The Blackout Ripper: London's Wartime Serial Killer
By Royal Air Force recruitment photograph, 1940 or 1941. Wartime Blackouts and Icy Skies February 1942 The Blitz, which had relentlessly pounded London from September 7, 1940, until May 16, 1941, was over, but it had left a grim legacy. The capital remained plunged in a total, suffocating 'blackout'—a state of mandatory near-blindness that would drag on until September 1944, before relaxing into a ghostly 'dim-out' until the war’s end. As if the darkness were not enough, Germany began the ruthless 'Baedeker Raids.' Ordered by Adolf Hitler in retaliation for the RAF bombing of Lübeck on the night of March 28–29, 1942, the German Luftwaffe deliberately targeted historic, culturally significant English towns. These raids bypassed industrial zones to strike directly at civilian morale and heritage sites. While German bombs threatened destruction from above, an entirely different kind of monster was preparing to hunt in the pitch-black streets below. That February w...
