The controversial British bombing raids on Dresden – known as ‘Operation Thunderclap’ – took place 73 years ago this month. During the raids, British bombers dropped thousands of tons of explosives and incendiary bombs onto the city, killing around 35,000 civilians. Using National Archive material and 1945 records from the Radio Research Station near Slough, historian Dr Patrick Major and Space Scientist Dr Chris Scott have explored the impact of the raids both on the ground and 300km above the earth in the ionosphere, where their ‘experiment in the past’ has shown that blast waves from the raids were so powerful that they shook the edge of space. They explain the work in this video, ahead of their public lecture on 27 February.