Buckingham Palace, one of the world's most famous buildings, was bombed during the Blitz on September 13, 1940. Six bombs were dropped, landing in the forecourt, the quadrangle, the Chapel and the garden. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, were at the Palace at the time and chose to stay rather than flee to Windsor Castle, where their daughters Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were staying.
King and Queen inspected the damage
The bombing caused significant damage to the Palace, but no royals were fatally injured. Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, later wrote to her mother-in-law Queen Mary: "Now we can look the East End in the eye."
Chapel damage and royal reactions
The Palace's private chapel, commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1844, was damaged in the bombing. King George VI initially wanted the chapel rebuilt, but post-war building restrictions and financial difficulties meant this did not go ahead.
In his diary, King George VI wrote: "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."
Queen Mother described the attack
Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, said everyone remained "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."
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."
