World War 2 In Review: Battle of Britain and the Blitz

Contrails above London after dogfight between British and German aircraft. September 1940.

View of St. Paul’s Cathedral during the Blitz.

English children in a trench during an air attack.

Firefighters of Yarmouth, England, battle the flames that followed a German bombing raid in April 1941.

Civilians take refuge in a London subway during an air raid.

The Church of Saint Mary Le Bow in London after a night raid by German bombers.

Night incendiary bombs turn a London stationery store into a walled pyre.

Morning: a sentry fire pump soaks down the still-smoldering London rubble.

Bomb which hit the Balham Road, London, blasted the facades off four stores and engulfed a double-deck bus in its huge crater.

The debris of St. Thomas's Hospital, London, the morning after receiving a direct hit during the Blitz, in front of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. 1940. The “Blitz” was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, half of them in London.

People sheltering in a tube train and on the platform at Piccadilly Tube Station, London, during an air raid. 1940.

A milkman delivering milk in a London street devastated during a German bombing raid. Firemen are dampening down the ruins behind him. 1940.

A scene in central London, the morning after a bomb raid. 1940.

A fireman attempts to check the flames from a gas explosion, after an air raid in Central London the previous night. 1940.

A view of devastation around St Paul's Cathedral in the City. Circa 1940.

A homeless boy points out his bedroom to his friends, after his home had been wrecked during a random bombing raid in an eastern suburb of London. 1940.