By the end of the attacks, between 900 and 1,000 people were dead and thousands more were injured, homeless and displaced. Targets identified included: the Short and Harland Ltd. Aircraft Factory; the Belfast power station and waterworks; Other maps uncovered following the Second World War also showed the parliament and city hall, Belfast gasworks, a rope factory and the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. "Through resources such as the Public Records Office and ancestry and genealogy websites I managed to get about 100 photos - which is about one tenth of the victims," he says. Nurse Emma Duffin, who had served in World War I, contrasted death in that conflict with what she saw:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}. It was the worst wartime raid outside of London in the UK. 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. Read about our approach to external linking. [citation needed], Other writers, such as Tony Gray in The Lost Years state that the Germans did follow their radio guidance beams. 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. Read about our approach to external linking. 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. "Through cross-referencing a number of different sources I have been able to get the most accurate number of people who died in the Blitz," he says. 55,000 houses were damaged leaving 100,000 temporarily homeless. Outside of London, with some 900 dead, this was the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Blitz. In the course of four Luftwaffe attacks on the nights of 7-8 April, 15-16 April, 4-5 May and 5-6 May 1941, lasting ten hours in total, 1,100 people died, over 56,000 houses in the city were damaged (53 per cent of its entire housing stock), roughly 100,000 made temporarily homeless and 20 million damage was caused to property at wartime values. Video, 00:01:23Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds, One-minute World News. Belfast has the world's largest dry dock. 10 Facts about Belfast City. In Bristol, the bombed-out ruins of St Peter's Church were left standing with added memorial plaques to the civilians who were killed. The night raids on London continued into 1941, and January 1011 saw exceptionally heavy attacks; the Mansion House (residence of the lord mayor of London) and the Bank of England narrowly avoided destruction when a bomb fell directly between them, creating a gigantic crater. And then naturally as I was over the target, I did pick up flak but I have no sense of exactly how weak or how strong it was, because every bit of flak you get is dangerous.. [citation needed], Casualties were lower than at Easter, partly because the sirens had sounded at 11.45pm while the Luftwaffe attacked more cautiously from a greater height. Under the leadership of amon de Valera it had declared its neutrality during the Second World War. Beginning on Black Saturday, London was attacked on 57 straight nights. Between Black Saturday and December 2, there was no 24-hour period without at least one alertas the alarms came to be calledand generally far more. The Battle of Britain VideoRussian minister laughed at for Ukraine war claims, The children left behind in Cuba's mass exodus, Xi Jinping's power grab - and why it matters, Snow, Fire and Lights: Photos of the Week. The most heavily bombed cities outside London were Liverpool and Birmingham. Ulster Historical Foundation. These figures are based on newspaper reports of the time, personal recollections and other primary sources, such as:- Van Morrison is from the east part of the city. Protection of the city fell to seven anti-aircraft batteries of 16 heavy guns and six light guns. (Some authors count this as the second raid of four). 3. Reviewed by: Geoffrey Roberts. Morale did suffer amid the death and devastation, but there were few calls for surrender. Taoiseach amon de Valera formally protested to Berlin. The Belfast blitz. "But there is no such equivalent in Belfast. The database Mr Freeburn has compiled is, he believes, the most accurate list of those killed and includes 222 children aged 16 or under. Video, 00:00:46Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. Once more, London was targeted and children were victims. The Titanic was built in Belfast. High explosive bombs predominated in this raid. J.P. Walshe, assistant secretary, recorded that Hempel was "clearly distressed by the news of the severe raid on Belfast and especially of the number of civilian casualties." On the 60th anniversary of the Belfast Blitz, Luftwaffe Pilot Gerhardt Becker spoke to BBC Northern Ireland about his mission over Belfast in 1941. There [is] ground for thinking that the enemy could not easily reach Belfast in force except during a period of moonlight. Even the children of soldiers had not been evacuated, with calamitous results when the married quarters of Victoria Barracks received a direct hit. His reply was: "We here today are in a state of war and we are prepared with the rest of the United Kingdom and Empire to face all the responsibilities that imposes on the Ulster people. Video, 00:01:37, Thanks, but no big speech, in Ken Bruce's sign off, Tear gas fired at Greece train crash protesters. The first was on the night of 78 April 1941, a small attack which probably took place only to test Belfast's defences. You can see the difference in those letters - post-Blitz is very much a grieving tone. He successfully busied himself with the task of making Northern Ireland a major supplier of food to Britain in her time of need.[5]. Video, 00:01:15The Belfast blitz, Up Next. There wasn't enough room for Anna or Billy, so they sheltered elsewhere, a twist of fate that would save their lives. Many "arrived in Fermanagh having nothing with them only night shirts". THE BELFAST BLITZ was a series of four air raids over Northern Ireland during the spring of 1941. 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. Belfast is as worthy a target as Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol or Glasgow.. The devastation was so great that the Germans coined a new verb, to coventrate, to describe it. This view was probably influenced by the decision of the IRA Army Council to support Germany. Several theatres and many cinemas were open, and there were even a few sporting events. The Premier Online Military History Magazine, Re-printed with permission fromWartimeNI.com. When a bombing raid was imminent, air-raid sirens were set off to sound a warning. 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. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The RAFs Spitfire was a superlative fighter, and it was not always easy for the Germans to distinguish it from the slightly less maneuverable but much more numerous Hurricanes. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The Belfast blitz devastated a city that up until 1941 had remained unscathed during World War Two. Video, 00:01:03One-minute World News, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages. Around 1am, Luftwaffe bombers flew over the city, concentrating their attack on the Harbour Estate and Queen's Island. An air raid shelter on Hallidays Road received a direct hit, killing all those in it. But these people all had families and friends and they had to deal with their loss for the rest of their lives.". It has been reported that on Easter Tuesday, Belfast suffered the highest loss of life of any city in the UK in a single raid. Can Nigeria's election result be overturned? [citation needed]. 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 Luftwaffe crews returned to their base in Northern France and reported that Belfast's defences were, "inferior in quality, scanty and insufficient". The Air Raid Precautions (A.R.P.) Video, 00:00:46, Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. As many were caught in the open by blast and secondary missiles, the enormous number of casualties can be readily accounted for. Just eight days earlier, eight planes destroyed the aircraft fuselage factory and damaged the docks, with 15 people ultimately killed as a result of that raid. 11 churches, two hospitals and two schools were destroyed. In the east of the city, Westbourne and Newcastle Streets on the Newtownards Road, Thorndyke Street off the Albertbridge Road and Ravenscroft Avenue were destroyed or damaged. The first (April 7 -8), a small attack, was most likely carried out to test the city's defenses. On the ground, there were only 22 anti-aircraft guns positioned around the city, six light and 16 heavy, and on the first night only seven of these were manned and operational. Yesterday the hand of good-fellowship was reached across the Border. devised the Morrison shelter (named for Home Secretary Herbert Stanley Morrison) as an alternative to the Anderson shelter. Government ministers in Northern Ireland began to realise the Luftwaffe may launch an attack, but it was too little, too late. So had Clydeside until recently. The area included the Harland and Wolff Ltd. Shipyard, the Short and Harland Ltd. Aircraft Factory, and the airfield at RAF Sydenham. Many of those who died as a result of enemy action lived in tightly packed, poorly constructed, terraced housing. Many bodies and body parts could not be identified. "Liverpool, Clydebank and Portsmouth all have a memorial to their victims of the Blitz. department distributed more than two million Anderson shelters (named after Sir John Anderson, head of the A.R.P.) On May 11, 1941, Hitler called off the Blitz as he shifted his forces eastward against the Soviet Union. workers. Belfast is famous for being the birthplace of the Titanic. The creeping TikTok bans, Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline. Men from the South worked with men from the North in the universal cause of the relief of suffering. 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. "A lot of the people I spoke to were relatives who ended up donating images and handwritten letters from before and after the Blitz. People hung black curtains in their windows so that no lights showed outside their houses. The city has been a leader in women's rights. Up to now, we have escaped an attack, said John MacDermott, the Minister for Security, Belfast, on March 24, 1941. 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. The most heavily bombed area was that which lay between York Street and the Antrim Road, north of the city centre. When Germany bombed Belfast as part of the Blitz during World War Two, the massive air raids left more than a thousand people dead. The South Hallsville School disaster prompted Londoners, especially residents of the East End, to find safer shelters, on their own if necessary. [6] It was MacDermott who sent a telegram to de Valera seeking assistance. At the core of this book is a compelling account of the Luftwaffe's blitz on Belfast in April-May 1941. The A.R.P. Heavy jacks were unavailable. along with England, Scotland, and Wales. There were still 80,000 more in Belfast. Wave after wave of bombers dropped their incendiaries, high explosives and land-mines. However they were not in a position to communicate with the Germans, and information recovered from Germany after the war showed that the planning of the blitz was based entirely on German aerial reconnaissance. 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). London seemed ablaze from the docks to Westminster, much damage was done, and casualties were high. About 1,000 people were killed and bombs hit half of the houses in the city, leaving 100,000 people homeless. Both planes quickly proved their mettle against German bombers, and Germanys best fighter, the Bf 109, was of limited use as an escort due to its relatively short operating range. 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. Raids between February and May pounded Plymouth, Portsmouth, Bristol, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Hull in England; Swansea in Wales; Belfast in Northern Ireland; and Clydeside in Scotland. The town of Dromara saw its population increase from 500 to 2,500. These private air-raid shelters were Anderson shelters, constructed of sheets of corrugated galvanised iron covered in earth. No searchlights were set up in the city at the time, and these only arrived on 10 April. The higher the German planes had to fly to avoid the balloons, the less accurate they were when dropping their bombs. Over 500 received care from the Irish Red Cross in Dublin. The Belfast Blitzconsisted of four German air raids on strategic targets in the city of Belfastin Northern Ireland, in April and May 1941 during World War II, causing high casualties. Nearby residential areas in east Belfast were also hit when "203 metric tonnes of high explosive bombs, 80 land mines attached to parachutes, and 800 firebomb canisters containing 96,000 incendiary bombs"[16] were dropped. Moya Woodside[23] noted in her diary: "Evacuation is taking on panic proportions. Over 100 German planes made contact with barrage balloon cables during the Blitz, and two-thirds of them crashed or made forced landings on British soil. I felt outraged, I should have felt sympathy, grief, but instead feelings of revulsion and disgust assailed me. Published: September 7, 2020 at 12:00 pm. The mass relocation, called Operation Pied Piper, was the largest internal migration in British history. The Blitz began at around 4 pm on September 7, 1940, when German bomber planes first appeared over London. He believed that key targets identified across the city were hit. High explosives were dropped. Poor visibility on the night meant that the accuracy of the bombers was hampered and the explosives were dropped on densely populated areas of Belfast. More than 500 German planes dropped more than 700 tons of bombs across the city, killing nearly 1,500 people and destroying 11,000 homes. Although it arrested German spies that its police and military intelligence services caught, the state never broke off diplomatic relations with Axis nations: the German Legation in Dublin remained open throughout the war. What happened in 1941 changed the city forever. 24 - The tyres Dunlop were invented in Belfast in 1887 25 - The two H&W cranes are named Samson and Goliath 26 - The Albert Clock is Ireland's leaning tower 27 - The mobile defibrillator was invented in Belfast 28 - Belfast's ice hockey team, the Giants, is one of the best in Europe. Maps and documents uncovered at Gatow Airfield near Berlin in 1945 showed the level of detail involved. But the authorities were afraid that bombs might not be the. Sixty years after the Germans bombed Belfast in World War II BBC News Online looks back and remembers the anniversary of the blitz. Prior to the "Belfast Blitz" there were only 200 public shelters in the city, although around 4,000 households had built their own private shelters. After the war, instructions from Joseph Goebbels were discovered ordering it not to be mentioned. [25] He followed up with his "they are our people" speech, made in Castlebar, County Mayo, on Sunday 20 April 1941 (Quoted in the Dundalk Democrat dated Saturday 26 April 1941): In the past, and probably in the present, too, a number of them did not see eye to eye with us politically, but they are our people we are one and the same people and their sorrows in the present instance are also our sorrows; and I want to say to them that any help we can give to them in the present time we will give to them whole-heartedly, believing that were the circumstances reversed they would also give us their help whole-heartedly Frank Aiken, the Irish Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures was in Boston, Massachusetts at the time. The raids on London primarily targeted the Docklands area of the East End. O'Sullivan felt that the whole civil defence sector was utterly overwhelmed. There were few bomb shelters. A force of 180 bombers dropped 750 bombs - including 203 tonnes of high explosives - and 29,000 incendiaries over a five-hour period. The telegram was sent at 4:35am,[citation needed] asking the Irish Taoiseach, amon de Valera for assistance. [12], There was little preparation for the conflict with Germany. In just these few hours, 430 people were killed and 1,600 were badly injured. From September 1940 until May 1941, Britain was subjected to sustained enemy bombing campaign, now known as the Blitz. Londoners enjoyed three weeks of uneasy peace until May 1011, the night of a full moon, when the Luftwaffe launched the most intense raid of the Blitz. The Belfast Blitz was a series of devastating Luftwaffe air raids that took place in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. 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. 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.
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