Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James Rogers and in this episode we're looking at the Blitz but not the Blitz that you might think of when you first hear that term of course we think of London understandably We think of the Blitz spirit but also the sheer destruction that was dealt on the capital city. However, there were many different Blitzes across the UK. There was the blizz on Liverpool, on Hull, on Cardiff, on Bristol,

on Coventry, Southampton, Swansea, Belfast, Glasgow.

In fact, it's hard to find a major city in the UK

that didn't undergo severe bombardment

by the Lufwaffe.

Every individual part of the UK was bombed.

One of these was the Plymouth Blitz.

Now Plymouth was bombed on 59 separate occasions during the Second World War

resulting in over a thousand civilian deaths. And to take us

through step by step just the impact this had on Plymouth in terms of its people,

but also in terms of the city itself and the lasting legacies of that considerable

destruction, we have the brilliant Harry Bennett from the University of Plymouth.

Harry spent the last 25 years researching this and the story he tells is

well it's remarkable that it's one that we just don't already know about. So here he is

Harry Bennett on the Plymouth podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm doing okay, although I'm afraid some of your listeners may find me a little gravelly

as a result of some sort of chest infection or something which I've picked up, but I hope we'll struggle through it.

Oh well I hope you have a swift recovery, especially in time for the bars to be opening

assuming Plymouth I hear.

Well I do happen to have a bottle of whiskey by me just to ease my vocal

chords so we don't even need to wait for the bars to actually open.

You sound like a historian and an academic would by any chance that be your job?

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