Their Finest Hour

[SiHart]

The Blitz (short for Blitzkrieg, German for "lightning war") began on 7 September 1940, with more than 300 bombers involved. The attacks started on the East End before moving to central London. In total, 430 were killed and 1,600 badly injured that day.

The BBC have a slideshow of some images of that time when the UK stood up to the Nazis. Have a look here- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11175676

Si xx

[Si Hunt]

A few people went out today to watch the display over St Pauls. I stayed here as it looked like it might rain.

Si.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

The Blitz and indeed Hitlers whole strategy of Blitzkeig marked a real shift in war, where it now was not just something between armies, but warred by armed forces against civilians.

Of course the danger is to get all romantic about war before the 20th century - civilian casualties did happen before this - indeed the very idea of siege warfare is one that inflicts suffering on soldier and civilian alike.

However the tactic of bombing civilians as it was is something which would probably make even the most ruthless general like Alexander or Caesar feel some measure of outrage. And alas now the idea of civilian casualties and "collateral damage" is just an accepted part of modern warfare.

[Andrew Curnow]

I always consider myself a bit of a thicko when it comes to history - whenever I tell people we never did history at school they laugh, but genuinely we didn't!! So the following, which I found quite interesting in the latest issue of our village newsletter, may in fact be common knowledge to everybody, in which case apologies!!

"...The official dates for the battle are July 10th to October 31st 1940... This sustained bombing continued throughout August and early September, and had almost achieved its goal of diabling Fighter Command in the invasion area, when a series of events resulted in a pivotal point in the battle.

Up to that point the Luftwaffe air offensive against Britain had excluded centres of civilian population but, during a night raid, bombs were accidentally dropped on Hornchurch. This prompted a Bomber Command raid on Berlin, which so infuriated Hitler that he ordered the Luftwaffe to change its targets and start attacking large cities. So the Blitz began. The change in tactics was a mistake for several reasons: It allowed Fighter Comman to repair its facilites in the South East; London was at the maximum range of the Luftwaffe's Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters, leaving them with little fuel for combat; It brought the bombers within range of fighter squadrons based north of the Thames."

In other words, and without taking anything away from the bravery of the people involved in the Battle of Britain, at least a part of our victory was down to mistakes and poor decisions on the German side. I don't really remember hearing that before at all, is it just me?

[Rob McCow]

A lot of our victories in the war are more victories for British propaganda and myth-building - if certain sources are to be believed. You could say that we were lucky. On the other hand, this attitude really takes away from the brave soldiers who fought to save the country. Or that we were unlucky that the Nazi party came to power in the first place.

There have been a few interesting planes flying over Basingstoke these past few days!

[Jason Thompson]

In other words, and without taking anything away from the bravery of the people involved in the Battle of Britain, at least a part of our victory was down to mistakes and poor decisions on the German side.

While that is certainly true, a major contributing factor to Hitler changing tactics was because of the heavy resistance he encountered in the earlier raids. Goering had assured him that the Luftwaffe could take out the British Air Force quickly and easily. He was wrong, and when victory did not come as quickly as he had been assured it would, Hitler got impatient. Were we lucky? Absolutely. Had the Air Force not resisted so strongly to start with, however, we may never have reached that point.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Ironically the bombing campaign was pretty much targetted against cities. The idea to kind of break peoples spirits into submission.

The armed forces of Germany has used a tactic of Blitzkreig to win a lot of victories. And in them they used air bombing power to kind of soften up a city, and then use conventional ground forces to push into that area which was weakened, to devastating effect.

The Blitz was an attempt at using Blitzkrieg without the "krieg". As the Gulf War showed - we were all high fiving ourselves for all the bombing we were doing. But bombing alone didn't really achieve victory. It weakened Iraqi forces yes, but you always need a push with forces on the ground to secure victory.