World War II brought a continuation of a tactic started during the Spanish Civil War; the mass bombing of cities. This started out as a result of missing strategic targets located in cities, such as facories, warehouses and military facilities. However, once started, it became a means in and of itself. All of the major combatants in WWII participated in the bombing of cities, the British using area bombing on Germany and the US doing the same thing to Japanese cities with B-29 raids in the Pacific. Unfortunately for those under the hail of bombs, it has since been pretty well shown that indiscriminate killing of civilians has never had the effect that those performing the task had hoped. This was mainly that they'd lose the will to fight, when in actuality, it frequently caused more determination and the scattering of production facilities to make it more difficult to destroy them.

For WWII, it was the German Luftwaffe that started the city destruction deal. This was, of course, the famous Blitz of September to May 1941 when the Germans first concentrated on London and then spread it to other cities in southern England. It was only the new war against the Soviet Union that caused the blitz to come to a near stop in mid 1941, though there were the occasional raids after that. However, the British night fighter force was such that these raids were often quite costly in terms of air crew.

It wasn't until 1944 and the development of the V-1 and V-2 missiles that England once again came under the rain of German bombs. Though the destruction wasn't as great during these periods, its effect on the populace was more of what was hoped from the first blitz of 1940. The populace was not expecting these raids and so seemed to be more fearful of these un-manned weapons. However, the Vengeance weapon attacks soon ended as their bases of operation were overrun by victorious Allied armies.

In this superbly done landscape book, author Gavin Mortimer has had access to the Mirror newspaper group archives to select images that bring to life this time period of British history. These images cover the entire period of the war with many of them being shown here for the first time. This exclusive content is thanks to war time censors who would not let these images be published during the time, not because of any macabre views, but because they showed things as they were and not as the censors wanted.

Divided into several sections, each covering a specific place and time period, we now get to see what the blitz was like and how it changed the face of the towns it affected and the lives of the people involved.

A superb book with clear and crisp images shown in landscape format it is an excellent chronicle of this period of British history. Highly recommended.

November 2010

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