Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

bombsight.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 69 posts

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#41

Post by m-i-l »

fit2rule wrote: post #37
m-i-l wrote: post #29

Also worth noting that unexploded bombs from the Second World War still turn up in London every now and again, e.g. 21 May in Wembley [0], 14 May in Bromley [1], 23 March in Bermondsey [2], 20 February in New Malden [3]. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/22/bomb-found-20... [1] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/pensioner-finds-unexpl... [2] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/police-called-in-afte…

Lest we forget the true nature of war, it should be noted that British and American bombs are discovered all over the place in Germany too, every year. And still cause casualties, alas.

Yes - from today's news at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32897388 "Some 20,000 people in the German city of Cologne have been forced to leave their homes as authorities defuse a one-tonne bomb from World War Two".

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#42

Post by jstalin »

fit2rule wrote: post #37
m-i-l wrote: post #29

Also worth noting that unexploded bombs from the Second World War still turn up in London every now and again, e.g. 21 May in Wembley [0], 14 May in Bromley [1], 23 March in Bermondsey [2], 20 February in New Malden [3]. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/22/bomb-found-20... [1] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/pensioner-finds-unexpl... [2] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/police-called-in-afte…

Lest we forget the true nature of war, it should be noted that British and American bombs are discovered all over the place in Germany too, every year. And still cause casualties, alas.

I've also heard that WWI munitions are routinely found in France still, with farmers still getting killed occasionally.

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#43

Post by kaybe »

fit2rule wrote: post #37
m-i-l wrote: post #29

Also worth noting that unexploded bombs from the Second World War still turn up in London every now and again, e.g. 21 May in Wembley [0], 14 May in Bromley [1], 23 March in Bermondsey [2], 20 February in New Malden [3]. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/22/bomb-found-20... [1] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/pensioner-finds-unexpl... [2] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/police-called-in-afte…

Lest we forget the true nature of war, it should be noted that British and American bombs are discovered all over the place in Germany too, every year. And still cause casualties, alas.

Wikipedia has numbers: Every year, about 5,500 duds are removed (sometimes, evacuation of several 10,000 people included), the daily average is given as 15. In 2013 an estimated 100,000 were remaining. Wars suck, for everyone and for a long time.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance + the german article)

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#44

Post by kaybe »

jstalin wrote: post #42
fit2rule wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget the true nature of war, it should be noted that British and American bombs are discovered all over the place in Germany too, every year. And still cause casualties, alas.

I've also heard that WWI munitions are routinely found in France still, with farmers still getting killed occasionally.

The topic even has its own wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#45

Post by mauricemir »

pjc50 wrote: post #32
kristopolous wrote: post #2

I'm curious about how the civilian population went about this. I'd like to say that if I saw even a remote possibility of something like this happening, I'd hastily vamoose to the hinterlands without a second thought and remain there indefinitely. What percentage of people left the cities in anticipation of such events? The narratives I've seen on the Japanese bombings was that people strategically moved to the small…

Some people did, if they had the money. Children were evacuated and dispersed. However, as always, people have to live within commuting distance of their work. And pretty much everyone was either conscripted, recruited into the manufacturing or logistic side of the war effort, or in one of the "exempt" professions keeping the country operating. My grandfather was one of those as a railway signalman. I can't remember…

One of my Grandfathers had to evacuate his whole school from Birmingham - his house also got bombed (lucky without my father in it )

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#46

Post by cafard »

scarmig wrote: post #17

Reminded me of the opening passage of Gravity's Rainbow . Tyrone Slothrop gets around... "A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of d…

As the other comment says, Gravity's Rainbow is about the V-2s; but I also recall that there is an element regarding the map of Slothrop's sexual adventures matching nicely to the map of V-2 strikes. (Well, I think I recall--it has been a long time since I read the book.)

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#47

Post by wahsd »

Wait. Every bomb? Seriously, how is that even possible? I guess, once you zoom in you realize the bombing wasn't really all that dense and I guess each bomb could have been cataloged.

What would be interesting is tying the bombs into stings and reconstructing the bomb raids over time.

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#48

Post by bweitzman »

empiricus wrote: post #39
failrate wrote: post #9

Is it a Poisson Distribution?

I can't see any possible reason for the distribution to be Poisson. It should be completely random, but the representation on the map is too regular.. Looks like the apparent regularity is an artifact of the way the data is filtered for display on the map for some scales; if I zoom out/in the fully random distribution becomes more visible.

Poisson distributions are completely random, so I'm guessing you mean either a uniform or normal distribution.

failrate is making a reference to the Thomas Pynchon novel "Gravity's Rainbow", in which the Poisson distribution of the bombing of London is a major plot point.

And I do believe the author is correct by claiming it is a Poisson distribution, since we are talking a number of events per km^2.

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#49

Post by tomjen3 »

afarrell wrote: post #18
afarrell wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luck Aerial bombardment was very inaccurate in those days. In Berlin, the RAF failed to hit what was then the largest office building in the world: the ministry of aviation. However, they did destroy one of the oldest synagogues in Europe. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus

For a separate discussion about the argument that the allies should have bombed the lines to the death camps: I've been bewildered for a decade how anyone proposes that they could have done any damage to a 1.4 meter wide target made of two steel beams lying on the earth. At least, any damage that could not have been repaired in half a week.

You don't blow up just any track: you blow up bridges because they take so much more time to build or repair.

As for the targeting: you have to go really low. British bombers attacked the gestapo hq in Copenhagen by going so low that their bombs were dropped into the sides of the building (consequently, although that wasn't the plan, a number of prisoners who had been housed in cells in the top floor managed to escape).

Of course you can only do something like that if you are willing to paint a huge target on yourself because you will be very easy to shoot down.

Re: An interactive map showing every German bomb dropped on London during WW2 Blitz

#50

Post by tomjen3 »

kristopolous wrote: post #2

I'm curious about how the civilian population went about this. I'd like to say that if I saw even a remote possibility of something like this happening, I'd hastily vamoose to the hinterlands without a second thought and remain there indefinitely. What percentage of people left the cities in anticipation of such events? The narratives I've seen on the Japanese bombings was that people strategically moved to the small…

Thank you for teaching me a new word today.

As others have pointed out children were evacuated, but realistically a lot of people have jobs to do that they can't just do elsewhere and most people just don't believe things like that will happen to them and certainly not here (there is a TED talk by a photographer of the Bosnian war about this that I cannot find right).

Finally, this is British people we are talking about: a stiff upper lip is basically their national idea (or was).

Regardless I hope I would have the foresight to do some vamoosing of my own, in case things went that much south.

Post reply on HN