The peace of Christmas 1940 ended suddenly and violently for Londoners on the night of December 29 when the German Luftwaffe launched an airborne attack so devastating it became known as the Second Great Fire of London. But out of the burning rubble came an image that would define the defiant 'Blitz spirit' of Britain and its capital city.
From 6.15pm until the all-clear sounded three and a half hours later, some 100,000 incendiary bombs and another 24,000 high-explosive devices rained on the heart of the City, destroying many of the buildings that had stood since the City of London was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666.
At one point, some 1,500 fires were raging in a strip of land that stretched from St Paul's Cathedral to the borders of Islington to the north – the largest continuous area of destruction in any Blitz attack on the UK.
[November 14, 1940 - Coventry Cathedral is destroyed by German bombs]
The Square Mile in particular suffered the greatest damage. In all 31 guild halls, 19 churches (including eight built by Sir Christopher Wren) and all of Paternoster Row – the historic heart of the publishing industry – were destroyed. 160 civilians perished, along with 14 firemen, and some 500 people were injured, 250 of them fire fighters.
Amidst the smoke and flames, however, St Paul's Cathedral stood, apparently unharmed, its dome a beacon of defiance. It was no coincidence – reports suggest that Winston Churchill ordered fire fighters to abandon the City's other burning buildings and concentrate all their efforts on protecting the cathedral. They were aided by 200 or so volunteers who patrolled the church's grounds and corridors armed with water pumps and sandbags to extinguish any fires.
Just half an hour into the raid, Daily Mail photographer Herbert Mason captured the iconic image at the top of this page of St Paul's surrounded by fire. Published in his paper two days later, it is said to have given the country hope for the battle ahead and remains a symbol of Britain's indomitable 'Blitz spirit' to this day.
[Also on this day: December 29, 1940 - Central Telegraph Office targeted by Luftwaffe bombers]
The Second Great Fire of London – Did you know?
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The name was apparently coined during the raid itself, when a US war reporter telegraphed his office with the news: “The second Great Fire of London has begun”.
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The sheer scale of the bombardment made it difficult enough to contain the 1,000°C fires, but the fact that the raid took place when the Thames tide was spectacularly low meant that with water mains ruptured by explosives, water was in short supply as hoses clogged up with mud from the river bank.
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Firemen who did trudge through the muddy river banks to gain access to the water also faced danger from the many unexploded bombs that had settled there during the previous 113 nights of the Blitz.
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Many of the 200-strong St Paul's Watch weren't firemen at all, but members of the Royal Institute of British Architects, recruited for their knowledge of the vulnerabilities of the structure and where best to target firefighting efforts. Twenty-eight incendiary devices did fall on the cathedral that night but all were safely extinguished.
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Photographer Herbert Mason was on the roof of the Daily Mail office in Fleet Street in his capacity as fire warden when he saw the dome of St Paul's appear through the parting smoke. He happened to have his camera with him and his powerful image, called 'St Paul's Survives' and declared by his paper to be 'War's Greatest Picture' was later used as propaganda to present the image of a defiant Britain to the world.
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Mason's image was usually cropped to omit the damaged burnings in front of St Paul's, but when German newspaper Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung used the photo in its January 1941 issue, it included the burning shells of neighbouring buildings to show that the Nazi bombing campaign was a success.
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German observers could see the night sky light up from their positions on the French coast, some 100 miles away.
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Around five million books were destroyed when the print shops and publishing houses of Paternoster Row were burnt down. The street no longer exists, but its location is marked by a City of London road sign to this day.
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Incredibly, the fires were generally brought under control by 4am on the morning of December 30.
