The aerial bombing in the summer of 1943 devastated the people, port and buildings of Hamburg, reducing a once prosperous city to nothing more than a pile of ashes. Whilst Allied bombers pounded the city, the terrified citizens took cover in cellars and purpose-built bomb shelters, in hopes of enduring the raids. Survivors emerged to find their city engulfed in flames, in what was to become known as the Hamburg Firestorm. With the level of destruction; culture and architecture being completely destroyed, the city was never to recover to its former glory. Such was the nature of the onslaught that scars of the aftermath of the bombings still remain to this day.