Bristol Blitz

Bristol was the sixth-most heavily bombed British city of the war. The Luftwaffe conducted six major bombing campaigns on Bristol between November 1940 and April 1941, causing Bristol to experience 548 air raid alerts and 77 air raids with: To counter the raids, Bristol's defenders developed an air defence system that increased in size and sophistication during the course of the war; local heavy anti-aircraft guns fired c. 59,000 rounds at attacking aircraft during the conflict. On 2 November 1940, the Luftwaffe dropped 5,000 incendiary and 10,000 high explosive bombs on the old city in a night raid. On 24 November 1940, Luftflotte 3 bombers left Germany to bomb Bristol. The attack started at 6:30 pm and continued in waves. Groups of two or three bombers passed over Bristol and dropped in total around 12,000 incendiary bombs and 160 tons of high-explosive bombs; within an hour over 70 fires had started. Park Street was "smashed" and the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery hit, 207 people were killed and thousands of houses were destroyed or damaged. The area that is now Castle Park was extensively damaged.