10 April 2018

WW2 Bombing Maps

In both world wars the Norfolk seaside town of Great Yarmouth and Gorleston-on-Sea, my childhood home town, was a target for German bombing. By the time I came along the bomb sites had been cleared— much of the land was vacant. Overgrown bomb sites and abandoned pill boxes made for informal play areas. There were still notices about bombs that might be washed up on the beach.

Like many communities Great Yarmouth has a variety of online resources on local history, one being Our Great Yarmouth. What I had not expected was a reproduction of a post war publication by the Borough Council commemorating the town's role containing day-by-day lists of air raids, photos of the damage, and a table showing 217 were killed and 588 injured.

At the end of the publication are maps of where the bombs fell. Given the number of bomb sites near where I lived I shouldn't have been surprised at the number than fell in the one square mile area shown.

Still in Norfolk, the Norfolk Record Office have detailed images of the bomb map for Norwich available to buy on CD.

The (UK) National Archives has a research guide to the Bomb Census survey records 1940-1945 which points to their archival resources. It reference a London map at http://bombsight.org/. You can likely find maps for other areas by Googling—examples are Birmingham and Liverpool.




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