St Paul's Survives

The cover of Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, which published this image in their January 1941 issue as proof that the German bombing campaign was working[1]
The front page of the Daily Mail on 31 December 1940. Mason's photo was captioned as "WAR'S GREATEST PICTURE". The image was cropped to omit many of the damaged buildings.

St Paul's Survives is a photograph taken in London during the night raid of 29/30 December 1940, the 114th night of the Blitz of World War II. In the early hours of 30 December, photographer Herbert Mason positioned on the roof of the Daily Mail building on Tudor Street, just off Fleet Street, took this image of St Paul's Cathedral surrounded by the smoke of burning buildings.[2]

The photograph became a symbol of British resilience and courage, and is considered one of the most iconic images of the Blitz. During the raid when the photograph was shot, more than 160 people died, over 500 were injured, and hundreds of buildings were destroyed in what became known as the Second Great Fire of London.[3]

The Blitz

Main article: The Blitz

The Blitz (from German, "lightning") was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain and Northern Ireland by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941,[4] during the Second World War. London, the United Kingdom's capital city, was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 57 consecutive nights. More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged, and more than 40,000 civilians were killed, half of them in London.[5]

When this picture was taken, almost every building immediately around St Paul's had burned down, with the cathedral surviving in a wasteland of destruction. Its survival was mainly due to the efforts of a special group of firefighters who were urged by prime minister Winston Churchill to protect the cathedral.[6] Twenty-nine incendiaries fell on and around the cathedral, with one burning through the lead dome and threatening to fall into the dome's wooden support beams. Members of the volunteer St Paul's Watch would have had to climb through the rafters to have any chance of putting it out, but the bomb fell outwards from the roof onto the Stone Gallery, where it was quickly extinguished.[2]

The picture

When German bombers struck London on 29 December 1940 it was the 114th night of the Blitz. As searchlights lit up the sky searching for enemy aircraft, the Daily Mail's chief photographer Herbert Mason was on top of the roof of his newspaper's building off Fleet Street.[6] German bombs destroyed hundreds of buildings that night and thick black smoke filled the air. Mason wanted to get a clear shot of St Paul's and waited hours for the smoke to clear sufficiently. Then the wind picked up just enough for Mason to take what would become one of the most iconic shots of the Blitz.

On 31 December, the Daily Mail took the unusual step of publishing the photographer's account of how he took the picture:[7]

“ I focused at intervals as the great dome loomed up through the smoke. Glares of many fires and sweeping clouds of smoke kept hiding the shape. Then a wind sprang up. Suddenly, the shining cross, dome and towers stood out like a symbol in the inferno. The scene was unbelievable. In that moment or two I released my shutter. ”
 
— Herbert Mason [8]

The photograph was taken in the early hours of Monday morning and was cleared for publication by the censors to appear in the issue of Tuesday 31 December 1940.

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