The royal dockyards at HMNB Devonport were the main target in order to facilitate Nazi German efforts during the Battle of the Atlantic.

Amidst the smoking ruins a headmistress nailed over the door a wooden sign saying simply Resurgam (Latin for I shall rise again), indicating the wartime spirit, a gesture repeated at other devastated European churches.

[4] Charles Church, Plymouth, destroyed by incendiaries on the nights of 20–21 March 1941, has been preserved in its ruined state as a memorial to civilian victims of the Blitz.

[5] The seminal work by Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxley on the ionic basis of nerve conduction resumed there in June 1947.

On the evening of 22 April 1941 during an attack on the central area, the communal air-raid shelter at Portland Square took a direct hit which killed 76 people.

Main roads were diverted around the city, while the original street plan of city centre, with the exception of Union Street, was to be erased and replaced with a grand vista leading from Naval Memorial on Plymouth Hoe to Plymouth railway station, intersected by new roads and lined by modern buildings.