I’ve long thought myself reasonably knowledgeable on World War II, and in particular on the air war. I had heard Belfast was bombed by a few planes at some point. One friend told me his father sat up in the hills and watched the bombers flying in. I’d seen mentions of it in various histories of the air war, but one is left with the impression the entire Battle of Britain was in the south of England. In terms of strategic importance, it was. London, Coventry and various attacks on other English cities were the heart of the action. That is where the “The Few” fought and died in the Battle of Britain. Squadrons went north for training and reforming. Other raids happened here and there but nothing that was terribly important to the course of the war. A couple raids on Belfast? When you read that amidst the history of the war in the skies over London it hardly registered even if you were sitting in Belfast. The unbidden first thought to cross one’s mind as Belfast resident was that we were doing quite a good enough job blowing it up ourselves. Why on Earth would we have needed any help from strangers?
The first raid was what I had believed it all to have been like. A few bombs on a Harland and Wolff factory, a few deaths here and there. That is what I had always believed had happened here.
I was very, very wrong as I found out tonight from a BBC Northern Ireland commemoration taped in our new Waterfront Hall. Local artists (several of whom I know from my many wastrel nights as a working musician in Ireland) sang period songs in between the film clips and dramatic readings of the words of those who lived through the raids. It is well worth the viewing but since most of you can’t do that, the web site is the next best thing.
900 people died that night on April 15th, 1941 in a second raid on a nearly defenseless city. The first had been a revelation to the Germans. No fighters defended the city. A handful of anti-aircraft guns were the sum total of defences. That was all there was to face over 200 He111’s and Ju88’s that roved at will over the city. Even those few defending guns were silenced when the telephone exchange was destroyed and all coordination lost.
In terms of numbers killed it was the worst single raid carnage of the Battle of Britain but one. Did any of you know that? I certainly did not.
The third raid came on May 4th of 1941. Belfast was still nearly defenseless. There were a handful of defending Spitfires and Hurricanes. This time “only” about 200 people died in the rain of incendiaries that devastated the city. But the destruction was far more complete. It left Belfast as devastated as any city in England and perhaps worse than most. Vast areas of housing were levelled in the conflagration that was visible from the Glen Shane pass 45 miles away. Ships were sunk in the harbour; the city centre was half destroyed.
No matter how much one reads the history of that terrible time, it gives one pause to realize the scope of the war was so vast that raids as devastating as these are reduced to minor historical footnotes.
