Word: blitz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
About 900 freight cars would be required to transport this tonnage by rail. It compares with 13,000 tons dropped by the R.A.F. in the 52 weeks of 1940, with 7,500 tons dropped by the Germans in the entire London blitz...
Back in January 1943, when German planes attacked London for the first time in 14 months, Londoners who had gone through the Great Blitz of 1940-41 were startled less by the raid itself than by the vast, thundering, metal-showering ack-ack barrage thrown up against the raiders...
...total bomb load, estimated at 195 tons, was less than half of that dropped in the worst raids of the blitz, less than one-twelfth of a first-class R.A.F. delivery on Berlin. Even so, it was enough to send several hundred people to their graves...
Last week the "little blitz" on England waned-at least temporarily. In one raid two Nazi planes were shot down, in another five of an estimated 100 (only a half dozen reached London). This brought to about 75 German losses in a fortnight-some 7% of the attacking forces. Damage and casualties were still closely guarded secrets, but Home Secretary Herbert Morrison let slip that one of the "episodes" (presumably the previous week) had been "as bad as the worst single incident" of the 1940-41 blitz...
Whether the Germans intended the little blitz as a strategic move, propaganda to bolster the Reich home front, or as a demonstration that there are still anti-invasion bombers, London was again becoming blitz-minded. Dinner guests took along their helmets, began to refer to the 1940-41 bombings as "the last...