THREAD/Tomorrow marks the 80th anniversary of what was to prove the heaviest and final raid of the Night Blitz on London and in this thread, we'll be taking a look at some of the events of the night and will also be including some of the magic weaved by the excellent @typejunky

THREAD/Tomorrow sees the 80th anniversary of the heaviest raid of the Night Blitz on London, as well as what proved to be the final raid on the capital for over a year. In this thread, we're going to take a look at what can still be seen with the aid of some "then and now"

perspectives, as well as some of the excellent merged photographs courtesy of the excellent @typejunky who has kindly produced some images. I'm sure most of you know Nick's work by now but I will tag these where they appear. Here we see the junction of Goodge Street/Charlotte St.

“There never was a raid like it. Another one like that and they’d have had us on our backs.” So said Reg Matthews, an eye-witness of the events of the night of 10/11 May 1941. Reg was not a man given to over-statement, as his work as a telephone engineer had seen him hard at work

throughout the Blitz but it was this raid that stood out the most as far as the sheer levels of destruction of infrastructure, as well of course, as the human cost. Unlike some of the earlier heavy raids, such as Black Saturday, 7 Sept 1940 which concentrated on the East End and

SE London and 29 December 1940, the great fire raid on the City of London, the raid of 10/11 May touched almost every part of the capital and was the closest the Luftwaffe ever came to paralysing London. We’ll start off in my own locality of Greenwich and compare shots of Nelson

the 1941 photo taken when repairs were underway, compared with a similar view today. Fortunately in this particular incident there were no casualties but a little further back towards Woolwich, a direct hit on two shelters in Trafalgar Road resulted in 9 shelterers being killed.

In the City of London, one of the now famous shots of the Blitz was taken on the morning of 11 May by Arthur Cross & Fred Tibbs as 23 Queen Victoria Street collapsed following bomb damage. Further along the same street, the fires advanced westwards, fanned by a strong easterly

wind towards another of the buildings to be consumed by the fires; this was the International HQ of the Salvation Army. There was one human casualty here, sadly hit by a fire engine as he evacuated the building and also one feline casualty in the form of "Ginger" the office cat,

who was unable to escape from the burning building. Whilst the scene was unfolding, a Salvation Army refreshment wagon staffed by two female Salvationists. George Woodhouse, a firefighter drafted in from Holloway to assist later wrote of these two girls...

“Two Salvation Army lasses were handing out cups of tea + biscuits as if it were a Sunday School outing. They appeared to be completely unaware of the bombs falling around them. I often wondered what the word courage meant, but on that night those two lasses had it in abundance.”

The original photograph here was taken by the light of the fires in Queen Victoria Street and the comparable view today was taken in roughly the same spot. At one time, it was thought that the fires would consume the College of Arms building and neighbouring Faraday House,

which at that time contained the largest telephone exchange in the world but a fortunate change in the wind direction, coupled with a determined stand by the firefighters here, averted any further spread of the flames westwards of this point

Just a short distance away in Cannon Street, the Cordwainers’ Hall was destroyed, without loss of life and which opened up views of St Paul’s not seen for many years. This site is now known as Festival Gardens and is one of the many green oases to be found in the Square Mile.

We can now see another piece of @typejunky's magic in blending one of my images of the Festival Gardens site with what once stood there which gives a really good idea as to where the Cordwainers' Hall fitted with the modern geography and how the views of St Paul's have opened up.

The view looking west from St Paul’s down Ludgate Hill and towards Fleet Street on the morning of the 11 May, was one of devastation. The Old Bailey was hit and we can compare the scene then and now.

Heading back to Cannon Street, the station was largely destroyed on this night and a tale of heroism from two train crews emerged, most notably driver Leslie Stainer, who moved two trains out of the station and onto the bridge.

He narrowly escaped death when the footplate of the engine he had just moved was hit, after which he and his colleagues crossed the bridge on foot to the south side where they watched the fires. “It was as if hell had been let loose” he was to say later.

Just across the road from the station, Walbrook was blocked and in the two shots, we can compare "then and now" views, as well as sampling some more of the @typejunky magic. Walbrook was slightly narrower in 1941 than it is now but Nick has captured this perfectly

Not far from here, where London Wall meets Throgmorten Avenue , the Carpenters’ Hall was hit and although the building survived, we can once again compare views, as well as seeing a stunning example of @typejunky's work which makes us really aware of the history on our streets.

North of here lies Smithfield Market, later to suffer further damage in a devastating V-2 rocket attack in March 1945 but on this day, we can compare the view of the market taken from Charterhouse Street, as well as checking out another of @typejunky's pieces of magic.

Heading west once more, one of the final buildings to be hit was St Clement Danes Church, now the Central Church of the RAF but in 1941 one of the many Wren parish churches in the City, in this case dating from 1685.

Here, it was incendiary bombs that caused the damage and as we can see from the contemporary photograph, the church roof soon collapsed in the flames, leaving the entire building in ruins. Whilst this tragic scene was unfolding, the rector of the church Rev. Pennington-Bickford

could be seen in tears watching his beloved church destroyed and within a few short weeks, he too was dead, as recorded on his death certificate “from a broken heart.” The damage from this heaviest of raids spread to the West End and we

can compare views of 14 Curzon Street, close to Shepherd Market as well as to nearby 58 Conduit Street. To the north west at the top end of Regent Street, the Queens Hall was reduced to a burning shell and just around the corner, the

Central Synagogue in Great Portland Street suffered a similar fate. Here, ARP Warden Stanley Barlow was awarded a George Medal for repeatedly entering the burning building to rescue people trapped whilst sheltering in the basement of the burning building.

Back in Westminster, by 03:00 on the 11th, the House of Commons chamber was ablaze, struck it was thought by a HE bomb with incendiaries strapped to it. Westminster Hall was also damaged but thanks to the efforts of the firefighters, the fires were mastered before

they could take hold. Across the way, Westminster Abbey suffered serious damage but not irreparable. It was clear though that this was a raid like no other that London had endured. From Streatham to St Johns Wood and from Woolwich to Westminster through to Wimbledon

the story was the same. London’s transport network was in pieces-all of the capital’s main line termini (except Marylebone) were out of action. Euston, Kings Cross, Paddington and Liverpool Street managed to re-open on the 12th but St Pancras (pictured), Victoria & Waterloo were

closed for a week. The Underground network was similarly shredded with 30 miles of track destroyed or impassable. Things were no better on the roads; two bus garages had been hit and in the case of Croydon (pictured), totally destroyed with the loss of 113 buses and four staff.

All but two road bridges (Tower and Lambeth) across the Thames were blocked. Unexploded bombs also caused serious disruption to the transport network and services could not resume in these areas until they were cleared. London’s industry was also seriously disrupted.

The gas works at Kennington had been hit and had deprived much of south London of its gas supply. Similar damage to the gas works at Poplar had deprived the city of it supply as well. Some 147 water mains had been broken as well as sewers damaged and the fear that typhoid

could break out caused an increased amount of chlorine to be pumped into the supply in order to ward off the danger. There was no outbreak of typhoid after this raid, or at any time during the Blitz in London. Many factories vital to British war production had been hit

and production disrupted, although remarkably the Woolwich Arsenal did not suffer any damage in this particular raid. The human cost was grim though; 1,454 Londoners had been killed and some 1,800 seriously injured. Luftflotte 3 had despatched 541 aircraft in two waves to attack

London and had dropped over 700 tons of HE plus some 86,000 incendiary bombs. Fourteen Luftwaffe aircraft failed to return to base. The RAF’s night fighter capability was still struggling to deal with night time bombing raids.

The raid was a lengthy one too – the sirens had sounded at 23:00 and the last bomb had dropped (on Scotland Yard) at 05:37. Some 12,000 people had been rendered homeless but as bad as this was, unknown to Londoners, this would be the last raid on their city

for over a year, for Hitler was looking east to attack the Soviet Union. Hugo Sperrle, commander of Luftflotte 3, wanted to mount further raids to destroy London for all time but the Fuhrer would not be moved – there would be no further attacks on London until

Russia had been dealt with. To close – and to add some perspective – once RAF Bomber Command started its area bombing campaign against German cities, they would routinely drop twice the tonnage of HE that was dropped on London in May 1941 and would do this night after night.

The RAF raids were usually far more concentrated than the Luftwaffe could ever manage. For example, in the first “Gomorrah” raid on Hamburg on 24 July 1943, 728 aircraft dropped 2,284 tons of bombs in just 50 minutes and returned to the same city two nights later

to drop a further 2,326 tons of bombs in a similar concentrated period of time. The human toll was appalling; as many as 40,000 people died in this second raid. Compare this with approximately 30,000 civilians killed in London during the entire war.

This was truly, “reaping the whirlwind”. I'm indebted to @typejunky for giving up his time to produce his stunning merged images which have helped illustrate this thread./END