Located on the far south-eastern corner of Britain, Kent was the closest county to Occupied Europe. Suffering not only direct bombardment by heavy guns from France, the airspace over Kent provided the quickest route from Luftwaffe airfields in Northern France to London. As such the county suffered from the very beginning of the Battle of Britain, the Blitz in 1940, through the Tip and Run raids of 1942 and 1943, to the V-1 and V-2 weapon onslaught that only ended in 1945. Towns such as Canterbury were also singled out and suffered their very own Blitz. As a result of this continuous onslaught during the Second World War, the county earned the nickname "Hellfire Corner".