The Belfast blitz devastated a city that up until 1941 had remained unscathed during World War Two. (Great War casualties) had died in hospital beds, their eyes had been reverently closed, their hands crossed to their breasts. Several accounts point out that Belfast, standing at the end of the long inlet of Belfast Lough, would be easily located. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The national government also provided funds to local municipalities to construct public air-raid shelters. Singer-songwriter Van Morrison was born here. On the 17th I heard that hundreds who either could not get away or could not leave for other reasons simply went out into the fields and remained in the open all night with whatever they could take in the way of covering. Death should be dignified, peaceful; Hitler had made even death grotesque. Belfast was largely unprepared for an attack of such a scale as 200 German bombers shelled the city on 15 April 1941. His death (along with preceding ill-health) came at a bad time and arguably inadvertently caused a leadership vacuum. 50,000 houses, more than half the houses in the city, were damaged. Video, 00:02:12, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. Van Morrison is from the east part of the city. The use of the Tube system as a shelter saved thousands of lives, and images of Londoners huddled in Underground stations would become an indelible image of British life during World War II. Subs offer. Government ministers in Northern Ireland began to realise the Luftwaffe may launch an attack, but it was too little, too late. Some 900 people died as a result of the bombing and 1,500 were injured. 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. Beginning in September 1940, the Blitz was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by the Luftwaffe against British cities. There is no slacking in our loyalty. Barton insisted that Belfast was "too far north" to use radio guidance. Humanity knows no borders, no politics, no differences of religious belief. 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. The Premier Online Military History Magazine, Re-printed with permission fromWartimeNI.com. Most of the objectives laid out by the reconnaissance crews were of either military or industrial importance. When incendiaries were dropped, the city burned as water pressure was too low for effective firefighting. The Luftwaffe crews returned to their base in Northern France and reported that Belfast's defences were, "inferior in quality, scanty and insufficient". A Raid From Above Over 500 received care from the Irish Red Cross in Dublin. 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. 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. Despite the military and industrial importance of the city, the Luftwaffe described the defences asweak, scanty, insufficient. 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]. The seeming normality of life on the Home Front was shattered in 1944 when the first of the V1's landed. Once more, London was targeted and children were victims. When the house was hit William, Harriette, Dorothy, 36-year-old Dot and 41-year-old Isa were all killed. These shelters, made of corrugated steel, were designed to be dug into a garden and then covered with dirt. 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. Between April 7 and May 6 of that year, Luftwaffe bombers unleashed death and destruction on the cities of Belfast, Bangor, Derry/Londonderry and Newtownards. The shipyard was among the largest in the world, producing merchant vessels and military shipping. Video, 00:02:54, At least 17 dead in Jakarta fuel storage depot fire. That evening over 150 bombers left their bases in northern France and the Netherlands and headed for Belfast. Apart from one or two false alarms in the early days of the war, no sirens wailed in London until June 25. 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? There were still 80,000 more in Belfast. Belfast was Ireland's industrial home, famous for tobacco, rope-making, linen, and ship-building, which made it the powerhouse it was. 10 Facts about Belfast City. These private air-raid shelters were Anderson shelters, constructed of sheets of corrugated galvanised iron covered in earth. 6. 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. Gring had insisted that such an attack was an impossibility, because of the citys formidable air defense network. People hung black curtains in their windows so that no lights showed outside their houses. Added to this was the repair and refitting of 22,000 more vessels. sprang into action, and Londoners, while maintaining the work, business, and efficiency of their city, displayed remarkable fortitude. Only four were known still to be alive. Published: September 7, 2020 at 12:00 pm. Weighing 46,328 tonnes, Titanic was to be the largest manmade moveable object the world had ever seen. No significant cut was made in necessary social services, and public and private premises, except when irreparably damaged, were repaired as speedily as possible. The Belfast blitz is remembered. Between April 7 and May 6 of that year, Luftwaffe bombers unleashed death and destruction on the cities of Belfast, Bangor, Derry/Londonderry and Newtownards. About 1,000 people were killed and bombs hit half of the houses in the city, leaving 100,000. Belfast is as worthy a target as Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol or Glasgow.. The first was on the night of 78 April 1941, a small attack which probably took place only to test Belfast's defences. The bombs continued to fall until 5am. On occasion, forces consisting of as many as 300 to 400 aircraft would cross the coast by day and split into small groups, and a few planes would succeed in penetrating Londons outer defenses. Authorities had noted Queens Island in the cityas a vulnerable point as early as 1929. IWM C 5424 1. [citation needed]. Since 1:45am all telephones had been cut. It is situated at on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. For two hours on the first day, 348 German bombers and 617 fighters blasted London. He described some distressing consequences, such as how "in one case the leg and arm of a child had to be amputated before it could be extricated. 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. But the raid of 15-16 April - the Easter Tuesday Raid - was on another scale. Richard Dawson Bates was the Home Affairs Minister. On September 10, 1940, the school was flattened by a German bomb, and people huddled in the basement were killed or trapped in the rubble. 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. 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. By the end of the attacks, between 900 and 1,000 people were dead and thousands more were injured, homeless and displaced. 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. It is perhaps true that many saved their lives running but I am afraid a much greater number lost them or became casualties."[20]. 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). The Germans expanded the Blitz to other cities in November 1940. At conservative gathering, Trump is still the favourite. 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. Video, 00:01:03One-minute World News, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages. Belfast is famous for being the birthplace of the Titanic. In Newtownards, Bangor, Larne, Carrickfergus, Lisburn and Antrim many thousands of Belfast citizens took refuge either with friends or strangers. 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. Even the children of soldiers had not been evacuated, with calamitous results when the married quarters of Victoria Barracks received a direct hit. Blitz Fibre UK Blitz Fibre UK Published Mar 1, 2023 + Follow Fact 1- Small but Mighty . 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, 00:01:38, At least 17 dead in Jakarta fuel storage depot fire, Australia's 'biggest drug bust' nets $700m of cocaine. 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 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. 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. 55,000 houses were damaged leaving 100,000 temporarily homeless. In late August the Germans dropped some bombs, apparently by accident, on civilian areas in London. Video, 00:00:46Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. Death had to a certain extent been made decent. For more than six months, German planes had flown reconnaissance flights over Belfast. Moya Woodside[23] noted in her diary: "Evacuation is taking on panic proportions. Belfast is located on the island of Ireland. For 57 nightsuntil November 2more than 1 million bombs were dropped on the capital city. The creeping TikTok bans. The period of the next moon from say the 7th to the 16th of April may well bring our turn." After the bombing began on September 7, local authorities urged displaced people to take shelter at South Hallsville School. 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). [citation needed], There was a second massive air raid on Belfast on Sunday 45 May 1941, three weeks after that of Easter Tuesday. The working-class living close to industrial centres suffered more than anyone over the course of the four raids. The wartime output of the yard included aircraft carriers HMS Formidable and HMS Unicorn, cruisers such as HMS Belfast and more than 130 other vessels used by the Royal Navy. 1. 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. Some 27 percent of Londoners utilized private shelters, such as Anderson shelters, while the remaining 64 percent spent their evenings on duty with some branch of the civil defense or remained in their own homes. Few children had been successfully evacuated. Tragically 35 were crushed to death when the mill wall collapsed. KS3 History (Environment and society) The Belfast Blitz learning resources for adults, children, parents and teachers. After his optician business was destroyed by a bomb, Mickey Davies led an effort to organize the Spitalfield Shelter. [21] Mass graves for the unclaimed bodies were dug in the Milltown and Belfast City Cemeteries. A force of 180 bombers dropped 750 bombs - including 203 tonnes of high explosives - and 29,000 incendiaries over a five-hour period. ", 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. They remained for three days, until they were sent back by the Northern Ireland government. He successfully busied himself with the task of making Northern Ireland a major supplier of food to Britain in her time of need.[5]. 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. What happened in 1941 changed the city forever. They are sleeping in the same sheugh (ditch), below the same tree or in the same barn. This option had been forbidden by city officials, who feared that once people began sleeping in Underground stations, they would be reluctant to return to the surface and resume daily life. Wave after wave of bombers dropped their incendiaries, high explosives and land-mines. Read about our approach to external linking. It was not the last time Belfast would suffer. Belfast, Irish Bal Feirste, city, district, and capital of Northern Ireland, on the River Lagan, at its entrance to Belfast Lough (inlet of the sea). Corrections? A victory for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain would indeed have exposed Great Britain to invasion and occupation. NI WW2 veterans honoured by France. Unlike N Ireland, the Irish Free State was no longer part of the UK. The 2017 film Zoo depicts an air raid during the Belfast Blitz. Six Heinkel He 111 bombers, from Kampfgruppe 26, flying at 7,000 feet (2,100m), dropped incendiaries, high explosive and parachute-mines. The offensive came to be called the Blitz after the German word blitzkrieg (lightning war). 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.". Belfast has the world's largest dry dock. The attacks were authorized by Germanys chancellor, Adolf Hitler, after the British carried out a nighttime air raid on Berlin. Roads out of town are still one stream of cars, with mattresses and bedding tied on top. 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. Video, 00:01:23Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds, One-minute World News. Under the leadership of Prime Minister John Miller Andrews, Northern Ireland remained unprepared. However Belfast was not mentioned again by the Nazis. The first attack was against the city's waterworks, which had been attacked in the previous raid. Heavy jacks were unavailable. Over the course of three days, some 1.5 million civiliansthe overwhelming majority of them childrenwere transported from urban centres to rural areas that were believed to be safe. 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. Over a period of nine months, over 43,500 civilians were killed in the raids, which focused on major cities and industrial centres. Men from the South worked with men from the North in the universal cause of the relief of suffering. 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. The "pothole blitz" is a common short-term initiative to combat storm weather damage. 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. 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. "They have never been published before, never seen the light of day.". These figures are based on newspaper reports of the time, personal recollections and other primary sources, such as:- 2. [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. The bombing of British cities - Swansea, Belfast, Glasgow Before the war broke out, civilians had been issued with gas masks and Anderson shelters, which people were encouraged to build at the. Belfast was the birthplace of the RMS Titanic, the world' most famous ship which, when it was constructed in the early 1900s, was longer than the height of the world's tallest building at 882 feet and six inches in length. When the bombing began, 76-year-old William and 72-year-old Harriette took refuge under the stairs along with Dorothy, Dot and Isa. An air raid shelter on Hallidays Road received a direct hit, killing all those in it. The creeping TikTok bans. However that attack was not an error. Under the leadership of amon de Valera it had declared its neutrality during the Second World War. John Wood Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre in Belfast in 1887. Three vessels nearing completion at Harland and Wolff's were hit as was its power station. When Germany bombed Belfast as part of the Blitz during World War Two, the massive air raids left more than a thousand people dead. Maps and documents uncovered at Gatow Airfield near Berlin in 1945 showed the level of detail involved. Belfast confetti," said one archive news report. So had Clydeside until recently. 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'. Many "arrived in Fermanagh having nothing with them only night shirts". wardens, and members of the Home Guard drilling in the parks, life went on much as usual. When a bombing raid was imminent, air-raid sirens were set off to sound a warning. Reviewed by: Geoffrey Roberts. Yesterday for once the people of Ireland were united under the shadow of a national blow. Video, 00:00:36Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. THE BELFAST BLITZ was a series of four air raids over Northern Ireland during the spring of 1941. 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. Video, 00:01:23, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages. The attacks by both V1's and V2's only ended as the Allies advanced up through Western Europe . The M.V. In Bristol, the bombed-out ruins of St Peter's Church were left standing with added memorial plaques to the civilians who were killed. C.S Lewis was born in Belfast, and the nearby countryside helped inspire The Chronicles of Narnia. Also, on Queens Island, stood the Short and Harland Ltd. Aircraft Factory. As the UK was preparing for the conflict, the factories and shipyards of Belfast were gearing up. It became a city by royal charter in 1888. Up Next. Later, guided by the raging fires caused by the first attack, a second group of planes began another assault that lasted until 4:30 the following morning. The most heavily bombed area was that which lay between York Street and the Antrim Road, north of the city centre. "It says a lot about how these people are forgotten that there is no Blitz memorial in Belfast," Mr Freeburn says. 29 - Belfast was once bigger than Dublin When the Blitz began, the government enforced a blackout in an attempt to make targeting more difficult for German night bombers. the Blitz, (September 7, 1940May 11, 1941), intense bombing campaign undertaken by Nazi Germany against the United Kingdom during World War II. (Some authors count this as the second raid of four). Video, 00:01:41, The German bombing of Coventry. Another claim was that the Catholic population in general and the IRA in particular guided the bombers. 7. along with England, Scotland, and Wales. The telegram was sent at 4:35am,[citation needed] asking the Irish Taoiseach, amon de Valera for assistance. On August 25 the British retaliated by launching a bombing raid on Berlin. headquarters, Toynbee hall and St. Dunstans; the American, Spanish, Japanese and Peruvian embassies and the buildings of the Times newspaper, the Associated Press of America, and the National City bank of New York; the centre court at Wimbledon, Wembley stadium, the Ring (Blackfriars); Drury Lane, the Queens and the Saville theatres; Rotten row, Lambeth walk, the Burlington arcade and Madame Tussauds.

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