Sovereign Lord, you created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. Have mercy on us for you are perfect and we are sinners. Your grace and mercy is unending. Holy Spirit we beg your presence in this place. Allow us the gift of clarity; that we may hear your words today and not our own. Continue to guide us along the path you have laid out before us. Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. The King of Glory, The Lord of Heavens’ Armies, Yahweh. Amen.
World War II (1939 – 1945)
The Blitz (September 1940 – May 1941)
Nighttime bombing raids against London and other British cities by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The raids followed the failure of the German Luftwaffe to defeat Britain’s Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain
The daylight attack against London on September 7, 1940, marked the opening phase of the German bomber offensive against Britain, which came to be called the Blitz after the German word “blitzkrieg,” meaning “lightning war.”
Daylight attacks soon gave way to night raids, which the British found difficult to counter. The British lacked effective antiaircraft artillery and searchlights, as well as night fighters that could find and shoot down an aircraft in darkness.
The scale of the attacks rapidly escalated. In that month alone, the German Air Force dropped 5,300 tons of high explosives on the capital in just 24 nights. In their efforts to ‘soften up’ the British population and to destroy morale before the planned invasion, German planes extended their targets to include the major coastal ports and centers of production and supply.
The infamous raid of November 14, 1940 on Coventry brought a still worse twist to the campaign. 500 German bombers dropped 500 tons of explosives and nearly 900 incendiary bombs on the city in ten hours of unrelenting bombardment…
“I stood on the footway of Hungerford bridge across the Thames watching the lights of London go out. The whole great town was lit up like a fairyland, in a dazzle that reached into the sky, and then one by one, as a switch was pulled, each area went dark, the dazzle becoming a patchwork of lights being snuffed out here and there until a last one remained, and it too went out. What was left us was more than just wartime blackout, it was a fearful portent of what war was to be. We had not thought that we would have to fight in darkness, or that light would be our enemy.”
Daily Herald journalist Mea Allan wrote those words in 1939 as she witnessed the introduction of universal blackout.
From Thurso to Truro, from Hastings to Holyhead, Britain was plunged into darkness at sunset on 1 September, two days before war was declared.
Street lights were switched off at the mains, vehicle headlights were masked to show only a crack of light, and stations were lit by candles.
In the months leading up to the declaration of war, women made and hung blackout curtains and blinds, and sealed any gaps round the edges with brown paper.
Did the blackout have any beneficial effects?
Burglary and mugging increased, and looters took advantage of deep blackout and bombed-out houses.
By the end of the first month of war there had been 1,130 road deaths attributed to the blackout, and coroners urged pedestrians to carry a newspaper or a white handkerchief to make them more visible.
A coroner in Birmingham told old people to keep off the streets after dark, suggesting routine visits to the pub in the evening had to be relinquished for the war effort, as so many were killed when they stepped from pub into darkened street.
Thousands struggled to work
Consumer Goods and Public Rail travel, too, was made more difficult by the blackout.
In darkened railway goods yards, porters struggled to read labels on freight travelling by train at night, which led to increasing delays for passengers.
After the blackout was lifted in 1941, doctors had diagnosed a new condition among factory workers on the home front: blackout anemia.
Just as seasonal aff
