Air raids began in August 1940, and in September 1940 the Palace Theatre on Oxford Street was hit.

The heaviest raids occurred on the nights of 22/23 and 23/24 December 1940, killing an estimated 684 people and injuring more than 2,000.

[1] The aircraft spread fanwise over the city and adopted the by-then familiar tactic of dropping flares followed by incendiaries and high explosives with later waves targeting the fires caused by the earlier attacks.

There were other less intensive bombing raids across Britain[2] and two German aircraft were reported to have been lost over the British Isles on 24 December; one crashed in the sea near Blackpool and the other, loaded with incendiaries and flares, crashed in flames near Sussex with no survivors.

RAF De Havilland Mosquitos shot down one German bomber over the North Sea and severely damaged another, causing it to crash land in Germany.