10 facts about the belfast blitz

Up Next. Video, 00:03:09Mapping the lives lost in the Belfast Blitz, Belfast City Hall in darkness as the Blitz is marked, Street fighting in Bakhmut but Russia not in control, Russian minister laughed at for Ukraine war claims. 4. From papers recovered after the war, we know of a Luftwaffe reconnaissance flight over Belfast on 30 November 1940. In clear weather, targets were easily identifiable. They prevented low-flying aircraft from approaching their targets at optimal altitudes and angles of attack. Despite the attacks, Belfast continued to contribute to the war effort, and within less than a year the city witnessed the arrival of thousands of American troops. Video, 00:02:54, At least 17 dead in Jakarta fuel storage depot fire. The fall of France in June, 1940, enabled the Luftwaffe to establish airfields across the north of the country, leaving Ulster within reach of bombers. Hundreds of incendiary and many high-explosive bombs were dropped, doing little material damage but causing many casualties. There was no smokescreen ability, however there were some barrage balloons positioned strategically for protection. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/event/the-Blitz, National Museums Liverpool - Merseyside Maritime Museum - The Blitz, The History Learning Site - The Blitz and World War Two. As well as photographs, the Luftwaffe gathered information on landmarks, potential targets and defences or lack thereof. He went to the Mater Hospital at 2pm, nine hours after the raid ended, to find the street with a traffic jam of ambulances waiting to admit their casualties. NI WW2 veterans honoured by France. An earlier flight on Oct. 18 allowed the crew to plot several targets in the city. Can Nigeria's election result be overturned? For 57 nightsuntil November 2more than 1 million bombs were dropped on the capital city. The crypt under the sanctuary and the cellar under the working sacristy had been fitted out and opened to the public as an air-raid shelter. On April 16 an attack even fiercer and more indiscriminate than those of the previous autumn started at 9:00 pm and continued until 5:00 the following morning; 500 aircraft were believed to have flown over in continuous waves, raining an estimated 450 tons of bombs across the city. When Germany bombed Belfast as part of the Blitz during World War Two, the massive air raids left more than a thousand people dead. There is no slacking in our loyalty. About 1,000 people were killed and bombs hit half of the houses in the city, leaving 100,000 people homeless. He stated that "he would once more tell his government how he felt about the matter and he would ask them to confine the operations to military objectives as far as it was humanly possible. 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. Authorities quickly implemented plans to protect Londoners from bombs and to house those left homeless by the attacks. 3. However, the Docklands was also a densely populated and impoverished area where thousands of working-class Londoners lived in run-down housing. Where they are going, what they will find to eat when they get there, nobody knows. [19], 220,000 people fled from the city. 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. After the war, when the first girl from the home got married Billy gave her away, having lost his only daughter. A victory for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain would indeed have exposed Great Britain to invasion and occupation. A modern bomb census has attempted to pinpoint the location of every bomb dropped on London during the Blitz, and the visualization of that data makes clear how thoroughly the Luftwaffe saturated the city. The phrase Business as usual, written in chalk on boarded-up shop windows, exemplified the British determination to keep calm and carry on as best they could. 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. The Luftwaffe had lost more than 600 aircraft, and, although the RAF had lost fewer than half that many, the battle was claiming British fighters and experienced pilots at too great a rate. In the eight months of attacks, some 43,000 civilians were killed. Another large-scale attack followed on March 19, when hundreds of houses and shops, many churches, six hospitals, and other public buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged. What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? MacDermott would be proved right. 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. Fortunately, the railway telegraphy link between Belfast and Dublin was still operational. In his interview, Becker stated that only military objectives were aimed for. Moya Woodside[23] noted in her diary: "Evacuation is taking on panic proportions. 19.99. St. Giles, Cripplegate, and St. Mary Wolnooth, also in the city, were damaged, while the Dutch church in Austin Friars, dating from the 14th century and covering a larger area than any church in the city of London, St. Pauls alone excepted, was totally destroyed. Death should be dignified, peaceful; Hitler had made even death grotesque. The attack on Coventry was particularly destructive. At the time of the first attack in April 1941, there were no operational searchlights, too few anti-aircraft batteries and scarcely enough public air raid shelters for a quarter of the population. NI WW2 veterans honoured by France. Compared to other cities, Belfast was virtually undefended. With Britains powerful Royal Navy controlling the surface approaches in the Channel and the North Sea, it fell to the Luftwaffe to establish dominance of the skies above the battle zone. The database Mr Freeburn has compiled is, he believes, the most accurate list of those killed and includes 222 children aged 16 or under. [21] Mass graves for the unclaimed bodies were dug in the Milltown and Belfast City Cemeteries. (Great War casualties) had died in hospital beds, their eyes had been reverently closed, their hands crossed to their breasts. Since 1:45am all telephones had been cut. For more than six months, German planes had flown reconnaissance flights over Belfast. These shelters were vital as these factories had many employees working late at night and early in the morning when Luftwaffe attacks were likely. Belfast, the city with the highest population density in the UK at the time, also had the lowest proportion of public air-raid shelters. Belfast made a considerable contribution towards the Allied war effort, producing many naval ships, aircraft and munitions; therefore, the city was deemed a suitable bombing target by the Luftwaffe. 55,000 houses were damaged leaving 100,000 temporarily homeless. Some had received food, others were famished. "It says a lot about how these people are forgotten that there is no Blitz memorial in Belfast," Mr Freeburn says. Video, 00:00:36Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. The mass relocation, called Operation Pied Piper, was the largest internal migration in British history. The House of Commons, Westminster Abbey, and the British Museum were severely damaged, and The Temple was almost completely destroyed. 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 . I felt outraged, I should have felt sympathy, grief, but instead feelings of revulsion and disgust assailed me. 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). The British thus fought with the advantage of superior equipment and undivided aim against an enemy with inconsistent objectives. 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. In a survey of shelter use, it was found that, although the public shelters were fully occupied every night, just 9 percent of Londoners made use of them. But the Luftwaffe was ready. 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. In the first days of the Blitz, a tragic incident in the East End stoked public anger over the governments shelter policy. Air power alone had failed to knock the United Kingdom out of the war. "A lot of the people I spoke to were relatives who ended up donating images and handwritten letters from before and after the Blitz. It is believed that the wartime government covered up the death toll because of concern over the effect it would have had on public morale. Few children had been successfully evacuated. Interesting facts about Belfast. The nights of November 3 and 28 were the only occasions during this period in which Londons peace was unbroken by siren or bomb. By Jonathan Bardon. Neighbouring residential areas were also hit. The Blitz | Facts, History, Damage, & Casualties | Britannica The seeming normality of life on the Home Front was shattered in 1944 when the first of the V1's landed. But the RAF had not responded. The Blitz was devastating for the people of London and other cities. Belfast was ill-prepared for the blitz. As many as 5,000 people had packed into this network of underground tunnels, which was dangerously overcrowded, dirty, and dark. [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 creeping TikTok bans. There were still 80,000 more in Belfast. "They have never been published before, never seen the light of day.". Sixty years after the Germans bombed Belfast in World War II BBC News Online looks back and remembers the anniversary of the blitz. The "pothole blitz" is a common short-term initiative to combat storm weather damage. Victory for the Royal Air Forces (RAFs) Fighter Command blocked this possibility and, in fact, created the conditions for Britains survival and the eventual destruction of the Third Reich. Many of the surface shelters built by local authorities were flimsy and provided little protection from bombs, falling debris, and fire. When the house was hit William, Harriette, Dorothy, 36-year-old Dot and 41-year-old Isa were all 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. The first deliberate raid took place on the night of 7 April. A Raid From Above parliament: "if the government realized 'that these fast bombers can come to Northern Ireland in two and three quarter hours'". By the time the raid was over, at least 744 people had lost their lives, including some living in places such as Newtownards, Bangor and Londonderry. There were few bomb shelters. THE BELFAST BLITZ was a series of four air raids over Northern Ireland during the spring of 1941. Anna and Billy returned to England and continued running the children's home. Tommy Henderson, an Independent Unionist MP in the House of Commons of Northern Ireland, summed up the feeling when he invited the Minister of Home Affairs to Hannahstown and the Falls Road, saying "The Catholics and the Protestants are going up there mixed and they are talking to one another. and Major Sen O'Sullivan, who produced a detailed report for the Dublin government. The raids hurt Britains war production, but they also killed many civilians and left many others homeless. In late August the Germans dropped some bombs, apparently by accident, on civilian areas in London. 7. Fiber-optic cables are made from thin strings of glass and are generally about one-tenth the width of a . Belfast has the world's largest dry dock. Video, 00:01:23Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds, One-minute World News. The Belfast blitz is remembered. On September 1, 1939, the day World War II began with Germanys invasion of Poland, the British government implemented a massive evacuation plan. "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.". Read about our approach to external linking. The South Hallsville School disaster prompted Londoners, especially residents of the East End, to find safer shelters, on their own if necessary. Given Belfast's geographic position, it was considered to be at the fringe of the operational range of German bombers and hence there was no provision for night-fighter aerial cover. While the balloons themselves were an obvious deterrent, they were anchored to the ground by steel tethers that were strong enough to damage or destroy any aircraft that flew into them. Morale did suffer amid the death and devastation, but there were few calls for surrender. 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. The period of the next moon from say the 7th to the 16th of April may well bring our turn." C.S Lewis was born in Belfast, and the nearby countryside helped inspire The Chronicles of Narnia. [4], The Government of Northern Ireland lacked the will, energy and capacity to cope with a major crisis when it came. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The first was on the night of 7-8 April 1941, a small attack which probably took place only to test Belfast's defences. The creeping TikTok bans. Under the leadership of amon de Valera it had declared its neutrality during the Second World War. 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). 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. The famous places damaged include the palace of Westminster and Westminster hall, the County hall, the Public Record office, the Law Courts, the Temple and the Inner Temple library; Somerset house, Burlington house, the tower of London, Greenwich observatory, Hogarths house; the Carlton, Reform, American, Savage, Arts and Orleans clubs; the Royal College of Surgeons, University college and its library, Stationers hall, the Y.M.C.A. On May 11, 1941, Hitler called off the Blitz as he shifted his forces eastward against the Soviet Union. Nine were registered on three separate occasions, and from the start of the Blitz until November 30 there were more than 350 alerts. BBC News | NORTHERN IRELAND | The Belfast blitz is remembered [citation needed] However on 20 October 1941 the Garda Sochna captured a comprehensive IRA report on captured member Helena Kelly giving a detailed analysis of damage inflicted on Belfast and highlighting prime targets such as Shortt and Harland aircraft factory and RAF Sydenham, describing them as 'the remaining and most outstanding objects of military significance, as yet unblitzed' and suggesting they should be 'bombed by the Luftwaffe as thoroughly as other areas in recent raids'[28][29], After three days, sometime after 6pm, the fire crews from south of the border began taking up their hoses and ladders to head for home. 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." 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. 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. What happened in 1941 changed the city forever. By the end of the attacks, between 900 and 1,000 people were dead and thousands more were injured, homeless and displaced. He was replaced by 54-year-old Sir Basil Brooke on 1 May. Belfast Blitz: The Luftwaffe attacks Northern Ireland - WartimeNI [13] However at the time Lord Craigavon, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland since its inception in 1921, said: "Ulster is ready when we get the word and always will be." 6. Roads out of town are still one stream of cars, with mattresses and bedding tied on top. The Germans expanded the Blitz to other cities in November 1940. The British government had anticipated air attacks on its population centres, and it had predicted catastrophic casualties. The Luftwaffe crews returned to their base in Northern France and reported that Belfast's defences were, "inferior in quality, scanty and insufficient". There was unease with the complacent attitude of the government, which led to resignations: Craigavon died on 24 November 1940. The devastation was so great that the Germans coined a new verb, to coventrate, to describe it. People hung black curtains in their windows so that no lights showed outside their houses. Harland and Wolff: The troubled history of Belfast's shipyard Also, on Queens Island, stood the Short and Harland Ltd. Aircraft Factory. The attacks by both V1's and V2's only ended as the Allies advanced up through Western Europe . Children and World War Two - History Learning Site Sir Basil Brooke, the Minister of Agriculture, was the only active minister. This amounted to nearly half of Britains total civilian deaths for the whole war. Nearby were the citys main power station, gasworks, telephone house and the Sirocco Engineering works. Read about our approach to external linking. ", Dawson Bates, the Home Affairs Minister, apparently refused to reply to army correspondence and when the Ministry of Home Affairs was informed by imperial defence experts in 1939 that Belfast was regarded as "a very definite German objective", little was done outside providing shelters in the Harbour area.[14]. . The district of Belfast has an area of 44 square miles (115 square km). Death had to a certain extent been made decent. [citation needed]. 7. 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. Belfast Blitz: Marking the lost lives 80 years on. Some 900 people died as a result of the bombing and 1,500 were injured. When a bombing raid was imminent, air-raid sirens were set off to sound a warning. It was solemn, tragic, dignified, but here it was grotesque, repulsive, horrible. Mr Freeburn set out to find out more about those who died, their personal stories and the tales of those left behind. The most significant loss was a 4.5-acre (1.8ha) factory floor for manufacturing the fuselages of Short Stirling bombers. 1. By British mainland blitz standards, casualties were light. Nevertheless, through sheer weight of numbers, the Germans were on the brink of victory in late August 1940. On July 16, 1940, Hitler issued a directive ordering the preparation and, if necessary, execution of Operation Sea Lion, the amphibious invasion of Great Britain. A short respite followed, until a widespread series of night raids on April 7 included some targets in the London area. Some are a total loss; others are already under repair with little outward sign of the damage sustained: Besides Buckingham palace, the chapel of which was wrecked, and Guildhall (the six-centuries old centre of London civic ceremonies and of great architectural beauty), which was destroyed by fire, Kensington palace (the London home of the earl of Athlone, governor general of Canada, and the birthplace of Queen Mary and Queen Victoria), the banqueting hall of Eltham palace (dating from King Johns time and long a royal residence), Lambeth palace (the archbishop of Canterbury), and Holland house (famous for its 17th century domestic architecture, its political associations, and its art treasures), suffered, the latter severely.

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