The Day St Paul's Was Saved

Exactly seventy years ago today Herbert Mason, a photographer for the Daily Mail, stood on the rooftop of the newspapers office in Fleet Street watching as London burned around him. Flames leaped from building to building as the firemen struggled to control them.

This was almost half way through the London Blitz which had begun on the seventh of September 1940 and continued almost nightly until May the following year, but for the Londoners huddled in air-raid shelters listening to their city exploding around them it seemed the onslaught would never end.

There had been a short pause in the bombing over the Christmas period but now it had restarted, this time the target was the city, that square mile of London that was the financial heart of the country.

This time the reason for the bombing had changed, it was not just to cause as much damage as possible but to cause a 'firestorm', this is where intense bombing causes the fires to create a strong artificial wind which sucks in everything around it, including surrounding buildings until they become unstoppable.

As well as Herbert Mason there was another man standing on a rooftop watching the devastation in the streets below and that man was Winston Churchill. According to someone who was there Churchill turned to an aide and said ''the bastards will pay for this'', and continued ''St Paul's must be saves''.

As the firemen outside the church fought to keep it safe others, church workers and volunteers were inside ready to leap on any of the thousands of incedary devices that managed to land in the church, thanks to the dedication of all the nearest St Paul's came near to suffering damage when one of these devices fell on the dome, fortunately a firewatcher was near by and soon knocked it to safety, if not the surely the lead dome would have been severly damaged.

The firemen who on those nights were trying to do the seemingly impossible reported hearing an unusual low sound which was the wind beginning to do it's work. It has been said that another night of bombing would have brought the firestorm into an unstoppable force and the city would have ceased to exist.

Luckily this was prevented by our perverse weather, on what would have been the tipping point for the firestorm the weather changed and the conditions deteriorate which prevented the Luftwaffe from flying and the city of London escaped what looked like the inevitable conclusion. Sadly five years later Dresden's weather wasn't to be so kind.

During the brief respite firemen worked to the brink of exhaustion to extinguish the fires around St Paul's and Wrens church was saved, little did they know at the time that in the camera of Herbert Mason lay the image of their victory, an image that would represent the courage of the British people not to be cowed by tyranny but to rise above it as St Paul's rose above the ashes of London. An image which would outlive the war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h29Bdv4apvQ