David Johnson (7) (1950–)

A number of books have been written about the Luftwaffe's bombings of London during World War II. I have read several of them, although I am sure there are many others I haven't seen. I can say, though, that I enjoyed this book, The London Blitz: The City Ablaze, December 29, 1940, enough to have read it twice. I first read David Johnson's book about 20 years ago (it was published in the US in 1981). With Johnson's book still in my memory after so many years, I recently purchased another book, published in 2005, about the events of December 29, 1940. Although I looked forward to reading it, after slogging through the first few chapters of the other book, I gave it up and decided that my time would be better spent to reread The London Blitz.

Johnson spent two years researching and writing the story of the December 29 attack. The book is written in a vivid, direct, journalistic style using an easy-to-follow chronological framework. The author traces the origin of the raid to Hitler himself; the Fuhrer was determined to destroy the vital, square mile City district of London in revenge for RAF raids on Berlin on December 20. The December 29 attack on London was engineered by Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Sperrle, and was led by an elite group of 20 highly experienced pilots who made up Kampf Gruppe 100. Johnson has made a good effort to reconstruct the planning and execution of the bombing from the point of view of Luftwaffe officers and pilots. The raid was intended to be twofold: hundreds of bombers carrying incendiary bombs were to target the City of London and set it afire, paving the way for a second wave of bombers to finish the destruction with high explosive bombs. Fortunately for London, the weather caused problems for the Luftwaffe, and the second wave had to be cancelled.

Even without the later attack with high explosives, the thousands of incendiaries dropped on London that night caused extensive damage, especially throughout the area surrounding St. Paul's Cathedral. (So distressing was the thought of losing St. Paul's, that Churchill demanded that saving the cathedral was an absolute priority.) Firefighters fought valiantly over many hours, despite personnel shortages on this quiet Sunday after Christmas. Another critical factor hampering firefighters was a combination of City water main damage due to bombing, and low tides, which made pumping a back-up water supply from the Thames difficult.

Johnson interweaves the experiences of individual Londoners with an hour-by-hour narrative of the night's events and catastrophes. The book is illustrated with a number of well-chosen black and white photos, and there are also helpful before-and-after maps of the City (though these are difficult to read in the paperback edition). Although Johnson provides a basic index and a listing of the many Blitz survivors he interviewed, there is no section of notes citing individual sources, which I would have liked to see.

The London Blitz held my interest from the first to the last page. Johnson succeeds in providing a good understanding of what happened in London that night, in terms of strategy, geography, and the effects of the raids on individual Londoners. There may well be a better history of the December 29, 1940 London Blitz, but I haven’t found it yet.… (meer)