack. He is tasked with guarding the most highly prized and symbolic target in London: the cathedral dome rising high above the city skyline.
St Paul's Cathedral
www.stpauls.co.uk
Official website of this symbol of British endurance.
An unlikely band of volunteers arrive to assist him: architects, recruited for their ability to navigate Christopher Wren's ingenious but vulnerable design. Above all, they are hampered by the fact that the dome is not a dome of stone but a lead shell resting on wooden beams – an intricate wooden fire-trap standing 140 feet (43 metres) tall. If fire gets in, the volunteers will have to crawl along the beams to reach it – acrobatics in the dark in a ready-made furnace.
As the dean is well aware, St Paul's does not exactly have the best of records with fire: in its 1,000-year history, the cathedral has already twice burned to the ground. But all it has to rely on in the Blitz is a handful of amateur firefighters stationed on its rooftops. Perhaps fittingly, below them, in a crypt holding the remains of Nelson, Wellington and Wren himself, are a group of first aid volunteers headed by the dean's wife.
29 December 1940: 4.30pm
Just before sunset, the German attack is launched. This is the first wave: 10 élite pathfinder aircraft of Kampgruppe 100, carrying a payload of thousands of newly developed incendiary bombs. They will be over the target in about 90 minutes.
In London, the lights across the city begin to go out – a black-out enforced by law. Within half an hour, there will be no streetlights, no window lights – any light that might help the bombers identify targets from the air will have been extinguished.
29 December 1940: 5.20pm
The first enemy planes are detected. They are approaching the English coast on a bearing for London.
29 December 1940: 6pm
The warning is passed on to the dean of St Paul's. The team of volunteers assigned to guard the cathedral from fire begin their long climb to the dome.
29 December 1940: 6.08pm
Sirens sound over London. It is the first warning of an air attack so ferocious that it will threaten to burn the City of London to the ground. For many families, the timing could not be worse. That night, several hundred previously evacuated children who have come home for Christmas are still in the city.
29 December 1940: 6.12pm
London's anti-aircraft guns unleash their first volley of shells. The bombers are over the city.
The first wave of 10 bombers is manned by expert German pilots, guided across the blacked-out city by a sophisticated new targeting system.
We knew that, in northern France, the Germans had two transmitters 60 miles apart that were angled into London. And they've got a distinctive sound. When the beams came over London, they crossed. Those two tones would go into a continuous tone and that's your target area.
George Wheeler, wartime firefighter, then 18
It is the signal to unleash the first ingredient of their payload on the streets below.
About six o'clock or shortly after, a strange noise echoed in the dome above us. It was unlike anything we'd heard before.
Walter Matthews, dean of St Paul'sAt first, I thought it was shrapnel but then each piece as it struck burst into a ball of greenish-white flame. In the strange white light, we could see air raid wardens running to put them out. On both sides of the street, we could see fires starting. A flickering yellow glow would appear behind the windows. Then I remembered something a Nazi newspaperman said in Berlin last fall. Bragging in front of a group of us, he said that London's docks and the older parts of the city could be burned off from the air like patches of weed.
William Lindsay White, American war correspondent
William Lindsay White, 1900–1973: In the shadow of his father by E Jay Jernigan (University of Oklahoma Press, 1997)
The biography of a son who pursued the same profession as his more famous father – newspaper editor William Allen White – carrying virtually the same name. It focuses on the conflict between father and son, and the differences between WLW's Kansas hometown and the more sophisticated East Coast where he made his reputation.
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There were thousands of these incendiary bombs, falling on the city. They've a concussion pad, and when they strike this, they burst into a fluorescent flame and it burns everywhere. Thousands of these landed that caused these fires everywhere.
Richard Holsgrove, wartime firefighter, then 17
Both Britain and Germany had experimented with incendiary bombs. In October, Churchill said that he wanted civilian populations near a target area 'to feel the weight of war'. When Munich was firebombed, Coventry was the reply: on the night of 14 November 1940, 568 people died there under the deadly rain of 150,000 fire bombs, 503 tons of high explosives and 130 parachute mines. This is what is beginning in London.
The Victorian and Edwardian buildings of the City are ideal for trapping incendiary bombs in situations awkward to reach. And while roofs are exposed and unguarded – for there is only a limited firewatching order in force – the doors of many buildings are securely barred and locked. Fires start that, whipped by the wind, roar like furnaces. Burning embers swirl into the air and through the streets, laying a blanket of glowing brands on roofs and gables.
29 December 1940: 6.30pm
At London's Fire Brigade Control centre in Westminster, emergency calls are flooding in. All are from the same area: a square mile around St Paul's. It is the first sign that this raid has a very particular target in its sights.
Incendiaries were landing over every roof and on the roofs of neighbouring buildings. All over the cathedral, small squads were now fighting separate battles. Some of the bombs were penetrating the lead sheeting, lodging in the roof timbers below. In half an hour, the scale of the attack was stretching our defences to the limit.
Walter Matthews, dean of St Paul's
The dean and his team are concentrating their efforts on the long, lower roofs of the cathedral. But out of sight, 140ft (43m) above them, a strange light is now reported to be glowing in the dome itself.
29 December 1940: 6.45pm
Hundreds of small fires have now been started along both sides of the river. Unfolding at St Paul's is the very scenario that the dean fears most.
Though the dome was not yet on fire, the lead shell was beginning to melt. An incendiary was lodged halfway through the outer shell. We knew that, once a fire got hold of the dome's timbers at that high altitude, it would quickly be fanned into a roaring furnace. Unless it could be stamped out at the very start, the chances of the dome were slender indeed.
Reporters had already cabled that St Paul's was in flames when the crisis suddenly passed. The bomb fell outwards into the Stone Gallery and was … put out. We thanked God our church was spared at the very moment the situation looked hopeless.
Walter Matthews, dean of St Paul's
As soon as one danger is averted at St Paul's, a much greater crisis is now unfolding. Incendiaries in their thousands have set the historic heart of London alight, and already the small fires across the city are meeting and joining. The smoke cloud rising from them is now visible for miles.
Phase one of the attack is complete. In the first 45 minutes of the German attack, 11,000 firebombs have fallen in the streets around St Paul's. It is already clear that this is no ordinary attack.
