10 facts about the belfast blitzweymouth club instructors
Learn how your comment data is processed. So had Clydeside until recently. 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. 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. 13 died, including a soldier killed when an anti-aircraft gun, at the Balmoral show-grounds, misfired. Another claim was that the Catholic population in general and the IRA in particular guided the bombers. "These people are often seen as a statistic but they were human beings, people who lived and grew up in - or moved to - Belfast and died in Belfast," Mr Freeburn, the museum's collections officer, says. 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. 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 Belfast Blitz was a series of devastating Luftwaffe air raids that took place in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. 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. When the war began, Belfast, like many other cities, adopted the wartime practices of rationing and blackouts. The Blitz began at about 4:00 in the afternoon on September 7, 1940, when German planes appeared over London. Death had to a certain extent been made decent. Accounts differ as to when flares were dropped to light up the city. 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.. 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. In the mistaken belief that they might damage RAF fighters, the anti-aircraft batteries ceased firing. NI WW2 veterans honoured by France. The creeping TikTok bans. Despite the military and industrial importance of the city, the Luftwaffe described the defences asweak, scanty, insufficient. The government announced that 77 people had died, but for years local residents insisted the toll was much higher. [citation needed], There was a second massive air raid on Belfast on Sunday 45 May 1941, three weeks after that of Easter Tuesday. With the surrender of France in June 1940, Germanys sole remaining enemy lay across the English Channel. Video, 00:01:37, Thanks, but no big speech, in Ken Bruce's sign off, Tear gas fired at Greece train crash protesters. 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. 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. Weighing 46,328 tonnes, Titanic was to be the largest manmade moveable object the world had ever seen. In many cases the daily life of the city was able to resume with delays of only hours. (Some authors count this as the second raid of four). 2. One, Tom Coleman, attended to receive recognition for his colleagues' solidarity at such a critical time. There was no opposition. People are leaving from all parts of town and not only from the bombed areas. The fall of France in June, 1940, enabled the Luftwaffe to establish airfields across the north of the country, leaving Ulster within reach of bombers. 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. "Liverpool, Clydebank and Portsmouth all have a memorial to their victims of the Blitz. Anna and Billy were buried up their necks in sewage but were rescued and survived. The most heavily bombed area was that which lay between York Street and the Antrim Road, north of the city centre. An earlier flight on Oct. 18 allowed the crew to plot several targets in the city. The Premier Online Military History Magazine, Re-printed with permission fromWartimeNI.com. The attacks were authorized by Germanys chancellor, Adolf Hitler, after the British carried out a nighttime air raid on Berlin. The creeping TikTok bans. 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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The fourth and final Belfast raid took place on the following night, 56 May. The crypt under the sanctuary and the cellar under the working sacristy had been fitted out and opened to the public as an air-raid shelter. These shelters, made of corrugated steel, were designed to be dug into a garden and then covered with dirt. 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. Here are 10 facts about both the German Blitzkrieg and the Allied bombing of Germany. Belfast is famous for being the birthplace of the Titanic. Beginning in September 1940, the Blitz was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by the Luftwaffe against British cities. The British government had anticipated air attacks on its population centres, and it had predicted catastrophic casualties. As many were caught in the open by blast and secondary missiles, the enormous number of casualties can be readily accounted for. While Anderson shelters offered good protection from bomb fragments and debris, they were cold and damp and generally ill-suited for prolonged occupancy. The next took place on Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941, when 200 Luftwaffe bombers attacked military and manufacturing targets in the city of Belfast. The bombs caused death and destruction across the city, affecting those of all religions and political backgrounds. An air raid shelter on Hallidays Road received a direct hit, killing all those in it. 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. 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. 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 period of the next moon from say the 7th to the 16th of April may well bring our turn." When a bombing raid was imminent, air-raid sirens were set off to sound a warning. 4. Apart from one or two false alarms in the early days of the war, no sirens wailed in London until June 25. the Blitz, (September 7, 1940May 11, 1941), intense bombing campaign undertaken by Nazi Germany against the United Kingdom during World War II. Incendiary bombs predominated in this raid. Richard Dawson Bates was the Home Affairs Minister. There are other diarists and narratives. Train after train and bus after bus were filled with those next in line. Video, 00:02:12Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. workers. As well as photographs, the Luftwaffe gathered information on landmarks, potential targets and defences or lack thereof. Still, many in Northern Ireland believed no Luftwaffe attack would come. ISBN 9781909556324. 1. 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." wardens, and members of the Home Guard drilling in the parks, life went on much as usual. Belfast Blitz: Facts In total there were four attacks on the County Antrim city. We were in exceptional good humour knowing that we were going for a new target, one of Englands last hiding places, said one pilot of the raid. For two hours on the first day, 348 German bombers and 617 fighters blasted London. Belfast is as worthy a target as Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol or Glasgow.. to households. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. All were exhausted. 1. After his optician business was destroyed by a bomb, Mickey Davies led an effort to organize the Spitalfield Shelter. Over a period of nine months, over 43,500 civilians were killed in the raids, which focused on major cities and industrial centres. At 10:40pm the air raid sirens sounded. As many as 5,000 people had packed into this network of underground tunnels, which was dangerously overcrowded, dirty, and dark. In the first days of the Blitz, a tragic incident in the East End stoked public anger over the governments shelter policy. Protection of the city fell to seven anti-aircraft batteries of 16 heavy guns and six light guns. German bombing of London during the Blitz, Discover how the Third Reich attacked Great Britain during World War II's Battle of Britain, atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Watch President Roosevelt outline his Four Freedoms and learn how Britain defeated Germany's Luftwaffe. 9. It was not the first time the alarm had sounded to signify the presence of Luftwaffe bombers over the city. The Germans expanded the Blitz to other cities in November 1940. 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. Please select which sections you would like to print: Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. He successfully busied himself with the task of making Northern Ireland a major supplier of food to Britain in her time of need.[5]. Corrections? It was solemn, tragic, dignified, but here it was grotesque, repulsive, horrible. "Through resources such as the Public Records Office and ancestry and genealogy websites I managed to get about 100 photos - which is about one tenth of the victims," he says. [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. Belfast is located on the island of Ireland. Some had received food, others were famished. People hung black curtains in their windows so that no lights showed outside their houses. Hitlers intention had been to break the morale of the British people so they would pressure their government to surrender. The bombs continued to fall until 5am. A Raid From Above Despite the attacks, Belfast continued to contribute to the war effort, and within less than a year the city witnessed the arrival of thousands of American troops. Under the leadership of amon de Valera it had declared its neutrality during the Second World War. 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. [9], War materials and food were sent by sea from Belfast to Great Britain, some under the protection of the neutral Irish tricolour. 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. "[22], In his opinion, the greatest want was the lack of hospital facilities. 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. 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). department distributed more than two million Anderson shelters (named after Sir John Anderson, head of the A.R.P.) 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. After the war, when the first girl from the home got married Billy gave her away, having lost his only daughter. 2023 BBC. There were few bomb shelters. Up Next. Everything on wheels is being pressed into service. 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. When the house was hit William, Harriette, Dorothy, 36-year-old Dot and 41-year-old Isa were all killed. Some 900 people died as a result of the bombing and 1,500 were injured. The World's Most-Famous Ship, The Titanic, was constructed here. Video, 00:02:12, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. On Nov. 30, 1940, a lone Luftwaffe plane flew across the Ards Peninsula unobserved and reported back to Berlin. For eight months the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. 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. NI WW2 veterans honoured by France. For 57 nightsuntil November 2more than 1 million bombs were dropped on the capital city. Roads out of town are still one stream of cars, with mattresses and bedding tied on top. Video, 00:01:41NI WW2 veterans honoured by France, The Spitfire turns 80. The database Mr Freeburn has compiled is, he believes, the most accurate list of those killed and includes 222 children aged 16 or under. But these people all had families and friends and they had to deal with their loss for the rest of their lives.". 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. 2. His death (along with preceding ill-health) came at a bad time and arguably inadvertently caused a leadership vacuum. Video, 00:00:46, Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. 55,000 houses were damaged leaving 100,000 temporarily homeless. It became a city by royal charter in 1888. KS3 History (Environment and society) The Belfast Blitz learning resources for adults, children, parents and teachers. No searchlights were set up in the city at the time, and these only arrived on 10 April. Again the Irish emergency services crossed the border, this time without waiting for an invitation. There wasn't enough room for Anna or Billy, so they sheltered elsewhere, a twist of fate that would save their lives. Belfast has the world's largest dry dock. By the. 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). The city covers a total area of 132.5 square kilometers (51 square miles). The danger faced in London was greatly increased when the V2 attacks started and the casualty figures mirrored those of the Blitz.. Davies also set up medical stations and persuaded off-duty medical personnel to treat the sick and wounded. 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. Wherever Churchill is hiding his war material we will go Belfast is as worthy a target as Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol or Glasgow." But the raid of 15-16 April - the Easter Tuesday Raid - was on another scale. There were Heinkel He 111s, Junkers Ju 88s and Dornier Do 17s. Many "arrived in Fermanagh having nothing with them only night shirts". It targeted the docks. Hundreds of incendiary and many high-explosive bombs were dropped, doing little material damage but causing many casualties. On November 14, 1940, a German force of more than 500 bombers destroyed much of the old city centre and killed more than 550 people. These figures are based on newspaper reports of the time, personal recollections and other primary sources, such as:- Unlike N Ireland, the Irish Free State was no longer part of the UK. The first deliberate raid took place on the night of 7 April. 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. The higher the German planes had to fly to avoid the balloons, the less accurate they were when dropping their bombs. 50,000 houses, more than half the houses in the city, were damaged. 150 corpses remained in the Falls Road baths for three days before they were buried in a mass grave, with 123 still unidentified. 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. Belfast was ill-prepared for the blitz. On July 16, 1940, Hitler issued a directive ordering the preparation and, if necessary, execution of Operation Sea Lion, the amphibious invasion of Great Britain. Several accounts point out that Belfast, standing at the end of the long inlet of Belfast Lough, would be easily located. For two hours, 348 German bombers and 617 fighters targeted the city, dropping high-explosive bombs as well as incendiary devices. Video, 00:01:23Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds, One-minute World News. But the authorities were afraid that bombs might not be the. The most heavily bombed cities outside London were Liverpool and Birmingham. In total over 1,300 houses were demolished, some 5,000 badly damaged, nearly 30,000 slightly damaged while 20,000 required "first aid repairs".[3]. At conservative gathering, Trump is still the favourite. This part of Belfast was the only one required to provide air raid shelters for workers. There was no smokescreen ability, however there were some barrage balloons positioned strategically for protection. continuous trek to railway stations. O'Sullivan felt that the whole civil defence sector was utterly overwhelmed. Gring had insisted that such an attack was an impossibility, because of the citys formidable air defense network. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. They prevented low-flying aircraft from approaching their targets at optimal altitudes and angles of attack. The A.R.P. The period of the next moon from say the 7th to the 16th of April may well bring our turn.. "Through cross-referencing a number of different sources I have been able to get the most accurate number of people who died in the Blitz," he says. 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. He was replaced by 54-year-old Sir Basil Brooke on 1 May. 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). 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." The town of Dromara saw its population increase from 500 to 2,500. Can Nigeria's election result be overturned? 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. devised the Morrison shelter (named for Home Secretary Herbert Stanley Morrison) as an alternative to the Anderson shelter. Tragically 35 were crushed to death when the mill wall collapsed. 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. 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. Indeed, on the night of the first raid, no Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft took to the air to intercept German planes. In Newtownards, Bangor, Larne, Carrickfergus, Lisburn and Antrim many thousands of Belfast citizens took refuge either with friends or strangers. Blitz Fibre UK Blitz Fibre UK Published Mar 1, 2023 + Follow Fact 1- Small but Mighty . [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. 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. For more than six months, German planes had flown reconnaissance flights over Belfast. The national government also provided funds to local municipalities to construct public air-raid shelters. About 1,000 people were killed and bombs hit half of the houses in the city, leaving 100,000 people homeless. 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. [6] It was MacDermott who sent a telegram to de Valera seeking assistance. 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. No significant cut was made in necessary social services, and public and private premises, except when irreparably damaged, were repaired as speedily as possible. When the Blitz began, the government enforced a blackout in an attempt to make targeting more difficult for German night bombers. The youngest victim was just six-weeks-old. Major O'Sullivan reported that "In the heavily 'blitzed' areas people ran panic-stricken into the streets and made for the open country. 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. Once more, London was targeted and children were victims. Video, 00:00:26The German bombing of Coventry, Living through the London Blitz. Only four were known still to be alive. Another attacked Bangor, killing five. In the New Lodge area people had taken refuge in a mill. The first day of the Blitz is remembered as Black Saturday. The telegram was sent at 4:35am,[citation needed] asking the Irish Taoiseach, amon de Valera for assistance. Belfast was largely unprepared for an attack of such a scale as 200 German bombers shelled the city on 15 April 1941. Published: September 7, 2020 at 12:00 pm. The district of Belfast has an area of 44 square miles (115 square km). The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. [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]. But the Luftwaffe was ready. The offensive came to be called the Blitz after the German word blitzkrieg (lightning war). Wherever Churchill is hiding his war material we will go. The attack on Coventry was particularly destructive. 6. [27] One widespread criticism was that the Germans located Belfast by heading for Dublin and following the railway lines north. Many people who were dug out of the rubble alive had taken shelter underneath their stairs and were fortunate that their homes had not received a direct hit or caught fire. 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. 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. 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). The famous Harland and Wolff cranes are called Samson and Goliath.
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