In many cases the daily life of the city was able to resume with delays of only hours. Around 20,000 people were employed on the site with 35,000 further along in the shipyard. By the end of the attacks, between 900 and 1,000 people were dead and thousands more were injured, homeless and displaced. By Jonathan Bardon. Belfast Blitz: Facts In total there were four attacks on the County Antrim city. 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. Read about our approach to external linking. "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.". Indeed, on the night of the first raid, no Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft took to the air to intercept German planes. 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.. When the bombing began, 76-year-old William and 72-year-old Harriette took refuge under the stairs along with Dorothy, Dot and Isa. The raids hurt Britains war production, but they also killed many civilians and left many others homeless. Video, 00:01:03One-minute World News, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages. Your donations help keep MHN afloat. A force of 180 bombers dropped 750 bombs - including 203 tonnes of high explosives - and 29,000 incendiaries over a five-hour period. As many were caught in the open by blast and secondary missiles, the enormous number of casualties can be readily accounted for. 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. Only four were known still to be alive. The South Hallsville School disaster prompted Londoners, especially residents of the East End, to find safer shelters, on their own if necessary. In clear weather, targets were easily identifiable. Under the leadership of Prime Minister John Miller Andrews, Northern Ireland remained unprepared. Belfast was ill-prepared for the blitz. "A lot of the people I spoke to were relatives who ended up donating images and handwritten letters from before and after the Blitz. In spite of blackouts, ubiquitous shelters and sandbags, the visible effects of mass evacuation, the presence of A.R.P. Video, 00:01:15The Belfast blitz, Up Next. The period of the next moon from say the 7th to the 16th of April may well bring our turn." From September 1940 until May 1941, Britain was subjected to sustained enemy bombing campaign, now known as the Blitz. [12], There was little preparation for the conflict with Germany. Elsewhere in the skies over Britain, Nazi official Rudolph Hess chose that same evening to parachute into Scotland on a quixotic and wholly unauthorized peace mission. Many of the surface shelters built by local authorities were flimsy and provided little protection from bombs, falling debris, and fire. Belfast is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland . "We can still see the physical scars of the Blitz in Belfast, that is what is left. There wasn't enough room for Anna or Billy, so they sheltered elsewhere, a twist of fate that would save their lives. 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. Tragically 35 were crushed to death when the mill wall collapsed. The British, on the other hand, were supremely well prepared for the kind of battle in which they now found themselves. On Nov. 30, 1940, a lone Luftwaffe plane flew across the Ards Peninsula unobserved and reported back to Berlin. 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. But these people all had families and friends and they had to deal with their loss for the rest of their lives.". During the first year of the war, behind-the-lines conditions prevailed in London. Simpson shot down one of the Heinkels over Downpatrick. That night almost 300 people, many from the Protestant Shankill area, took refuge in the Clonard Monastery in the Catholic Falls Road. 2023 BBC. The creeping TikTok bans, Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline. Heinkel He 111 and Dornier Do 17 planes fitted with Zeiss cameras captured high-quality aerial imagery. The offensive came to be called the Blitz after the German word blitzkrieg (lightning war). An air raid shelter on Hallidays Road received a direct hit, killing all those in it. Brides, Fleet St.; St. Lawrence Jewry; St. Magnus the Martyr; St. Mary-at-hill; St. Dunstan in the East; St. Clement [Eastcheap] and St. Jamess, Piccadilly). By the middle of December it had reached nearly 1,700,000 (adjusted for inflation, this was the equivalent of roughly 100 million in 2020). The shipyard was among the largest in the world, producing merchant vessels and military shipping. [citation needed]. 3. In each station volunteers were asked for, as it was beyond their normal duties. ISBN 9781909556324. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. The M.V. 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. Fortunately, the railway telegraphy link between Belfast and Dublin was still operational. (Some authors count this as the second raid of four). 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. This view was probably influenced by the decision of the IRA Army Council to support Germany. Revised estimates made decades later indicated that close to 600 men, women, and children had been killed in the bombing. Incendiary bombs predominated in this raid. Instead of pressing his advantage, however, Hitler abruptly changed his strategy. Death had to a certain extent been made decent. continuous trek to railway stations. 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 . The next took. Three nights later (April 1920) London was again subjected to a seven-hour raid, and the loss of life was considerable, especially among firefighters and the A.R.P. 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]. Read about our approach to external linking. the Blitz, (September 7, 1940May 11, 1941), intense bombing campaign undertaken by Nazi Germany against the United Kingdom during World War II. These private air-raid shelters were Anderson shelters, constructed of sheets of corrugated galvanised iron covered in earth. [9], War materials and food were sent by sea from Belfast to Great Britain, some under the protection of the neutral Irish tricolour. 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. [6] It was MacDermott who sent a telegram to de Valera seeking assistance. The fourth and final Belfast raid took place on the following night, 56 May. His death (along with preceding ill-health) came at a bad time and arguably inadvertently caused a leadership vacuum. [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. 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. 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. Clydeside got its blitz during the period of the last moon. It became a city by royal charter in 1888. MacDermott would be proved right. Singer-songwriter Van Morrison was born here. Eduard Hempel, the German Minister to Ireland, visited the Irish Ministry for External Affairs to offer sympathy and attempt an explanation. Up to now, we have escaped an attack, said John MacDermott, the Minister for Security, Belfast, on March 24, 1941. 11 churches, two hospitals and two schools were destroyed. He believed that key targets identified across the city were hit. 7. Anna and Billy were buried up their necks in sewage but were rescued and survived. Some had received food, others were famished. 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. The Premier Online Military History Magazine, Re-printed with permission fromWartimeNI.com. 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. C.S Lewis was born in Belfast, and the nearby countryside helped inspire The Chronicles of Narnia. Video, 00:02:12, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. Similar initiatives bearing the same name were ordered in the past decade by former mayors Libby . Video, 00:00:51Australia's 'biggest drug bust' nets $700m of cocaine, Thanks, but no big speech, in Ken Bruce's sign off. [citation needed]. By 4 am the entire city seemed to be in flames. Video, 00:01:38, At least 17 dead in Jakarta fuel storage depot fire, Australia's 'biggest drug bust' nets $700m of cocaine. About 1,000 people were killed and bombs hit half of the houses in the city, leaving 100,000 people homeless. Nine were registered on three separate occasions, and from the start of the Blitz until November 30 there were more than 350 alerts. [4], The Government of Northern Ireland lacked the will, energy and capacity to cope with a major crisis when it came. 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. Video, 00:00:46, Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. He spoke with Professor Flynn, (Theodore Thomson Flynn, an Australian based at the Mater Hospital and father of actor Errol Flynn), head of the casualty service for the city, who told him of "casualties due to shock, blast and secondary missiles, such as glass, stones, pieces of piping, etc." Taoiseach amon de Valera formally protested to Berlin. [18], Over 900 people died, 1,500 people were injured, 400 of them seriously. At 10:40 on the evening of Easter Tuesday 1941 air raid sirens sounded across Belfast, sending people across the city scrambling for safety - in one of the 200 public shelters in the city or the thousands of shelters or other "safe" spaces in private homes. The database Mr Freeburn has compiled is, he believes, the most accurate list of those killed and includes 222 children aged 16 or under. 255 corpses were laid out in St George's Market. The Belfast blitz devastated a city that up until 1941 had remained unscathed during World War Two. The telegram was sent at 4:35am,[citation needed] asking the Irish Taoiseach, amon de Valera for assistance. 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. 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 seeming normality of life on the Home Front was shattered in 1944 when the first of the V1's landed. Another defensive measure employed by the British was barrage balloonslarge oval-shaped unmanned balloons with stabilizing tail finsinstalled in and around major target areas. Corrections? The famous Harland and Wolff cranes are called Samson and Goliath. Heavy jacks were unavailable. [21] Mass graves for the unclaimed bodies were dug in the Milltown and Belfast City Cemeteries. The Belfast blitz is remembered. 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. In the first days of the Blitz, a tragic incident in the East End stoked public anger over the governments shelter policy. In another building, the York Street Mill, one of its massive sidewalls collapsed on to Sussex and Vere Streets, killing all those who remained in their homes. 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. Over 500 received care from the Irish Red Cross in Dublin. Train after train and bus after bus were filled with those next in line. 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. But the RAF had not responded. ", Mapping the lives lost in the Belfast Blitz. It was not the first time the alarm had sounded to signify the presence of Luftwaffe bombers over the city. The first deliberate raid took place on the night of 7 April. And even then, Westminster stated it was not ample provision; Stormont still worried about the costs to industry. It is perhaps true that many saved their lives running but I am afraid a much greater number lost them or became casualties."[20]. Subs offer. 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. There were few bomb shelters. Video, 00:01:41, The German bombing of Coventry. It remains a high death toll - a shocking number of people killed in just a few weeks. High explosive bombs predominated in this raid. ", US journalist Ben Robertson reported that at night Dublin was the only city without a blackout between New York and Moscow, and between Lisbon and Sweden and that German bombers often flew overhead to check their bearings using its lights, angering the British. Ulster Historical Foundation. People are leaving from all parts of town and not only from the bombed areas. 2. The most heavily bombed cities outside London were Liverpool and Birmingham. Authorities quickly implemented plans to protect Londoners from bombs and to house those left homeless by the attacks. It was not the last time Belfast would suffer. Video, 00:01:41NI WW2 veterans honoured by France, The Spitfire turns 80. Moya Woodside[23] noted in her diary: "Evacuation is taking on panic proportions. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 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. These shelters, made of corrugated steel, were designed to be dug into a garden and then covered with dirt. The ill-fated ship was built in the city in 1912, and to this day, there is a museum dedicated to its building and the lives of all of those on board. They all say the same thing, that the government is no good. 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. 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.
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