Defending England's North
Sea coast in the Second World War. The Battle of Britain and the
Atlantic and the Blitz are invariably the focus of books and perceptions of the
air war over and around Britain during the Second World War.
Yet, it was Britain’s more
exposed eastern flank, from the South Foreland in the south to Bridlington in
the north that faced nearly six years of unrelenting attacks by the Luftwaffe,
the Kriegsmarine and, amazingly, the Corpo Aereo Italiano based in
Belgium. The Italians alone launched
some 150 raids on England
hitting Great Yarmouth, Clacton, Harwich, Deal,
Ramsgate and a host of other targets.
This book chronicles the air war around the east coast as its
principle focus but also incorporates the joint operations mounted by both the
Allies and the Axis forces. It looks at the preparations for invasion, the
defence of vital convoys, the air defences, the coastal blitz, ship and crew
rescue and crucial docks and shipyards.
With so much attention paid to the south coast, the air war over the
east coast was often fought on a shoe-string although it was the coast that lay
closest to Germany. It was not a war of vast
fleets of warships and submarines, it was conflict staged by aircraft and
smaller raiding craft. It also saw the biggest mine-laying campaign in history
and the largest battle fought between Axis S-Boats and Allied Motor Torpedo
Boats.
As the tide turned in Britain’s favour, the east coast became the
staging post of the great bomber offensives against enemy occupied Europe and
Germany itself. Yet the raiding and
attacks on the east coast continued culminating in air-launched V1 attacks and
finally V2 strikes.
