The German Luftwaffe dropped thousands of bombs on London from 1939 to 1945, killing almost 30,000 people. More than 70,000 buildings were completely demolished, and another 1.7 million were damaged. The extent of the damage to each and every one of these buildings was logged and mapped in near real-time by surveyors, architects, engineers, and construction workers. The result is an incredible collection of maps, color-coded by hand, that reveal the amount of the destruction in painstaking detail. Today, the maps remain an invaluable resource for academics, family historians, and even builders trying to avoid touching off unexploded bombs.
Now, these bomb census maps are available in a beautiful oversized book released earlier this year to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the Blitz, a nine-month period during which London and other British cities were relentlessly attacked by the German air force. Visually, the maps are quite striking. The apparent randomness of the colors stands in contrast to the more orderly pattern of streets and buildings. The damage from World War II transformed London into the architecturally diverse city it is today. The maps showing how widespread the destruction was, really bring home the scale of the devastation.