BREAKING NEWS: Buckingham Palace discovers decades-old secrets amid renovations
Buckingham Palace is one of the most famous buildings in the world, with hundreds of tourists gathering at its gates every single day. While the Palace is one of the biggest tourist attractions in London, not everyone knows that it was once at great risk.
This was in 1940, at the height of the Blitz, when the Palace was bombed. On September 13, 1940, six bombs had been dropped, landing in the forecourt, the quadrangle, the Chapel and in the garden. Both King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, were at Buckingham Palace at the time, and decided to stay put rather than flee to Windsor Castle, where their daughters Princess Elizabeth – the late Queen Elizabeth II – and Princess Margaret were staying.
Here, the Daily Express has looked at the photographs of the devastating Buckingham Palace bombing 86 years on…
The King And Queen examined the bomb damage in the rubble
Buckingham Palace was bombed badly in 1940, and while the property experienced some damage, no royals were fatally injured. The bombing happened when both King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, were in residence. At the time, it is believed Queen Elizabeth was pleased the bombing happened, and wrote in a letter to her mother-in-law Queen Mary: “Now we can look the East End in the eye.”
Bomb Damage At Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace’s private chapel was damaged in the bombing. The chapel, according to The Royal Collection Trust, was commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1844. Originally, after the 1940 bombing, King George VI had wanted the chapel rebuilt; however, with funds difficult and post-war building restrictions, this did not go ahead.
Bomb Damage
King George VI recalled the moment in his diary of what happened during the bombing. He wrote on the day of the incident 85 years ago: “All of a sudden we heard an aircraft making a zooming noise above us, saw 2 bombs falling past the opposite side of the Palace, & then heard 2 resounding crashes as the bombs fell in the quadrangle about 30 yds away. We looked at each other, & then we were out into the passage as fast as we could. The whole thing happened in a matter of seconds…6 bombs had been dropped. The aircraft was seen coming straight down the Mall below the clouds, having dived through the clouds and had dropped 2 bombs in the forecourt, 2 in the quadrangle, one in the Chapel and the other in the garden.”
A crater made by a bomb which was dropped and exploded outside Buckingham Palace, London, 14th September, 1940
Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, said everyone stayed ‘calm’ during the bombing. In a letter to Queen Mary, she wrote: “…at this moment we heard the unmistakable whirr-whirr of a german plane…and before anything else could be said, there was the noise of aircraft diving at great speed, and then the scream of a bomb – It all happened so quickly, that we had only time to look foolishly at each other, when the scream hurtled past us, and exploded with a tremendous crash in the quadrangle.”
Archives sur la Reine mère
The letter continued: “I saw a great column of smoke & earth thrown up into the air, and then we all ducked like lightning into the corridor. There was another tremendous explosion, and we & our 2 pages who were outside the door, remained for a moment or two in the corridor away from the staircase, in case of flying glass. It is curious how one’s instinct works at those moments of great danger, as, quite without thinking, the urge was to get away from the windows. Everybody remained wonderfully calm, and we went down to the shelter.”
