[6] It was MacDermott who sent a telegram to de Valera seeking assistance. They all say the same thing, that the government is no good. Again the Irish emergency services crossed the border, this time without waiting for an invitation. Authorities had noted Queens Island in the cityas a vulnerable point as early as 1929. No searchlights were set up in the city at the time, and these only arrived on 10 April. Belfast suffered a series of bombing raids in the spring of 1941, which became known as the 'Blitz of Belfast'. Very early in the German bombing campaign, it became clear that the preparationshowever extensive they seemed to have beenwere inadequate. the Blitz, (September 7, 1940May 11, 1941), intense bombing campaign undertaken by Nazi Germany against the United Kingdom during World War II. When the Blitz began, the government enforced a blackout in an attempt to make targeting more difficult for German night bombers. This type of shelteressentially a low steel cage large enough to contain two adults and two small childrenwas designed to be set up indoors and could serve as a refuge if the building began to collapse. The most significant loss was a 4.5-acre (1.8ha) factory floor for manufacturing the fuselages of Short Stirling bombers. The Luftwaffe never attacked the city after May 1941, but it would be many years before life returned to normal for many in the city. Read about our approach to external linking. Heavy jacks were unavailable. No attendant nurse had soothed the last moments of these victims; no gentle reverent hand had closed their eyes or crossed their hands. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. In total over 1,300 houses were demolished, some 5,000 badly damaged, nearly 30,000 slightly damaged while 20,000 required "first aid repairs".[3]. Moya Woodside[23] noted in her diary: "Evacuation is taking on panic proportions. At nightfall the Northern Counties Station was packed from platform gates to entrance gates and still refugees were coming along in a steady stream from the surrounding streets Open military lorries were finally put into service and even expectant mothers and mothers with young children were put into these in the rather heavy drizzle that lasted throughout the evening. Few children had been successfully evacuated. There were still 80,000 more in Belfast. He was asked, in the N.I. Published: September 7, 2020 at 12:00 pm. On August 25 the British retaliated by launching a bombing raid on Berlin. Over 500 received care from the Irish Red Cross in Dublin. High explosives were dropped. Still, many in Northern Ireland believed no Luftwaffe attack would come. along with England, Scotland, and Wales. The next took place on Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941, when 200 Luftwaffe bombers attacked military and manufacturing targets in the city of Belfast. Some 900 people died as a result of the bombing and 1,500 were injured. In the west and north of the city, streets heavily bombed included Percy Street, York Park, York Crescent, Eglinton Street, Carlisle Street, Ballyclare, Ballycastle and Ballynure Streets off the Oldpark Road; Southport Street, Walton Street, Antrim Road, Annadale Street, Cliftonville Road, Hillman Street, Atlantic Avenue, Hallidays Road, Hughenden Avenue, Sunningdale Park, Shandarragh Park, and Whitewell Road. Similar initiatives bearing the same name were ordered in the past decade by former mayors Libby . Video, 00:00:51, Australia's 'biggest drug bust' nets $700m of cocaine, Thanks, but no big speech, in Ken Bruce's sign off. The area included the Harland and Wolff Ltd. Shipyard, the Short and Harland Ltd. Aircraft Factory, and the airfield at RAF Sydenham. The famous Harland and Wolff cranes are called Samson and Goliath. At 4:15am John MacDermott, the Minister of Public Security, managed to contact Basil Brooke (then Agriculture Minister), seeking permission to seek help from the Irish government. What happened in 1941 changed the city forever. Simpson shot down one of the Heinkels over Downpatrick. Humanity knows no borders, no politics, no differences of religious belief. [citation needed], On Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941, spectators watching a football match at Windsor Park noticed a lone Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 aircraft circling overhead.[15]. Roads out of town are still one stream of cars, with mattresses and bedding tied on top. Apart from one or two false alarms in the early days of the war, no sirens wailed in London until June 25. Heinkel He 111 and Dornier Do 17 planes fitted with Zeiss cameras captured high-quality aerial imagery. Over a period of nine months, over 43,500 civilians were killed in the raids, which focused on major cities and industrial centres. The creeping TikTok bans. Prayers were said and hymns sung by the mainly Protestant women and children during the bombing. When a bombing raid was imminent, air-raid sirens were set off to sound a warning. There wasn't enough room for Anna or Billy, so they sheltered elsewhere, a twist of fate that would save their lives. Munster, for example, operated by the Belfast Steamship Company, plied between Belfast and Liverpool under the tricolour, until she hit a mine and was sunk outside Liverpool. They prevented low-flying aircraft from approaching their targets at optimal altitudes and angles of attack. After the passing of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, it became the seat of the government of Northern Ireland. Interesting facts about Belfast. Although casualties were heavy, at no time did they approach the estimates that had been made before the war, and only a fraction of the available hospital and ambulance capacity was ever utilized. He believed that key targets identified across the city were hit. In spite of blackouts, ubiquitous shelters and sandbags, the visible effects of mass evacuation, the presence of A.R.P. Anna and Billy were buried up their necks in sewage but were rescued and survived. The British government had anticipated air attacks on its population centres, and it had predicted catastrophic casualties. O'Sullivan reported: "There were many terrible mutilations among both living and dead heads crushed, ghastly abdominal and face wounds, penetration by beams, mangled and crushed limbs etc.". Brides, Fleet St.; St. Lawrence Jewry; St. Magnus the Martyr; St. Mary-at-hill; St. Dunstan in the East; St. Clement [Eastcheap] and St. Jamess, Piccadilly). Video, 00:01:38At least 17 dead in Jakarta fuel storage depot fire, Australia's 'biggest drug bust' nets $700m of cocaine. Under the leadership of Prime Minister John Miller Andrews, Northern Ireland remained unprepared. 2. At the start of World War Two, Belfast had considered itself safe from an aerial attack, as the city's leaders believed that Belfast was simply too far away for Luftwaffe bombers to reach - assuming that they would have to fly from Nazi Germany. When war broke out in 1939 the city did not expect to be attacked by German bombers: it was geographically remote and deemed a relatively . These figures are based on newspaper reports of the time, personal recollections and other primary sources, such as:- Some 27 percent of Londoners utilized private shelters, such as Anderson shelters, while the remaining 64 percent spent their evenings on duty with some branch of the civil defense or remained in their own homes. "There will always be people who will slip through the net but I am able to say at least 987 were killed across all raids.". Several accounts point out that Belfast, standing at the end of the long inlet of Belfast Lough, would be easily located. It was not the last time Belfast would suffer. Streets heavily bombed in the city centre included High Street, Ann Street, Callender Street, Chichester Street, Castle Street, Tomb Street, Bridge Street (effectively obliterated), Rosemary Street, Waring Street, North Street, Victoria Street, Donegall Street, York Street, Gloucester Street, and East Bridge Street. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Yesterday for once the people of Ireland were united under the shadow of a national blow. Lecturer of History, Queens University, Belfast, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Belfast_Blitz&oldid=1136721396, During the war years, Belfast shipyards built or converted over 3,000 navy vessels, repaired more than 22,000 others and launched over half a million tons of merchant shipping over 140. Thank you. But the raid of 15-16 April - the Easter Tuesday Raid - was on another scale. Belfast, the city with the highest population density in the UK at the time, also had the lowest proportion of public air-raid shelters. Video, 00:01:41, The German bombing of Coventry. So had Clydeside until recently. Belfast's Albert Clock tower is sinking - it leans by four feet. Air-raid damage was widespread; hospitals, clubs, churches, museums, residential and shopping streets, hotels, public houses, theatres, schools, monuments, newspaper offices, embassies, and the London Zoo were bombed. The first attack was against the city's waterworks, which had been attacked in the previous raid. On August 2, Luftwaffe commander Hermann Gring issued his Eagle Day directive, laying down a plan of attack in which a few massive blows from the air were to destroy British air power and so open the way for the invasion. ", Dawson Bates informed the Cabinet of rack-renting of barns, and over thirty people per house in some areas.[24]. Van Morrison is from the east part of the city. The 'Blitz' - from the German term Blitzkrieg ('lightning war') - was the sustained campaign of aerial bombing attacks on British towns and cities carried out by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) from September 1940 until May 1941. "[22], In his opinion, the greatest want was the lack of hospital facilities. headquarters, Toynbee hall and St. Dunstans; the American, Spanish, Japanese and Peruvian embassies and the buildings of the Times newspaper, the Associated Press of America, and the National City bank of New York; the centre court at Wimbledon, Wembley stadium, the Ring (Blackfriars); Drury Lane, the Queens and the Saville theatres; Rotten row, Lambeth walk, the Burlington arcade and Madame Tussauds. "It says a lot about how these people are forgotten that there is no Blitz memorial in Belfast," Mr Freeburn says. Rescue workers search through the rubble of Eglington Street in Belfast, Northern Ireland, after a German Luftwaffe air raid, 7 May 1941, Anna (left) and her husband Billy (back right) survived while Harriette, Dorothy and Billy were killed along with Dot and Isa, Dot and Isa, with Dorothy when she was a toddler, Royal Welch Fusiliers assist in clearing bomb damage in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 7 May 1941, Mapping the lives lost in the Belfast Blitz. The devastation was so great that the Germans coined a new verb, to coventrate, to describe it. Most of the objectives laid out by the reconnaissance crews were of either military or industrial importance. In The Blitz: Belfast in the War Years, Brian Barton wrote: "Government Ministers felt with justification, that the Germans were able to use the unblacked out lights in the south to guide them to their targets in the North." THE BELFAST BLITZ was a series of four air raids over Northern Ireland during the spring of 1941. About 1,000 people were killed during the Belfast Blitz of 1941, with Harland and Wolff among the buildings that were hit by the Luftwaffe. 2023 BBC. The attacks were authorized by Germanys chancellor, Adolf Hitler, after the British carried out a nighttime air raid on Berlin. Six Heinkel He 111 bombers, from Kampfgruppe 26, flying at 7,000 feet (2,100m), dropped incendiaries, high explosive and parachute-mines. Nearby were the citys main power station, gasworks, telephone house and the Sirocco Engineering works. By then 250 firemen from Clydeside had arrived. That contrasts with the figure that is often given of more than 900 killed on Easter Tuesday alone. Initially it was thought that the Germans had mistaken this reservoir for the harbour and shipyards, where many ships, including HMS Ark Royal were being repaired. It targeted the docks. By mid-September 1940 the RAF had won the Battle of Britain, and the invasion was postponed indefinitely. Video, 00:00:46, Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. Many of those who died as a result of enemy action lived in tightly packed, poorly constructed, terraced housing. Many in Northern Ireland thought that Belfast was outside the range of the Luftwaffe. A Luftwaffe pilot gave this description "We were in exceptional good humour knowing that we were going for a new target, one of England's last hiding places. Video, 00:02:12Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. The Belfast Blitz consisted of four German air raids on strategic targets in the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland, in April and May 1941 during World War II, causing high casualties. Many people who were dug out of the rubble alive had taken shelter underneath their stairs and were fortunate that their homes had not received a direct hit or caught fire. A charitable relief fund for the people of London was opened September 10. Public buildings destroyed or badly damaged included Belfast City Hall's Banqueting Hall, the Ulster Hospital for Women and Children and Ballymacarrett library, (the last two being located on Templemore Avenue). C.S Lewis was born in Belfast, and the nearby countryside helped inspire The Chronicles of Narnia. The Belfast blitz devastated a city that up until 1941 had remained unscathed during World War Two. He described some distressing consequences, such as how "in one case the leg and arm of a child had to be amputated before it could be extricated. He successfully busied himself with the task of making Northern Ireland a major supplier of food to Britain in her time of need.[5]. Up Next. In every instance, all stepped forward. During the first year of the war, behind-the-lines conditions prevailed in London. It was solemn, tragic, dignified, but here it was grotesque, repulsive, horrible. "These people are often seen as a statistic but they were human beings, people who lived and grew up in - or moved to - Belfast and died in Belfast," Mr Freeburn, the museum's collections officer, says. "We can still see the physical scars of the Blitz in Belfast, that is what is left. Instead of pressing his advantage, however, Hitler abruptly changed his strategy. We were in exceptional good humour knowing that we were going for a new target, one of Englands last hiding places, said one pilot of the raid. The Belfast blitz. Between April 7 and May 6 of that year, Luftwaffe bombers unleashed death and destruction on the cities of Belfast, Bangor, Derry/Londonderry and Newtownards. Major Sen O'Sullivan reported on the intensity of the bombing in some areas, such as the Antrim Road, where bombs "fell within fifteen to twenty yards of one another." Find out how it began, what the Germans hoped to achieve and how it severe it was, plus we visit nine places affected by the attacks. This part of Belfast was the only one required to provide air raid shelters for workers. ", Mapping the lives lost in the Belfast Blitz. On 28 April 1943, six members of the Government threatened to resign, forcing him from office. By Jonathan Bardon. For eight months the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. The bombing of British cities - Swansea, Belfast, Glasgow Before the war broke out, civilians had been issued with gas masks and Anderson shelters, which people were encouraged to build at the. Beginning in September 1940, the Blitz was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by the Luftwaffe against British cities. Once more, London was targeted and children were victims. British Spies and Irish Rebels by Paul McMahon, Report by the Garda Sochna 23 October 1941 IMA G2/1722, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Irish Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures, "Eamon de Valera and Hitler: An Analysis of International Reaction to the Visit to the German Minister, May 1945", "Extracts from an article, "The Belfast Blitz, 1941", "Historical Topics Series 2 The Belfast Blitz", "Your Place and Mine The Belfast Blitz", "Northern Ireland Parliamentary Elections Results: Biographies", "Belfast Blitz: The night death and destruction rained down on city", "Multitext - the Blitz - Belfast during the second World War", http://www.niwarmemorial.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/The_Belfast_Blitz.pdf, http://www.proni.gov.uk/historical_topics_series_-_02_-_the_belfast_blitz.pdf, Extracts from an article on The Belfast Blitz, 1941. Air power alone had failed to knock the United Kingdom out of the war. 7. Barton wrote: "the Catholic population was much more strongly opposed to conscription, was inclined to sympathise with Germany", "there were suspicions that the Germans were assisted in identifying targets, held by the Unionist population." Read about our approach to external linking. The couple, who ran a children's home, stayed with Anna's parents, William and Harriette Denby, and her sisters, Dot and Isa, at Evelyn Gardens, off the Cavehill Road, in the north of the city. By the end of the attacks, between 900 and 1,000 people were dead and thousands more were injured, homeless and displaced. Wherever Churchill is hiding his war material we will go. 50,000 houses, more than half the houses in the city, were damaged. When the war began, Belfast, like many other cities, adopted the wartime practices of rationing and blackouts. Clydeside got its blitz during the period of the last moon. An air raid shelter on Hallidays Road received a direct hit, killing all those in it. During the whole period, although the citys operation was disrupted in ways that were sometimes serious, no essential service was more than temporarily impaired. Video, 00:01:15The Belfast blitz, Up Next. The winter of 193940 was severe, but the summer was pleasant, and in their leisure hours Londoners thronged the parks or worked in their gardens. [12], There was little preparation for the conflict with Germany. The Premier Online Military History Magazine, Re-printed with permission fromWartimeNI.com. The British thus fought with the advantage of superior equipment and undivided aim against an enemy with inconsistent objectives. Around 1am, Luftwaffe bombers flew over the city, concentrating their attack on the Harbour Estate and Queen's Island. The nights of November 3 and 28 were the only occasions during this period in which Londons peace was unbroken by siren or bomb. There is no slacking in our loyalty. Looking back on the Belfast Blitz, Oberleutnant Becker signed off with the following words: A war is the worst thing that can happen to Mankind. This hub of industry and trade represented a legitimate military target for the Germans, and some 25,000 bombs were dropped on the Port of London alone. On the 60th anniversary of the Belfast Blitz, Luftwaffe Pilot Gerhardt Becker spoke to BBC Northern Ireland about his mission over Belfast in 1941. Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Historical Topics Series 2, The Belfast Blitz, 2007, This page was last edited on 31 January 2023, at 20:18. The 2017 film Zoo depicts an air raid during the Belfast Blitz. "A lot of the people I spoke to were relatives who ended up donating images and handwritten letters from before and after the Blitz. Fewer than 4,000 women and children were evacuated. But Mr Freeburn's research casts doubt on this. Of the churches, besides St. Pauls cathedral, where at one time were five unexploded bombs in the immediate vicinity and the roof of which was pierced by another that exploded and shattered the high altar to fragments, those damaged were Westminster abbey, St. Margarets Westminster, Southwark cathedral; fifteen Wren churches (including St. [17] A stray bomber attacked Derry, killing 15. to households. KS3 History (Environment and society) The Belfast Blitz learning resources for adults, children, parents and teachers. Nine were registered on three separate occasions, and from the start of the Blitz until November 30 there were more than 350 alerts. Their Chain Home early warning radar, the most advanced system in the world, gave Fighter Command adequate notice of where and when to direct their forces, and the Luftwaffe never made a concerted effort to neutralize it. In just these few hours, 430 people were killed and 1,600 were badly injured. Death had to a certain extent been made decent. In another building, the York Street Mill, one of its massive sidewalls collapsed on to Sussex and Vere Streets, killing all those who remained in their homes. Sometimes they were trying establish a blockade by destroying shipping and port facilities, sometimes they were directly attacking Fighter Command ground installations, sometimes they were targeting aircraft factories, and sometimes they were attempting to engage Fighter Command in the skies. ", US journalist Ben Robertson reported that at night Dublin was the only city without a blackout between New York and Moscow, and between Lisbon and Sweden and that German bombers often flew overhead to check their bearings using its lights, angering the British. Video, 00:00:46Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. Apart from those on London, this was the greatest loss of life in any night raid during the Blitz. Between April 7 and May 6 of that year, Luftwaffe bombers unleashed death and destruction on the cities of Belfast, Bangor, Derry/Londonderry and Newtownards. Beginning on Black Saturday, London was attacked on 57 straight nights. 2. One of every six Londoners was made homeless at some point during the Blitz, and at least 1.1 million houses and flats were damaged or destroyed.
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