The Bomb Sight Project

In 2012 geographer Dr. Kate Jones of University of Portsmouth England,conceived a year- long mapping project that used cartography to trace the exact points of attack of London during the Second World War. This project used red bomb symbols to illustrate where each bomb landed. The map shows how the entire greater city, from Egham in the west to Dartford in the east, Potters Bar in the north and Caterham in the south, was affected. She is of the opinion that when one looks at these maps and sees the proliferation of bombs dropped on the capital, one realizes the meaning of the word ‘blitz’, which comes from the German, meaning “lightning war”. Dr. Jones chose to focus on the period of the Blitz which saw the most intensive bombing by the Luftwaffe which killed thousands and destroyed more than a million homes.The Bomb Sight project uses a slightly longer timeframe for mapping which bombs fell where because it uses maps of the London Second World War bomb census, taken between October 1940 and June 1941 which until now has only been available to view in the reading room at the National Archives. The locations of the bombs have been combined with geo-located photographs from the Imperial War Museum and geo-located memories from the BBC’s WW2 People’s War Archive.

Users can manipulate the map and zoom into specific streets or boroughs as well as find out what type of bomb was dropped where.Funded by higher education charity Jisc, Dr Jones has created a website and mobile app to make the interactive map available to the general public, especially students, teachers and citizen researchers.The Android app also gives users an augmented reality view that allows users to point their phone at a street scene and, using the phone’s camera and GPS, view the bombs that fell nearby.