High explosive bombs predominated in this raid. The British thus fought with the advantage of superior equipment and undivided aim against an enemy with inconsistent objectives. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The first day of the Blitz is remembered as Black Saturday. Air power alone had failed to knock the United Kingdom out of the war. 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. 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." Instead of pressing his advantage, however, Hitler abruptly changed his strategy. Belfast is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland. Belfast is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland . In the mistaken belief that they might damage RAF fighters, the anti-aircraft batteries ceased firing. At conservative gathering, Trump is still the favourite. 55,000 British civilian casualties were sustained through German bombing before the end of 1940 This included 23,000 deaths. 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. Video, 00:00:46, Hong Kong skyscraper fire seen on city's skyline, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds. The danger faced in London was greatly increased when the V2 attacks started and the casualty figures mirrored those of the Blitz.. However that attack was not an error. For eight months the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. By Jonathan Bardon. There were Heinkel He 111s, Junkers Ju 88s and Dornier Do 17s. 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. No searchlights were set up in the city at the time, and these only arrived on 10 April. The past doesnt change, its just over.. For more than six months, German planes had flown reconnaissance flights over Belfast. Belfast, the city with the highest population density in the UK at the time, also had the lowest proportion of public air-raid shelters. 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. Learn how your comment data is processed. There [is] ground for thinking that the enemy could not easily reach Belfast in force except during a period of moonlight. Belfast's Albert Clock tower is sinking - it leans by four feet. In many cases the daily life of the city was able to resume with delays of only hours. [19], 220,000 people fled from the city. Belfast was Ireland's industrial home, famous for tobacco, rope-making, linen, and ship-building, which made it the powerhouse it was. But these people all had families and friends and they had to deal with their loss for the rest of their lives.". The success of Mickeys Shelter was another factor that urged the government to improve existing deep shelters and to create new ones. This amounted to nearly half of Britains total civilian deaths for the whole war. 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. [4], The Government of Northern Ireland lacked the will, energy and capacity to cope with a major crisis when it came. A Raid From Above Video, 00:01:38, At least 17 dead in Jakarta fuel storage depot fire, Australia's 'biggest drug bust' nets $700m of cocaine. Read about our approach to external linking. Maps and documents uncovered at Gatow Airfield near Berlin in 1945 showed the level of detail involved. "Liverpool, Clydebank and Portsmouth all have a memorial to their victims of the Blitz. 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.". [9], War materials and food were sent by sea from Belfast to Great Britain, some under the protection of the neutral Irish tricolour. 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. The telegram was sent at 4:35am,[citation needed] asking the Irish Taoiseach, amon de Valera for assistance. From September 1940 until May 1941, Britain was subjected to sustained enemy bombing campaign, now known as the Blitz. 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. For two hours, 348 German bombers and 617 fighters targeted the city, dropping high-explosive bombs as well as incendiary devices. 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. Given Belfast's geographic position, it was considered to be at the fringe of the operational range of German bombers and hence there was no provision for night-fighter aerial cover. Belfast Blitz: Facts In total there were four attacks on the County Antrim city. Several accounts point out that Belfast, standing at the end of the long inlet of Belfast Lough, would be easily located. On May 11, 1941, Hitler called off the Blitz as he shifted his forces eastward against the Soviet Union. Air-raid damage was widespread; hospitals, clubs, churches, museums, residential and shopping streets, hotels, public houses, theatres, schools, monuments, newspaper offices, embassies, and the London Zoo were bombed. The Premier Online Military History Magazine, Re-printed with permission fromWartimeNI.com. [citation needed]. In the New Lodge area people had taken refuge in a mill. Here are 10 facts about both the German Blitzkrieg and the Allied bombing of Germany. Nevertheless, for all the hardship it caused, the campaign proved to be a strategic mistake by the Germans. Prayers were said and hymns sung by the mainly Protestant women and children during the bombing. sprang into action, and Londoners, while maintaining the work, business, and efficiency of their city, displayed remarkable fortitude. 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. Simpson shot down one of the Heinkels over Downpatrick. 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. 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. But the RAF had not responded. 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. At the core of this book is a compelling account of the Luftwaffe's blitz on Belfast in April-May 1941. 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. William Joyce (known as "Lord Haw-Haw") announced in radio broadcasts from Hamburg that there will be "Easter eggs for Belfast". The offensive came to be called the Blitz after the German word blitzkrieg (lightning war). By 1941, production of the Short Stirling Bomber and the Short Sunderland Flying Boat was underway. Video, 00:03:09, Mapping the lives lost in the Belfast Blitz, Russian minister laughed at for Ukraine war claims. It is believed that the wartime government covered up the death toll because of concern over the effect it would have had on public morale. For 57 nightsuntil November 2more than 1 million bombs were dropped on the capital city. They remained for three days, until they were sent back by the Northern Ireland government. 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. The Germans expanded the Blitz to other cities in November 1940. Video, 00:01:41NI WW2 veterans honoured by France, The Spitfire turns 80. That night almost 300 people, many from the Protestant Shankill area, took refuge in the Clonard Monastery in the Catholic Falls Road. It remains a high death toll - a shocking number of people killed in just a few weeks. These shelters, made of corrugated steel, were designed to be dug into a garden and then covered with dirt. For two hours on the first day, 348 German bombers and 617 fighters blasted London. Video, 00:01:23, Watch: Matt Hancock message row in 83 seconds, Isabel Oakeshott: Why I leaked Hancock's messages. He was replaced by 54-year-old Sir Basil Brooke on 1 May. ", 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]. 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. Protection of the city fell to seven anti-aircraft batteries of 16 heavy guns and six light guns. The higher the German planes had to fly to avoid the balloons, the less accurate they were when dropping their bombs. 8. NI WW2 veterans honoured by France. Video, 00:00:36, Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. Eduard Hempel, the German Minister to Ireland, visited the Irish Ministry for External Affairs to offer sympathy and attempt an explanation. Video, 00:00:36Tears of relief after man found in Amazon jungle. 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. Belfast suffered a series of bombing raids in the spring of 1941, which became known as the 'Blitz of Belfast'. 4. The attacks were authorized by Germany's chancellor, Adolf Hitler, after the British carried out a nighttime air raid on Berlin. Belfast was not properly prepared for the attacks, with too few shelters and not enough anti-aircraft guns. From a purely military perspective, the Blitz was entirely counterproductive to the main purpose of Germanys air offensiveto dominate the skies in advance of an invasion of England. 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. At 10:40pm the air raid sirens sounded. 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. The "Hiram Plan" initiated by Dawson Bates, the Home Affairs Minister, had failed to materialise. and Major Sen O'Sullivan, who produced a detailed report for the Dublin government. ", Mapping the lives lost in the Belfast Blitz. 1. 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. Belfast was largely unprepared for an attack of such a scale as 200 German bombers shelled the city on 15 April 1941. Once more, London was targeted and children were victims. 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. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 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. (Some authors count this as the second raid of four). 7. Anna and Billy were buried up their necks in sewage but were rescued and survived. Also, on Queens Island, stood the Short and Harland Ltd. Aircraft Factory. In addition, there simply was not enough space for everyone who needed shelter in one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world. Video, 00:02:54, At least 17 dead in Jakarta fuel storage depot fire. Belfast has the world's largest dry dock. When Germany bombed Belfast as part of the Blitz during World War Two, the massive air raids left more than a thousand people dead. His death (along with preceding ill-health) came at a bad time and arguably inadvertently caused a leadership vacuum. Over 20 hospitals were hit, among them the London (many times), St. Thomass, St. Bartholomews, and the childrens hospital in Great Ormond st., as well as Chelsea hospital, the home for the aged and invalid soldiers, built by Wren. Video, 00:00:51, Australia's 'biggest drug bust' nets $700m of cocaine, Thanks, but no big speech, in Ken Bruce's sign off. More than 1,000 people were killed, and the damage was more widespread than on any previous occasion. Belfast's Albert Clock tower is sinking - it leans by four feet. It is perhaps true that many saved their lives running but I am afraid a much greater number lost them or became casualties."[20]. 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. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Yesterday the hand of good-fellowship was reached across the Border. The A.R.P. 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. Neighbouring residential areas were also hit. Emma Duffin, a nurse at the Queen's University Hospital, (who previously served during the Great War), who kept a diary; As well as these two major targets, other firms in Belfast produced valuable materials for the war effort including munitions, linen, ropes, food supplies and, of course, cigarettes. 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). 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. [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]. 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His report concluded with: "a second Belfast would be too horrible to contemplate". Dissatisfaction with public shelters also led to another notable development in the East EndMickeys Shelter. (Great War casualties) had died in hospital beds, their eyes had been reverently closed, their hands crossed to their breasts. The working-class living close to industrial centres suffered more than anyone over the course of the four raids. They all say the same thing, that the government is no good. In Newtownards, Bangor, Larne, Carrickfergus, Lisburn and Antrim many thousands of Belfast citizens took refuge either with friends or strangers. People hung black curtains in their windows so that no lights showed outside their houses. 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.