Colorized a photo of the twisted remains of a double-decker London City bus after a German Blitz on the City, September 10, 1940

Colorized a photo of the twisted remains of a double-decker  London City bus after a day time German Blitz on the City that also left some department stores in ruins,  September 10, 1940, just 3 days after the start of the Blitz. 

The  Battle of Britain between August and September 1940 and saw the defeat of the German Luftwaffe despite a clear 4:1 numerical superiority in aircraft over Britain.  Hitler then turned his sights on conducting bombing Blitzes that almost sent the UK to its knees if not for the fact that Hitler canceled his plans to invade Britain for his invasion of Soviet Russia to the east  The Royal Family was already preparing to evacuate to Canada and had Hitler continued with his invasion of Britain and not embark on a disastrous Russian campaign, he would have won the war at that point.  America was still sitting on the fence until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941, but without the UK as its launch point in the European theatre, there would not be any country in Europe to host a US military build-up for a Normandy landing. 

On September 7, 1940  around 4:00 PM, 348 German bombers (mostly Heinkel 111) escorted by 617 fighters blasted London until 6:00 PM. Two hours later, guided by the fires set by the first assault, a second wave commenced another attack that lasted until 4:30 the following morning.  The blitz lasted until May 1951 leaving more than 50,000 civilian casualties including 28,500 dead.