London in wartime: a bomb explodes near Drury Lane in 1944

[editor]

Sadly this is a daily occurrence for many people around the world, but this is an incredible photo showing people going about their daily lives.

 

[Idaho]

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Goering

 

[marty21]

My father-in-law was in the Canadian Airforce during the war & saw a V2 when he was flying back from bombing Germany. He regretted not trying to shoot it down (he was a gunner on Wellingtons) .

 

[Pickman's model]

My father-in-law was in the Canadian Airforce during the war & saw a V2 when he was flying back from bombing Germany. He regretted not trying to shoot it down (he was a gunner on Wellingtons) .

I suspect what he saw was a v1, like a drone, rather than a v2 - there was some success shooting v1s down but a v2 descended at several times the speed of sound

 

[marty21]

I suspect what he saw was a v1, like a drone, rather than a v2 - there was some success shooting v1s down but a v2 descended at several times the speed of sound

I can't ask him anymore, but you're probably correct .

 

[Pickman's model]

I can't ask him anymore, but you're probably correct .

Being up in a flimsy frame of wood and metal like a Wellington's in itself a daring and brave thing to do so whether it was a 1 or 2 yer fil imo courageous

 

[Puddy_Tat]

mum-tat heard the engine of a V1 stop overhead (she would have been about 5 at the time, and living in the part of north kent that's now south east london)

 

[Hollis]

Does this photo have a date?

I often think the V bomb campaign gets overlooked by the Blitz - think about 9000 people were killed in London by them in 1944/45.

RAF had bombed the factory buliding them in 1943 at Peenemunde to try to delay production. USAAF in 1944..

I imagine the Blitz must have been terriifying - but the randomness of the V bombs is hard to get your head round.

​

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Does this photo have a date?

I often think the V bomb campaign gets overlooked by the Blitz - think about 9000 people were killed in London by them in 1944/45.

RAF had bombed the factory buliding them in 1943 at Peenemunde to try to delay production. USAAF in 1944..

I imagine the Blitz must have been terriifying - but the randomness of the V bombs is hard to get your head round.

​

the photo is posted a few places on the internet.

one suggests it's 18 june 1944, and landed in Aldwych - more here. but putting exact dates / times / locations to war time photos is not always easy - the government didn't want to make precise details public of what had landed where and when.

especially when they were feeding back duff information via double agents to say that the V1's had overshot london and landed in countryside north of london (the idea being to get them eventually to land in countryside south of london, but that's why south london copped a lot more of them than north london did)

but there were a few that landed round Aldwych - extract from the LCC's bomb damage map (from layers of london website)

each large circle represents a V1, the red squiggles above each circle is mine to make them a bit more obvious. the colours represent state of the building, from black (totally destroyed), purple (badly damaged) through red, pink, orange to yellow (slight damage)

 

[Hollis]

There used to be a website called bomsight.org which showed all the bomb sites in London in SWW... dunno what's happened to it.. been down several years now.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

There used to be a website called bomsight.org which showed all the bomb sites in London in SWW... dunno what's happened to it.. been down several years now.

it seems to be alive here - i seem to remember it having a bad patch.

although it records the 1940-41 blitz so doesn't include V1 / V2.

 

[T & P]

View attachment 445353

Sadly this is a daily occurrence for many people around the world, but this is an incredible photo showing people going about their daily lives.

Extraordinary image. I have never seen this photograph before, and if I had come across it randomly on the internet I would have instantly dismissed it as fake/ CGI/ AI. Everything from the composition to the behaviour of the people shown to the size of the mushroom cloud screams ‘not real’ to me. In particular the mushroom cloud, even though I’m certainly not a pyrotechnics expert. Breathtaking shot.

 

[Spymaster]

Extraordinary image. I have never seen this photograph before, and if I had come across it randomly on the internet I would have instantly dismissed it as fake/ CGI/ AI. Everything from the composition to the behaviour of the people shown to the size of the mushroom cloud screams ‘not real’ to me. In particular the mushroom cloud, even though I’m certainly not a pyrotechnics expert. Breathtaking shot.

That smoke and debris cloud wouldn’t have developed until quite a few seconds after the explosion. So, the group of men in the street behind the bus are all looking at it, grandad in the black suit on the right was probably deaf, so completely oblivious, and the girls getting off the bus were possibly inside when it exploded, so unaware of the column behind them.