"Atonement vs. Historical Accuracy" Topic

In this movie, there is an allusion to a German bomb that struck a water main, which flooded one of the underground stations and drowned those sheltering there.

Historical accuracy or literary license?

Is there anyone on this forum who lived through those times or heard stories from relatives about the interior set-up of these shelters?

It seems logical that there might be blast doors installed between the stations themselves to prevent fewer casualties if a bomb did penetrate the roof and detonate within the tunnel itself.

On the other hand, the trains did continue to run.

JW

Read in a book called "Forgotten Voices" about a shelter being flooded by a severed main but it was set up in a basement not an underground station.

Not sure about blast doors being installed on the underground so there may be a little poetic licence in the Atonement story line.

The underground stations being used as shelters tended to be adopted by the public rather than endorsed by the authorities, who eventually gave way to public presssure and turned a blind eye to their use. Essentially every spare foot of the ground area was used with enough room for train users to get by.

I would think that the British authorities had few higher priorities than building blast doors on the Underground….

This actually did happen. Oct 14th 1940, the Balham tube station was hit and 68 poeople were killed. The water went up to the second stair on the escalator. They cleared 7 million gallons of water and the line was not reopened again until Jan 19 1941.

regards
Bob

JackWhite, are there blast doors in the subways in the USA? I would have thought that during the '50s when they might have been needed as air raid shelters they might have thought of it.

No? Well, same answer to the London question.

I doubted it for a little while: Then I checked the BTC website and their timeline of railway policing in London which confirms it and some other terriying actions. Amazing – the first terrorist bomb to be found on the railways was in 1903!!

On the other hand, the trains did continue to run.

Yes, and that was what made all the difference.

In the Reich, the trains were destroyed. All that buildup of material waiting to be taken to the "fronts", and no way to get it there. The strategic bombing of factories and production centers halted nothing. In fact, in the last months of the war, Germany's production actually set new records. It was losing the railroad system which killed Hitler's army, starving/strangling it.

<<The strategic bombing of factories and production centers halted nothing. In fact, in the last months of the war, Germany's production actually set new records. It was losing the railroad system which killed Hitler's army, starving/strangling it.>>

This is a popular misconception based on overly simplistic presentations of bare statistics (often by those seeking to demonise the Allied effort as a war crime). Germany's war production rose steadily from 1939 because of improved efficiency through experience and R&D, and because more and mroe resources were being directed to such production, increasingly to the detriment of other essential non-military production. What Allied bombing did was reduce the RATE of that increase, limiting the expansion of German war production to levels that prevented them gaining strategic advantages that might otherwise have accrued.

There was another mass death at a Tube station during an alert, when a woman carrying a baby fell down a staircase that had a right-hand bend in it at the base of the first flight of steps. The ensuing human pile-up against the retaining wall at the bottom of the first flight led to about 70 deaths, IIRC. I can't remember which station it was, but it was always specifically cited as a reason for not running down the stairs when I was at school in the early 1960s (many teachers were either war vets or had been civilians during the Blitz).

Hi

Super, agreed. I have so many pics of beautiful fighters sitting on hard stands with no fuel to get them to units, being captured or destroyed in place.

No "red ball express" for the germans.

Rocky

Supercilius it was Bethnall Green tube, and it wasnt 70 people died, it was 173!

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