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. Men from the South worked with men from the North in the universal cause of the relief of suffering. For 57 nightsuntil November 2more than 1 million bombs were dropped on the capital city. Wherever Churchill is hiding his war material we will go. [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]. Belfast suffered a series of bombing raids in the spring of 1941, which became known as the 'Blitz of Belfast'. Around 1am, Luftwaffe bombers flew over the city, concentrating their attack on the Harbour Estate and Queen's Island. A victory for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain would indeed have exposed Great Britain to invasion and occupation. [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. The creeping TikTok bans, Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline. It is situated at on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. Belfast Blitz: Marking the lost lives 80 years on A force of 180 bombers dropped 750 bombs - including 203 tonnes of high explosives - and 29,000 incendiaries over a five-hour period. The attacks were authorized by Germanys chancellor, Adolf Hitler, after the British carried out a nighttime air raid on Berlin. Major O'Sullivan reported that "In the heavily 'blitzed' areas people ran panic-stricken into the streets and made for the open country. The raids hurt Britains war production, but they also killed many civilians and left many others homeless. Belfast Blitz: Facts In total there were four attacks on the County Antrim city. The Belfast Blitz was a series of devastating Luftwaffe air raids that took place in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. Jimmy Doherty, an air raid warden (who later served in London during the V1 and V2 blitz), who wrote a book on the Belfast blitz; The next took place on Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941, when 200 Luftwaffe bombers attacked military and manufacturing targets in the city of Belfast. London was bombed for 57 consecutive nights from 7 September 1940 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. Davies also set up medical stations and persuaded off-duty medical personnel to treat the sick and wounded. Compared to other cities, Belfast was virtually undefended. ", 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 mortuary services had emergency plans to deal with only 200 bodies. This amounted to nearly half of Britains total civilian deaths for the whole war. Over 500 received care from the Irish Red Cross in Dublin. 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. But the RAF had not responded. 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.". Prayers were said and hymns sung by the mainly Protestant women and children during the bombing. Beginning on Black Saturday, London was attacked on 57 straight nights. By 6am, within two hours of the request for assistance, 71 firemen with 13 fire tenders from Dundalk, Drogheda, Dublin, and Dn Laoghaire were on their way to cross the Irish border to assist their Belfast colleagues. 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. Train after train and bus after bus were filled with those next in line. It was solemn, tragic, dignified, but here it was grotesque, repulsive, horrible. 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. "It says a lot about how these people are forgotten that there is no Blitz memorial in Belfast," Mr Freeburn says. department distributed more than two million Anderson shelters (named after Sir John Anderson, head of the A.R.P.) What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? This part of Belfast was the only one required to provide air raid shelters for workers. The Titanic was built in Belfast. 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. In his interview, Becker stated that only military objectives were aimed for. For eight months the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any material on this site without expressand written permission from the author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. For two hours, 348 German bombers and 617 fighters targeted the city, dropping high-explosive bombs as well as incendiary devices. These shelters were vital as these factories had many employees working late at night and early in the morning when Luftwaffe attacks were likely. 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. Eduard Hempel, the German Minister to Ireland, visited the Irish Ministry for External Affairs to offer sympathy and attempt an explanation. 7. So had Clydeside until recently. Only four were known still to be alive. Many of the surface shelters built by local authorities were flimsy and provided little protection from bombs, falling debris, and fire. Again the Irish emergency services crossed the border, this time without waiting for an invitation. The mass relocation, called Operation Pied Piper, was the largest internal migration in British history. 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. "We can still see the physical scars of the Blitz in Belfast, that is what is left. The district of Belfast has an area of 44 square miles (115 square km). The A.R.P. I felt outraged, I should have felt sympathy, grief, but instead feelings of revulsion and disgust assailed me. However that attack was not an error. Gring had insisted that such an attack was an impossibility, because of the citys formidable air defense network. 50,000 houses, more than half the houses in the city, were damaged. 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." While Anderson shelters offered good protection from bomb fragments and debris, they were cold and damp and generally ill-suited for prolonged occupancy. It was the worst wartime raid outside of London in the UK. 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 initial human cost of the Blitz was lower than the government had expected, but the level of destruction exceeded the governments dire predictions. 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}. For eight months the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. After a brief lull, the Luftwaffe returned in force on February 17. At the core of this book is a compelling account of the Luftwaffe's blitz on Belfast in April-May 1941. [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. Ulster Historical Foundation. However Belfast was not mentioned again by the Nazis. From papers recovered after the war, we know of a Luftwaffe reconnaissance flight over Belfast on 30 November 1940. 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. Streetlights, car headlights, and illuminated signs were kept off. 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. to households. At conservative gathering, Trump is still the favourite. Barton insisted that Belfast was "too far north" to use radio guidance. The Battle of Britain 8. Brooke noted in his diary "I gave him authority as it is obviously a question of expediency". Churches destroyed or wrecked included Macrory Memorial Presbyterian in Duncairn Gardens; Duncairn Methodist, Castleton Presbyterian on York Road; St Silas's on the Oldpark Road; St James's on the Antrim Road; Newington Presbyterian on Limestone Road; Crumlin Road Presbyterian; Holy Trinity on Clifton Street and Clifton Street Presbyterian; York Street Presbyterian and York Street Non-Subscribing Presbyterian; Newtownards Road Methodist and Rosemary Street Presbyterian (the last of which was not rebuilt). Video, 00:01:15The Belfast blitz, Up Next. In each station volunteers were asked for, as it was beyond their normal duties. 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. When the house was hit William, Harriette, Dorothy, 36-year-old Dot and 41-year-old Isa were all killed. THE BELFAST BLITZ was a series of four air raids over Northern Ireland during the spring of 1941. 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 would appear that Adolf Hitler, in view of de Valera's negative reaction, was concerned that de Valera and Irish American politicians might encourage the United States to enter the war. Belfast is famous for being the birthplace of the Titanic. You can see the difference in those letters - post-Blitz is very much a grieving tone. 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. On 28 April 1943, six members of the Government threatened to resign, forcing him from office. Since most casualties were caused by falling masonry rather than by blast, they provided effective shelter for those who had them. 2023 BBC. 1. sprang into action, and Londoners, while maintaining the work, business, and efficiency of their city, displayed remarkable fortitude. The city covers a total area of 132.5 square kilometers (51 square miles). In the New Lodge area people had taken refuge in a mill. From September 1940 until May 1941, Britain was subjected to sustained enemy bombing campaign, now known as the Blitz. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. Authorities quickly implemented plans to protect Londoners from bombs and to house those left homeless by the attacks. Several theatres and many cinemas were open, and there were even a few sporting events. 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." 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. [9], War materials and food were sent by sea from Belfast to Great Britain, some under the protection of the neutral Irish tricolour. Belfast's Albert Clock tower is sinking - it leans by four feet. 11 churches, two hospitals and two schools were destroyed. 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. Has it taken bursting bombs to remind the people of this little country that they have common tradition, a common genius and a common home?