Belfast, the city with the highest population density in the UK at the time, also had the lowest proportion of public air-raid shelters. It is perhaps true that many saved their lives running but I am afraid a much greater number lost them or became casualties."[20]. The national government also provided funds to local municipalities to construct public air-raid shelters. 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. Hundreds of incendiary and many high-explosive bombs were dropped, doing little material damage but causing many casualties. All were exhausted. The first (April 7 -8), a small attack, was most likely carried out to test the city's defenses. London was bombed for 57 consecutive nights from 7 September 1940 The success of Mickeys Shelter was another factor that urged the government to improve existing deep shelters and to create new ones. 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. So had Clydeside until recently. After the passing of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, it became the seat of the government of Northern Ireland. The Belfast Blitz was a series of devastating Luftwaffe air raids that took place in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. Death had to a certain extent been made decent. A Luftwaffe terror bombing attack on the Spanish city of Guernica (April 26, 1937) during the Spanish Civil War had killed hundreds of civilians and destroyed much of the town. MacDermott would be proved right. Although there were some comparatively slight raids later in 1941, the most notable one on July 27, the May 1011 attack marked the conclusion of the Blitz. NI WW2 veterans honoured by France. 3. London seemed ablaze from the docks to Westminster, much damage was done, and casualties were high. 2. In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War, an invitation was received by the Dublin Fire Brigade for any survivors of that time to attend a function at Hillsborough Castle and meet Prince Charles. The attack on Coventry was particularly destructive. Train after train and bus after bus were filled with those next in line. the Blitz, (September 7, 1940May 11, 1941), intense bombing campaign undertaken by Nazi Germany against the United Kingdom during World War II. 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. On August 25 the British retaliated by launching a bombing raid on Berlin. C.S Lewis was born in Belfast, and the nearby countryside helped inspire The Chronicles of Narnia. "They have never been published before, never seen the light of day.". Heavy jacks were unavailable. Over 500 received care from the Irish Red Cross in Dublin. By 1941, production of the Short Stirling Bomber and the Short Sunderland Flying Boat was underway. 6. There [is] ground for thinking that the enemy could not easily reach Belfast in force except during a period of moonlight. Fiber-optic cables are made from thin strings of glass and are generally about one-tenth the width of a . The Belfast blitz. Many bodies and body parts could not be identified. 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. The mortuary services had emergency plans to deal with only 200 bodies. NI WW2 veterans honoured by France. There were Heinkel He 111s, Junkers Ju 88s and Dornier Do 17s. On 28 April 1943, six members of the Government threatened to resign, forcing him from office. They are sleeping in the same sheugh (ditch), below the same tree or in the same barn. (Great War casualties) had died in hospital beds, their eyes had been reverently closed, their hands crossed to their breasts. However Belfast was not mentioned again by the Nazis. 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. By then 250 firemen from Clydeside had arrived. For eight months the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. There was no opposition. Few children had been successfully evacuated. But the RAF had not responded. Belfast is located on the island of Ireland. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). After the war, when the first girl from the home got married Billy gave her away, having lost his only daughter. Even the children of soldiers had not been evacuated, with calamitous results when the married quarters of Victoria Barracks received a direct hit. Very early in the German bombing campaign, it became clear that the preparationshowever extensive they seemed to have beenwere inadequate. About 1,000 people were killed and bombs hit half of the houses in the city, leaving 100,000. Belfast Blitz: Facts In total there were four attacks on the County Antrim city. What happened in 1941 changed the city forever. Burke Street which ran between Annadale and Dawson streets in the New Lodge area, was completely wiped off the map with all its 20 houses flattened and all of the occupants killed.[16]. 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. The raids on London primarily targeted the Docklands area of the East End. 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. The A.R.P. Many "arrived in Fermanagh having nothing with them only night shirts". He was succeeded by J. M. Andrews, then 69 years old, who was no more capable of dealing with the situation than his predecessor. 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. Video, 00:01:23Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds, One-minute World News. They all say the same thing, that the government is no good. THE BELFAST BLITZ was a series of four air raids over Northern Ireland during the spring of 1941. Read about our approach to external linking. "It says a lot about how these people are forgotten that there is no Blitz memorial in Belfast," Mr Freeburn says. 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. It was solemn, tragic, dignified, but here it was grotesque, repulsive, horrible. As well as photographs, the Luftwaffe gathered information on landmarks, potential targets and defences or lack thereof. 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. Moya Woodside[23] noted in her diary: "Evacuation is taking on panic proportions. Video, 00:01:41NI WW2 veterans honoured by France, The Spitfire turns 80. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom . Updates? This raid overall caused relatively little damage, but a lot was revealed about Belfast's inadequate defences. The first deliberate raid took place on the night of 7 April. Belfast Blitz: Marking the lost lives 80 years on. The British thus fought with the advantage of superior equipment and undivided aim against an enemy with inconsistent objectives. The attacks by both V1's and V2's only ended as the Allies advanced up through Western Europe . The House of Commons, Westminster Abbey, and the British Museum were severely damaged, and The Temple was almost completely destroyed. After the first week of September, although night bombing on a large scale continued, the large mass attacks by day, which had proved so costly to the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, were replaced by smaller parties coming over in successive waves. When a bombing raid was imminent, air-raid sirens were set off to sound a warning. Belfast has the world's largest dry dock. Gring had insisted that such an attack was an impossibility, because of the citys formidable air defense network. [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. Neighbouring residential areas were also hit. For two hours on the first day, 348 German bombers and 617 fighters blasted London. Video, 00:01:03One-minute World News, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages. wardens, and members of the Home Guard drilling in the parks, life went on much as usual. "Liverpool, Clydebank and Portsmouth all have a memorial to their victims of the Blitz. The Germans established that Belfast was defended by only seven anti-aircraft batteries, which made it the most poorly defended city in the United Kingdom. After a brief lull, the Luftwaffe returned in force on February 17. The Blitz began at about 4:00 in the afternoon on September 7, 1940, when German planes appeared over London. The most heavily bombed cities outside London were Liverpool and Birmingham. [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]. Humanity knows no borders, no politics, no differences of religious belief. These shelters, made of corrugated steel, were designed to be dug into a garden and then covered with dirt. And even then, Westminster stated it was not ample provision; Stormont still worried about the costs to industry. 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 Titanic was built in Belfast. 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. 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. Reviewed by: Geoffrey Roberts. Some had received food, others were famished. Clydeside got its blitz during the period of the last moon. He believed that this was being done already but it was inevitable that a certain number of civilian lives should be lost in the course of heavy bombing from the air". 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. This amounted to nearly half of Britains total civilian deaths for the whole war. Compared to other cities, Belfast was virtually undefended. Belfast was Ireland's industrial home, famous for tobacco, rope-making, linen, and ship-building, which made it the powerhouse it was. Omissions? Dissatisfaction with public shelters also led to another notable development in the East EndMickeys Shelter. 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. Anna and Billy returned to England and continued running the children's home. Author Lawrence H. Dawson detailed the damage to Londons historic buildings for the 1941 Britannica Book of the Year: The following curtailed list identifies some of the better known places in inner London that have been damaged by enemy action. 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. Again the Irish emergency services crossed the border, this time without waiting for an invitation. These private air-raid shelters were Anderson shelters, constructed of sheets of corrugated galvanised iron covered in earth. 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 BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Because basements, a logical destination in the event of an air raid, were a relative rarity in Britain, the A.R.P. He successfully busied himself with the task of making Northern Ireland a major supplier of food to Britain in her time of need.[5]. ", 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]. You can see the difference in those letters - post-Blitz is very much a grieving tone. Sir Basil Brooke, the Minister of Agriculture, was the only active minister. Contributions poured in from every part of the world in such profusion that on October 28 its scope was extended to cover the whole of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. Fighter Commands efforts were greatly aided by the lack of any consistent plan of action on the part of the Germans. 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. Video, 00:00:36, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. Video, 00:02:12, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. Where they are going, what they will find to eat when they get there, nobody knows. In many cases the daily life of the city was able to resume with delays of only hours. But Mr Freeburn's research casts doubt on this. "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.". The refugees looked dazed and horror stricken and many had neglected to bring more than a few belongings Any and every means of exit from the city was availed of and the final destination appeared to be a matter of indifference. Under the leadership of amon de Valera it had declared its neutrality during the Second World War. Many of those who died as a result of enemy action lived in tightly packed, poorly constructed, terraced housing. The British, on the other hand, were supremely well prepared for the kind of battle in which they now found themselves. Nevertheless, for all the hardship it caused, the campaign proved to be a strategic mistake by the Germans. Fewer than 4,000 women and children were evacuated. Hitlers intention had been to break the morale of the British people so they would pressure their government to surrender. 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. While some of the poorer and more crowded suburban areas suffered severely, the mansions of Mayfair, the luxury flats of Kensington, and Buckingham Palace itselfwhich was bombed four separate timesfared little better. In the mistaken belief that they might damage RAF fighters, the anti-aircraft batteries ceased firing. At the beginning of the Blitz, British ack ack gunners struggled to inflict meaningful damage on German bombers, but later developments in radar guidance greatly improved the effectiveness of both antiaircraft artillery and searchlights. By the end of the attacks, between 900 and 1,000 people were dead and thousands more were injured, homeless and displaced. Fortunately, the railway telegraphy link between Belfast and Dublin was still operational. Just before Easter 1941, Anna and Billy Burdett and their 12-year-old daughter, Dorothy, returned to Belfast from England to visit Anna's family. 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. Six Heinkel He 111 bombers, from Kampfgruppe 26, flying at 7,000 feet (2,100m), dropped incendiaries, high explosive and parachute-mines. Death should be dignified, peaceful; Hitler had made even death grotesque. Another defensive measure employed by the British was barrage balloonslarge oval-shaped unmanned balloons with stabilizing tail finsinstalled in and around major target areas. The youngest victim was just six-weeks-old. 2023 BBC. The district of Belfast has an area of 44 square miles (115 square km). As more and more people began sleeping on the platforms, however, the government relented and provided bunk beds and bathrooms for the underground communities. That contrasts with the figure that is often given of more than 900 killed on Easter Tuesday alone. They prevented low-flying aircraft from approaching their targets at optimal altitudes and angles of attack.

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