10 facts about the belfast blitz

For 57 nightsuntil November 2more than 1 million bombs were dropped on the capital city. Davies also set up medical stations and persuaded off-duty medical personnel to treat the sick and wounded. As many as 5,000 people had packed into this network of underground tunnels, which was dangerously overcrowded, dirty, and dark. [citation needed]. The Belfast blitz is remembered. Video, 00:01:23, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages. The World's Most-Famous Ship, The Titanic, was constructed here. THE BELFAST BLITZ was a series of four air raids over Northern Ireland during the spring of 1941. There were still 80,000 more in Belfast. Why Alex Murdaugh was spared the death penalty, Why Trudeau is facing calls for a public inquiry, The shocking legacy of the Dutch 'Hunger Winter'. Also, on Queens Island, stood the Short and Harland Ltd. Aircraft Factory. 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. The government announced that 77 people had died, but for years local residents insisted the toll was much higher. For more than six months, German planes had flown reconnaissance flights over Belfast. "Liverpool, Clydebank and Portsmouth all have a memorial to their victims of the Blitz. Video, 00:02:54, At least 17 dead in Jakarta fuel storage depot fire. Morale did suffer amid the death and devastation, but there were few calls for surrender. The offensive came to be called the Blitz after the German word blitzkrieg (lightning war). The Luftwaffe crews returned to their base in Northern France and reported that Belfast's defences were, "inferior in quality, scanty and insufficient". These balloons, the largest of which were some 60 feet (18 metres) long, were essentially an airspace denial tool. People are leaving from all parts of town and not only from the bombed areas. I felt outraged, I should have felt sympathy, grief, but instead feelings of revulsion and disgust assailed me. Can Nigeria's election result be overturned? Around 20,000 people were employed on the site with 35,000 further along in the shipyard. Anna and Billy returned to England and continued running the children's home. Islington parish church, the rebuilt Our Lady of Victories (Kensington), the French church by Leicester square, St. Annes, Soho (famous for its music), All Souls, Langham place, and Christ Church in Westminster Bridge road (whose towerfortunately savedcommemorates President Lincolns abolition of slavery), were among a large number of others. John Clarke MacDermott, the Minister of Public Security, after the first bombing, initiated the "Hiram Plan" to evacuate the city and to return Belfast to 'normality' as quickly as possible. Mr Freeburn set out to find out more about those who died, their personal stories and the tales of those left behind. [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. However, the Docklands was also a densely populated and impoverished area where thousands of working-class Londoners lived in run-down housing. No searchlights were set up in the city at the time, and these only arrived on 10 April. On September 1, 1939, the day World War II began with Germanys invasion of Poland, the British government implemented a massive evacuation plan. By 1941, production of the Short Stirling Bomber and the Short Sunderland Flying Boat was underway. The higher the German planes had to fly to avoid the balloons, the less accurate they were when dropping their bombs. 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. Major O'Sullivan reported that "In the heavily 'blitzed' areas people ran panic-stricken into the streets and made for the open country. It is perhaps true that many saved their lives running but I am afraid a much greater number lost them or became casualties."[20]. I was definitely one of the first over the target and as I flew in there was no great defence because there were not a great many aircraft over the target at that point, recalled Becker. 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. An air raid shelter on Hallidays Road received a direct hit, killing all those in it. When the war began, Belfast, like many other cities, adopted the wartime practices of rationing and blackouts. Gring had insisted that such an attack was an impossibility, because of the citys formidable air defense network. But the raid of 15-16 April - the Easter Tuesday Raid - was on another scale. 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. Only four were known still to be alive. In every instance, all stepped forward. 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. [21] Mass graves for the unclaimed bodies were dug in the Milltown and Belfast City Cemeteries. 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. and Major Sen O'Sullivan, who produced a detailed report for the Dublin government. 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. 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. Video, 00:00:46Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. The Belfast Blitz was a series of devastating Luftwaffe air raids that took place in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. But the Luftwaffe was ready. 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. 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. 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). 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. 255 corpses were laid out in St George's Market. Published: September 7, 2020 at 12:00 pm. When the bombing began, 76-year-old William and 72-year-old Harriette took refuge under the stairs along with Dorothy, Dot and Isa. That evening over 150 bombers left their bases in northern France and the Netherlands and headed for Belfast. Maps and documents uncovered at Gatow Airfield near Berlin in 1945 showed the level of detail involved. Authorities quickly implemented plans to protect Londoners from bombs and to house those left homeless by the attacks. There were few bomb shelters. When the house was hit William, Harriette, Dorothy, 36-year-old Dot and 41-year-old Isa were all killed. In the subsequent years, this lack of preparation has often dominated the discussion about the Belfast Blitz, but a new project led by Alan Freeburn from the Northern Ireland War Memorial aims to shift the focus back to the ordinary men, women and children who lost their lives. The database Mr Freeburn has compiled is, he believes, the most accurate list of those killed and includes 222 children aged 16 or under. "A lot of the people I spoke to were relatives who ended up donating images and handwritten letters from before and after the Blitz. Where they are going, what they will find to eat when they get there, nobody knows. 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. In the mistaken belief that they might damage RAF fighters, the anti-aircraft batteries ceased firing. Instead of pressing his advantage, however, Hitler abruptly changed his strategy. Richard Dawson Bates was the Home Affairs Minister. 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. After his optician business was destroyed by a bomb, Mickey Davies led an effort to organize the Spitalfield Shelter. 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. [4], The Government of Northern Ireland lacked the will, energy and capacity to cope with a major crisis when it came. 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. 55,000 British civilian casualties were sustained through German bombing before the end of 1940 This included 23,000 deaths. Another claim was that the Catholic population in general and the IRA in particular guided the bombers. On 4-5 May, another raid, made up of 204 bombers, killed another 203 people and the following night 22 more died. With tangled hair, staring eyes, clutching hands, contorted limbs, their grey-green faces covered with dust, they lay, bundled into the coffins, half-shrouded in rugs or blankets, or an occasional sheet, still wearing their dirty, torn twisted garments. Taoiseach amon de Valera formally protested to Berlin. MacDermott would be proved right. 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. Video, 00:01:37, Thanks, but no big speech, in Ken Bruce's sign off, Tear gas fired at Greece train crash protesters. [17] A stray bomber attacked Derry, killing 15. 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. There was no opposition. It remains a high death toll - a shocking number of people killed in just a few weeks. By Jonathan Bardon. On the 60th anniversary of the Belfast Blitz, Luftwaffe Pilot Gerhardt Becker spoke to BBC Northern Ireland about his mission over Belfast in 1941. A force of 180 bombers dropped 750 bombs - including 203 tonnes of high explosives - and 29,000 incendiaries over a five-hour period. James Craig, Lord Craigavon, had been Prime Minister of Northern Ireland since its inception in 1921 up until his death in 1940. The success of Mickeys Shelter was another factor that urged the government to improve existing deep shelters and to create new ones. The attack on Coventry was particularly destructive. The Belfast blitz. What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? The offensive came to be called the Blitz after the German word blitzkrieg ("lightning war"). From their photographs, they identified suitable targets: There had been a number of small bombings, probably by planes that missed their targets over the River Clyde in Glasgow or the cities of the northwest of England. Government apathy, a lack of leadership and a belief the Luftwaffe could not reach Belfast lead to the city lagging behind in terms of basic defences. During the whole period, although the citys operation was disrupted in ways that were sometimes serious, no essential service was more than temporarily impaired. An earlier flight on Oct. 18 allowed the crew to plot several targets in the city. ", 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]. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The creeping TikTok bans. The 2017 film Zoo depicts an air raid during the Belfast Blitz. Government ministers in Northern Ireland began to realise the Luftwaffe may launch an attack, but it was too little, too late. In just these few hours, 430 people were killed and 1,600 were badly injured. 50,000 houses, more than half the houses in the city, were damaged. After the war, instructions from Joseph Goebbels were discovered ordering it not to be mentioned. 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. Video, 00:01:15The Belfast blitz, Up Next. So had Clydeside until recently. 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. 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. Few children had been successfully evacuated. Reviewed by: Geoffrey Roberts. 2023 BBC. The most heavily bombed cities outside London were Liverpool and Birmingham. Clydeside got its blitz during the period of the last moon. The attacks were authorized by Germanys chancellor, Adolf Hitler, after the British carried out a nighttime air raid on Berlin. Brian Barton of Queen's University, Belfast, has written most on this topic.[19]. 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. When a bombing raid was imminent, air-raid sirens were set off to sound a warning. The most heavily bombed area was that which lay between York Street and the Antrim Road, north of the city centre. Belfast was ill-prepared for the blitz. In his interview, Becker stated that only military objectives were aimed for. 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. London was bombed for 57 consecutive nights from 7 September 1940 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. It became a city by royal charter in 1888. Video, 00:01:03One-minute World News, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages. [1][2], The third raid on Belfast took place over the evening and morning of 45 May 1941; 150 were killed. That night almost 300 people, many from the Protestant Shankill area, took refuge in the Clonard Monastery in the Catholic Falls Road. 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. The national government also provided funds to local municipalities to construct public air-raid shelters. Barton insisted that Belfast was "too far north" to use radio guidance. Around 1am, Luftwaffe bombers flew over the city, concentrating their attack on the Harbour Estate and Queen's Island. Video, 00:00:51Australia's 'biggest drug bust' nets $700m of cocaine, Thanks, but no big speech, in Ken Bruce's sign off. Revised estimates made decades later indicated that close to 600 men, women, and children had been killed in the bombing. The attacks by both V1's and V2's only ended as the Allies advanced up through Western Europe . This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Over 500 received care from the Irish Red Cross in Dublin. 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. 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. There are other diarists and narratives. By 4 am the entire city seemed to be in flames. In the New Lodge area people had taken refuge in a mill. IWM C 5424 1. 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. sprang into action, and Londoners, while maintaining the work, business, and efficiency of their city, displayed remarkable fortitude. 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. No attendant nurse had soothed the last moments of these victims; no gentle reverent hand had closed their eyes or crossed their hands. Belfast's Albert Clock tower is sinking - it leans by four feet. Fighter Commands efforts were greatly aided by the lack of any consistent plan of action on the part of the Germans. Roads out of town are still one stream of cars, with mattresses and bedding tied on top. Even the children of soldiers had not been evacuated, with calamitous results when the married quarters of Victoria Barracks received a direct hit. On 24 March 1941, John MacDermott, Minister for Security, wrote to Prime Minister John Andrews, expressing his concerns that Belfast was so poorly protected: "Up to now we have escaped attack. There were Heinkel He 111s, Junkers Ju 88s and Dornier Do 17s. 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. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 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. Heinkel He 111 and Dornier Do 17 planes fitted with Zeiss cameras captured high-quality aerial imagery. Video, 00:02:12Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. By the. Up Next. 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." 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.