The Tower Of London During World War two

I paid a visit to the Tower of London and was delighted to be given a tour by Minette Butler, one of the Assistant Curators. The tour specifically focussed on the Tower during World War Two: what surviving evidence is there of bomb damage at the Tower, how did its residents cope and what role did it carry out for the war effort?

Many readers will remember the Tower of London’s 2014 poppy display, to mark the centenary of the First World War. Called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, it consisted of 888,246 poppies flooding the moat of the Tower, each one representing a British or colonial serviceman that died in that war. 

2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two. To mark that anniversary, the Tower of London has created a new poppy display called The Tower Remembers, using 30,000 of the poppies from the 2014 display. The poppies were created by the artist Paul Cummins and are on loan from the Imperial War Museum. 

The installation this year, designed by Tom Piper, represents a ‘wound’ at the heart of the Tower. Poppies burst up as if thrown from a bomb crater and flow down the lawn outside the White Tower. 

They also flow from the top of the Tower, mirroring the flowing into the moat from the 2014 installation. 

The installation is at the Tower until Remembrance Day on the 11th November.

The Tower Over The Centuries

The Tower of London is, of course, one of the city’s great historic buildings and has had many purposes over the centuries. Originally built on the orders of William the Conqueror in 1078, it stands at a commanding, defensive spot by the River Thames. 

The Tower has been expanded over the years and has been used as a fortress, a royal residence, a menagerie, prison and place of execution, as well as a home for the Royal Armouries, the Crown Jewels and the Royal Mint.

The Tower of London started to become a tourist attraction from the 18th century before being more officially opened from the early 19th century. It closed however to tourists at the outbreak of the Second World War on the 3rd September 1939. 

preparing For Attack

Blackout was enforced across the country from the 1st September 1939, to obscure towns and cities from the air. Ordinary citizens would cover their windows with blackout blinds, but the number of medieval arrow slits at the Tower, posed a bit of a challenge. The procedure put in place at the Tower was simple, the on-site electrician would simply cut the power to the whole site if an air raid was imminent. 

All of the priceless historic artefacts were removed from the Tower and distributed to other locations. The Crown Jewels, for example, were removed and taken to a secret location. It has since been revealed that they were squirrelled away at Windsor Castle. 

Defence and Morale

In 1940 a barrage balloon was a tethered in the western moat.

Barrage balloons were intended to make low-flying aircraft fly higher and disrupt their aim. They were also however important in terms of being very visible, morale-boosting symbols of London defending itself against the Luftwaffe. It was initially operated by the RAF and later, from 1942, taken over by the Women’s Auxiliary Airforce, who lived in huts in the moat. 

Speaking of morale-boosting, part of the Southern moat of the Tower also became an allotment.

They grew vegetables such as carrots, cabbages and runner beans. This was to show that everyone was doing their bit during the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, that encouraged the public to transform green spaces into allotments to make the country less reliant on imports. 

Soldiers at the Tower

Military units were stationed at the Tower during the war; the Scots Guards and later the Home Guard, alongside the Yeoman Warders. They were largely stationed in the Waterloo Block, now known as the Jewel House 

The galleries in the White Tower that had once been packed with medieval armour were now bare and empty. They were repurposed as communal spaces for the soldiers. A canteen was set up as well as a library, billiards table and a theatre for performances. One of the floors was even chalked up as a badminton court. 

The Yeoman Warders did not totally relinquish their duties of showing off the Tower to visitors. From February 1940 visiting troops from the Commonwealth were given tours of the Tower. American soldiers, for example, particularly wanted to visit the Tower whilst stationed in London. Merchant navy members, nurses and the Women’s land army were also offered tours. 

The Tower Is Hit

As the new poppy installation alludes to, the Tower itself was hit during the war. Many of the Yeoman Warders’ families had been evacuated and many of the community at the Tower volunteered as firewatchers to put out incendiary bombs. 

The South lawn was hit twice by explosive bombs, one just narrowly missing the White Tower. 

On 23rd September 1940, numbers 3-4 Casemates, the street on the outer ward of the Tower, were almost completely destroyed. Also on that night, half of the old Hospital Block was destroyed and John McKee, a Scots Guardsman was killed. You can see in the brickwork today where they have been repaired. 

On the 5th October 1940 a bomb hit and destroyed the North bastion. A Yeoman warder, Samuel Reeves, a World War One veteran and his mother-in-law Lily Frances Lunn were sadly killed. 

On the 8th December 1940 a bomb landed near the West Gates. You can still see shrapnel damage on the metal today.

Electrician Thomas Norman Percy Anderson was killed in the blast. Tragically, he was one his way to post a letter to his father, in which he had written about how he was looking forward to his wife visiting the Tower the next day. 

The Second Great Fire And Hitler’s Revenge

On the 29th December 1940, a night that is often described as the ‘Second Great Fire of London’, a 19th century building called the Main Guard was gutted by incendiary bombs.

It was not rebuilt and the bomb damage revealed a section of medieval curtain wall that you can see today.

One of the accounts from that night apparently talks about how the soldiers were largely annoyed that a bomb had knocked their pints over- talk about priorities!

From 1944-1945 London was targeted again with Hitler’s V1 and V2 rockets. The tide of war had turned against Germany and these were a last-ditch attempt to demoralise the populace. ‘V’ stood for ‘Vergeltungswaffen’, that translates as ‘revenge weapons’ or ‘reprisal weapons’.

It is thought that, possibly, all V1 rockets were aimed roughly at Tower Bridge. A V1 flying bomb hit a collection of barges in the Thames by the Tower, killing six people and sending debris and shrapnel flying all the way into the Tower. 

The Tower as a Prison Once Again

The Tower, over its near thousand year history, was a prison for many key figures in English history such as Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh and Guy Fakwes. In the War, this purpose was revived. 

In September 1939, the East side of the Tower, including the old Hospital Block and officers’ quarters, were requisitioned to become a Prisoner of War Collection Centre. Prisoners of War, mostly from captured German U-boats, were brought here for questioning before being transferred to other camps. I wrote about Latimer House in Buckinghamshire recently, where they sent many of the prisoners and bugged their cells. Similarly, at the Tower, the prisoner’s cells were bugged with hidden microphones. They were hidden, for example, often in the light fixtures. The prisoner’s conversations were then recorded by ‘Secret Listeners’ in the nearby M Room. 

Below you can see the 13th century Salt Tower, where some prisoners were kept.

The lower floors were used to house prisoners, but the upper floors were where the Secret Listeners were stationed, eavesdropping on their every word.

The most famous prisoner to be brought here was Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess. In May 1941 Hess took a solo flight to Scotland before bailing out of his plane near Glasgow. He claimed he had come to negotiate a peace between Germany and the UK, but his motives remain mysterious. He was brought to the Tower and kept in the King’s House for four days, before being transferred out. 

One Final Execution

Again, the Tower is most famous for its 16th century executions: the beheading of Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey amongst others, but over half the executions here actually took place in the 20th century.

Eleven German spies were shot by firing squad at the Tower during the First World War. In the Second World War, one German spy was executed at the Tower. Josef Jakobs had parachuted into Huntingdonshire in 1941, but broke his ankle on landing. He was captured and found with £500 in cash, forged identity papers, a radio transmitter and a German sausage.

Jakobs was shot by firing squad on the 15th August 1941 and was the last person ever to be executed at the Tower. 

After the War

From the 8th May 1945, after Victory in Europe, the Tower was floodlit for three nights. Many families threw open their doors, partied in the streets and turned on all the lights in their homes, after years of grim and dreary blackout. 

The Tower lit up again for two nights after VJ Day in August. On 1st January 1946 the Tower reopened to the public and the Crown Jewels returned in October 1946. 

Minette told me a very sweet story about a ceremony that took place at the Tower on November 4th 1946. An American carrier pigeon called GI Joe was brought to the Tower to be given the Dickin medal. This was a medal given to animals that displayed exceptional valour or devotion to duty during the war. GI Joe had flown 20 miles in 20 minutes to call off an air raid on a re-captured Italian town.

Thank you very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed that history of the Tower at War. You can find out more about the poppy display and visiting the Tower here. 

More of London’s incredible history below…