the london blitz facts:

1. nazi germany (luftwaffe) fought the british (Royal Air Force)

2. the blitz was started by accident - the original german plan was to destroy all r.a.f. airfields and air installations(runways etc) based mainly on the english south coast away (but near) london. this was to be done to enable operation sealion, which was german code, and the landing of nazi troops on british soil to conquer the uk after france had fallen (may 1940).
the luftwaffe while bombing oil depots( suppilied fuel to aircrafts) in londons east end over flew and bombed central london. the raf retailiated by a surprise bombing of berlin. thus hitler said 'we will wipe english cities of the map'

3. the blitz occured between june 1940 to october 1940 in order to destroy the raf (before operation sealion,see above)
it was hoped that all british air cover would be destroyed thus allowing the nazi boats transport troop over the english channel safely and the luftwaffe would then move on to striking britains superior naval resources in the region and britain would have been conquered

4. the british first used the phrase 'the bomber will always get through'. this essentially meant that instead of attacking the bombers on the way to the mission/drop zone they would attack them on the way back to their bases in northern france. this doctrine was changed after two months of devastating bombing raid on churchills request . the raf then changed to dog fighting tactics and would engage the luftwaffe before the drop zone which resulted in a much more succesful outcome.

5. the british main plane was the spitfire the germans used the heinkel bomber. the british spitfire was highly manoeverable.

6. the germans concentrated there attacks on london - but also attacked other industrial cities and in fact totally flattened coventry in central england - the germans used terror attacks to frighten the population into submission by bombing residential areas

7. the london populous used the underground as shelter from the raids

8. the germans had a 3 to 1 advantage in airplanes at the beginning of the blitz. at one point famously churchill was at raf head quarter when all the british planes were in usage

9. the german tactics of attacking civilian areas meant attention was diverted from attacking strategic targets - airfield, radar and oil depots - meant the raf had time to repair

10 THE BRITISH HAD A SECRET WEAPON - radar and could see the germans coming over the channel (sea) and thus had time to orrganise esential in the defeat of the lufftwaffe

11. in october 1940 due to nazi losses, due to concentrating attacks outside of airfields and the brits use of radar and concentrating attacks on lufftwaffe bomber formations, hitler told the lufftwaffe to suspend the blitz and turned his attemntion to the east and yugoslavia


britain won due mainly to better planes -spitfire and radar - but it was close