# WW2 London Bombings
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 27, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708 "2016-12-27T17:34:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/1 "2016-12-27T17:34:26Z")
So I was binge watching Foyle’s War. Very enjoyable, I love the detail and the stories. I did sort of have a question - several times they covered the London Blitz and it showed people in the subway tunnels - in the bombings, did any of the tunnels the people sheltered in collapse due to the bombings?
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### Author:  [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2016, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/2 "2016-12-27T17:47:32Z")
I’ve been waiting for a thread to share the following
> **[Bomb Sight - Mapping the London Blitz](http://bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900)**
>
> Explore the London Blitz through our website. Discover London during WW2 bombing raids, exploring maps, images and memories. The Bomb Sight web map and mobile app reveals WW2 bomb census maps between 7/10/1940 and 06/06/1941, previously available...
You can put this on to your android mobile phone and it will overlay the map on to your navigator, in other words you can walk right by the places where the bombs fell.
I also will point out that on the river that is a memorial that was hit with WW1 zeppelin bomb shrapnel and you can still see some to the damage.
The tube stations were fine, however there was a crush of people trying to get down to safety and a large number of people died.
The majority of people has local shelters such as Anderson shelters, those could not take a direct hit but proved to be effective enough from blast
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### Author:  [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/3 "2016-12-27T18:03:56Z")
At Bank station in 1941, a bomb broke through the surface and burst in the ticket booking hall (which is not far under the ground) with 111 killed.
At Balham station in 1940, a bomb burst in the roadway above the platform, and when a bus crashed into the crater the tunnel collapsed flooding the station with water from the mains and the sewers. About 64 were killed (this incident is, somewhat fictionalised, portrayed in the movie \*Atonement.) \*
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2016, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/4 "2016-12-27T18:57:02Z")
The Dope is a miracle, where else could people like me ask a funky random question and get answers =)
And that app is neat, we are going to hit London for vacation in about 2 or so years and I plan on using it =)
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### Author:  [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2016, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/5 "2016-12-27T19:10:12Z")
> [@aruvqan](#):
>
> And that app is neat, **we are going to hit London** for vacation in about 2 or so years and I plan on using it =)
(Bolding mine)
I find your formulation… disturbing. 😉
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2016, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/6 "2016-12-27T19:37:16Z")
> [@aruvqan](#):
>
> So I was binge watching Foyle’s War. Very enjoyable, I love the detail and the stories. I did sort of have a question - several times they covered the London Blitz and it showed people in the subway tunnels - in the bombings, did any of the tunnels the people sheltered in collapse due to the bombings?
The show was great until after the war when it got really preachy. ☹
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### Author:  [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)
#### Post date: [December 27, 2016, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/7 "2016-12-27T22:45:40Z")
> [@aruvqan](#):
>
> So I was binge watching Foyle’s War. Very enjoyable, I love the detail and the stories. I did sort of have a question - several times they covered the London Blitz and it showed people in the subway tunnels - in the bombings, did any of the tunnels the people sheltered in collapse due to the bombings?
Wonderful show, if I had to choose one word to describe it it would be ‘humane’. There is a scene in the movie ‘Atonement’ which features the collapse of a tunnel being used as a shelter. Despite the awards and popularity of that movie I would describe it as the exact opposite of ‘Foyle’s War’, it had a really unpleasant cynical modern sensibility and I felt unclean after having watched it.
Edited to add that I see Mk VII got there first!
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/8 "2016-12-28T00:10:23Z")
The London underground was built by tunneling through the rock using the “deep bore” method. They were deeper than subway tunnels in, say, New York or Paris, which used the cheaper “cut and cover” method. The rock and depth (the stations can be four stories underground) made the safe from bombs.
Washington DC has a similar deep bore system.
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### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/9 "2016-12-28T01:41:31Z")
Although people were killed by direct hits, as mentioned above, remember that the biggest danger was being hit by debri. “Bomb shelters” worked , very succesfully, to prevent deaths from flying bricks & stuff.
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/10 "2016-12-28T03:00:38Z")
Even more answers=) Thanks!
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### Author:  [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/11 "2016-12-28T03:26:45Z")
It was mostly the deep by the standards of the day Central Line which was used as a shelter. Don’t think the Jubilee line existed at the time. Piccadilly and Victoria lines have some deep stations today, no idea if that was the case in 1940.
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/12 "2016-12-28T05:30:05Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> The London underground was built by tunneling through the rock using the “deep bore” method.
Only certain lines and stations. Some Circle and Metropolitan Line stations are very shallow, or even open to the sky above, dating from when trains were pulled by steam locomotives.
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### Author:  [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/13 "2016-12-28T20:08:38Z")
> [@AK84](#):
>
> It was mostly the deep by the standards of the day Central Line which was used as a shelter. Don’t think the Jubilee line existed at the time. Piccadilly and Victoria lines have some deep stations today, no idea if that was the case in 1940.
Some (mainly above ground) bits of what were to be incorporated into the Jubilee line were pre-war, but the really deep bits only date from 1979 (hence the name commemorating the 1977 Silver Jubilee) and the 1999 extension.
Other than on the cut-and-cover lines like the Circle, the deeper stations actually probably tend to be the older ones because they’re central. Trivial exceptions like the Waterloo & City line aside, all (?) the deep-cut lines emerge above ground at their extremities. (Isn’t there some smart-arse observation that, by a fair margin, most of the Underground’s track is above ground?) But prior to that, once the tunnelling technology was perfected, it was just cheaper to tunnel well-below the densely-packed existing buildings in the centre, where the main demand for stations was.
Over time and with the spread of Metroland in the early 20th century, those lines then spread outwards with the sprawl, but into areas where it was much cheaper to build those extensions above ground.
The Jubilee line excepted, pretty much all the current deep tube stations were there in 1939. And the likes of the Northern line ones, etc., were certainly also used as civilian shelters.
Though the Central line case is probably worth highlighting, since it was the only (?) deep line running through the East End, which - with the only sparsely populated City - took the brunt of the Blitz on account of the Docks.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/14 "2016-12-28T20:18:46Z")
> [@casdave](#):
>
> I’ve been waiting for a thread to share the following
>
> [Bomb Sight - Mapping the World War 2 London Blitz Bomb Census](http://bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900)
I haven’t spent much time on it. Does it include V1 and V2 hits?
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### Author:  [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/15 "2016-12-28T20:40:29Z")
No, it ends shortly after when the Blitz is deemed to have ended - after 11th May 1941, when the bomber squadrons began to be repositioned ready for the attack on Russia, so it doesn’t include the Baedecker Raids, or the Baby Blitz, or the V1/V2 attacks.
The Victoria Line was not built until after the war, and eastern parts of the Central Line were not complete when the war began, and were used as factories or shelters.
Deep shelters were built under some of the Northern Line platforms; these can be recognised by the large circular emergency exit structures (at Goodge Street, Belsize Park, Clapham Common, Clapham South, Clapham North, Camden Town and Stockwell, the site at St Pauls was abandoned for fear of damaging the Cathedral). Construction began in 1940, they were not opened to the public until 1944. Goodge St was used by the US Army as a transit camp for personnel passing through London.
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### Author:  [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/16 "2016-12-28T20:45:00Z")
This one does not because it only covers the blitz to June 1941, however there are maps that do show V1 V2 strikes.
[https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=51.557835383082306%2C-0.5801300140381045&spn=1.520457%2C3.488159&t=m&oe=UTF8&msa=0&source=embed&ie=UTF8&mid=17Ko\_cQwsVzpPp2FzYGPdtHy74BM&z=9](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=51.557835383082306%2C-0.5801300140381045&spn=1.520457%2C3.488159&t=m&oe=UTF8&msa=0&source=embed&ie=UTF8&mid=17Ko_cQwsVzpPp2FzYGPdtHy74BM&z=9)
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### Author:  [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/17 "2016-12-28T21:53:12Z")
My gran grew up in Bethnal Green and mentioned twice what happened in March 1943. Well, she started to mention it and then tailed off.
It wasn’t part of the Blitz in the usual sense, a woman stumbled and fell as people were going down into the tube ahead of a raid. Over 15o very, very local people, mostly women and children died.
eta:
> [@](#):
>
> Some managed to get free but 173, most of them women and children, were crushed and asphyxiated. Some 60 others were taken to hospital. News of the disaster was withheld for 36 hours and reporting of what had happened was censored, giving rise to allegations of a cover-up, although it was in line with existing wartime reporting restrictions. Among the reports which never ran was one filed by Eric Linden of the Daily Mail, who witnessed the disaster. The story which was reported instead was that there had been a direct hit by a German bomb. The results of the official investigation were not released until 1946.[2]
>
> At the end of the war, the Minister of Home Security, Herbert Morrison, quoted from a secret report to the effect that there had been a panic, caused by the discharge of anti-aircraft rockets, fired from nearby Victoria Park. But other authorities who looked into what had happened disagreed; the Shoreditch Coroner, Mr W R H Heddy,[3] said that there was “nothing to suggest any stampede or panic or anything of the kind”; Mr Justice Singleton, summarising his decision in Baker v Bethnal Green Corporation, an action for damages by a bereaved widow,[4] said “there was nothing in the way of rushing or surging” on the staircase; the Master of the Rolls, Lord Greene, reviewing the lower court’s judgement[5] said “it was perfectly well known … that there had been no panic”.
> **[Bethnal Green tube station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethnal_Green_tube_station)**
>
> Bethnal Green is a London Underground station in Bethnal Green, London, England, served by the Central line. It lies between Liverpool Street and Mile End stations, is in Travelcard Zone 2, and is open 24 hours on a Friday and Saturday as part of the Night Tube service. The station was opened as part of the long planned Central line eastern extension on 4 December 1946, having previously been used as an air-raid shelter. On 3 March 1943, 173 people, including 62 children, were killed in a crus...
God bless you gran.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww2-london-bombings/775708/18 "2016-12-28T22:07:34Z")
> [@casdave](#):
>
> This one does not because it only covers the blitz to June 1941, however there are maps that do show V1 V2 strikes.
>
> [V2 rockets on London and surrounding counties - Google My Maps](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=51.557835383082306%2C-0.5801300140381045&spn=1.520457%2C3.488159&t=m&oe=UTF8&msa=0&source=embed&ie=UTF8&mid=17Ko_cQwsVzpPp2FzYGPdtHy74BM&z=9)
Thanks!