Dan Snow's History Hit - The Belfast Blitz

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

It wasn't just London that was devastated by German bombing raids in WWII, but Belfast in Northern Ireland too. The most intense bombing took place over four consecutive nights, from April 7 to April 10, 1941, as the Luftwaffe targeted strategic locations, industrial sites, and residential areas in Belfast. Over 1000 residents in the city and surrounding counties were killed in the raids. Hundreds more were wounded and many deceased were left unidentified after the rubble was cleared.The Belfast Blitz was part of the wider strategic bombing campaign by the Germans, aiming to weaken the resolve of the British population and disrupt industrial production. Dr Jim O'Neill joins Dan to tell the city's story of war, of how people, including his own family experienced the raids, learning to survive in a state of constant fear and danger and the heroic bravery that emerged. He also tells Dan about his own work to ensure those who were killed are properly memorialised.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Ella Blaxill.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout?code=dansnow&plan=monthly.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Belfast in Northern Ireland was one of the great industrial cities of the United Kingdom on the outbreak of war in 1939, but for various reasons as you'll hear it was not widely believed that it would be a target of the German Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, in any bombing that would take place across the British Isles in the Second World War. The government in Belfast, the authorities, refused to take the necessary preparations that ensured that loss of life, loss of property would be limited in the event of German air raids. The cost of their naive optimism was paid in the lives of the men, women and children in Belfast. Throughout April and May 1941, there were four raids. There was a particularly awful raid on the evening of the 15th

of April. Over 750 people were killed, which we think makes it the bloodiest single raid outside London of any raid on Britain during the Second World War. Half of the houses in Belfast were damaged. There were so many bodies to deal with afterwards that they were thrown into mass graves. It was a devastating attack and it wasn't the last one. In this episode of the podcast, I want to talk to Jim O'Neill. He's been on the podcast before talking about Queen Elizabeth I's travails, her disastrous campaigns in Ireland. He's a Belfast-born former archaeologist, now a historian. He works at the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum and he's been collecting stories and publicising stories about the Belfast Blitz. My grandpa was in the Canadian Navy during the Second World War. Belfast was a key terminus

for supplies coming across the Atlantic convoy routes. And he remembers all too well the damage, the destruction of that Blitz. He would tell me about it when I was young. And now here comes Jim O'Neill to tell all of us about the Belfast Blitz. T-minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

Jim, thanks very much for coming back on the podcast. Great to be here, Don. Ireland in the First World War had been a part of the United Kingdom. Now Ireland was in a very different position in the Second World War. Did that change? Was there a difference, do you think, on the ground in Ireland just at the start of the war? The fact that the South was neutral, but the North was very much in this Second Great War? I think what we see is there's a fundamental separation between the whole experience of

Great Britain and Northern Ireland during the war. And one of those reasons was definitely the existence of the border between Northern Ireland and the neutral South. And what we see is certainly considering contemporary politics going on at the minute, you see a separation that perhaps people don't remember because of the land border with a neutral country. You see things like the way the north is even treated by great britain is different you see the post is censored between great britain and northern ireland there's sort of like a ring fence what is described as of security around great britain that northern ireland is not part of and part of that reason is the border which is

seen as a potential weakness for intelligence. All the telephone lines between Great Britain and Ireland are tapped 24 hours a day. There's travel restrictions in the south. In Dublin, you still have things like the Italian and German legations are still there. So it's seen as a big security risk, and the government of Westminster is very, very aware of this. You also see things like the south still has a territorial claim in the north, and so De Valera, the Irish Taoiseach, very much expresses that all Ireland is not part of the War, so he has this continual complaint that Ireland shouldn't be used, or Northern Ireland shouldn't be part of the war effort.

But to tell you the truth, the way Northern Ireland even saw itself, it saw itself as quite separate. In fact, there were some sort of ongoing opinions that this was England's war. It seems quite naive in retrospect, considering what happens in World War II, but Northern Ireland, even in its very tone of the way the war started

and the way it continued up until the Blitz, it saw itself as something different, even though it was a centre of industry and things like shipyards and aircraft manufacture. It should have been a target, but there was an all-pervading idea that somehow Northern Ireland would escape the attentions of the Germans, which turned out to be quite false. And also, there was an all-pervading idea that somehow northern ireland would escape the attentions of

the germans which turned out to be quite false and also there was no conscription conscription was in force in britain but not in northern ireland and obviously lots and lots of non-irish people and some southern irish people volunteered to fight for the british army in the second world war but it was not mandatory and that must have made it feel very different as well it was totally different there was no conscription so there was actually talk of bringing it in but then the british government realized that it actually might be more trouble than it's worth both the actual enforcement of it and the political ramifications including the united states with the large american lobby but they also feared that there was actually a significant amount of recruitment in this size and they thought that

would dry up completely but with that and the fact is that northern ireland was a net producer of foodstuffs during the war so even though there was rationing it didn't bite as deeply in northern ireland as it did in great britain so what you see is certainly the mass observation group that was studying morale across the united kingdom noticed that there was a very different atmosphere in Northern Ireland. What they considered Ireland wasn't really in the war, didn't see itself as part of the war. Things like the long shifts, the long working shifts

that were instituted for war production in Great Britain hadn't happened here. In 1940, you still had a weak stoppage of all the factories during the 12th of Fortnite, which was where you have the orange demonstrations and the commemoration of the Battle of the Bowen. The industry stopped for an entire week in 1940. They just didn't see themselves as part of it.

And there was a pervading idea right from top to bottom, from political leaders all the way to the people on the street, is they believed that Northern Ireland just would not be attacked for a number of different reasons. One, they believed that Northern Ireland was too far away from Germany. It was just too far and too hard to defend. Even at the very top of the political leadership in Northern Ireland, there's quotes of politicians saying,

oh, so the Germans just wouldn't be able to find Belfast or they just wouldn't be bothered. There was far more tempting targets in Great Britain, so they wouldn't come here. And some even fell back on the idea that Belfast would be protected by the defences in Great Britain. No, there was anti-aircraft batteries and barrage balloons and fighter defences all up from Scotland and England and Wales that anything that tried to get across this would be destroyed.

And so Belfast was essentially shielded by Great Britain. And the more extreme, actually, even now, you think it's almost naive, is that they believed that because de Valera had stated that all of Ireland should be free of German attack, and he'd actually make approaches to the German legation in Dublin saying that Belfast should be considered as part of Ireland and shouldn't be attacked. It seems ridiculous now, but this was actually given credence in the higher levels of political and even military thinking in Great Britain. And so there was a massive lack of preparedness throughout Northern Ireland, but definitely in Belfast, they just had no concept of what was coming. It's interesting that they hoped that that might be the case,

de Valera's sort of approach, given that Northern Ireland was, as you point out, a massive centre of particularly shipbuilding in Belfast. But Northern Ireland is one of the most militarised landscapes in the United Kingdom during the Second World War. There just seems to be bases and significant military sites all over Partix the Battle of the Atlantic, and for lots of reasons. So it was certainly a military target, wasn't it? Oh, you wouldn't

believe it. If you actually look at the numbers that came out of it throughout the war, why did we even think for a second that this wasn't going to happen? If you look at the sheer numbers, the shipyards over World War II brought out about 140 warships, maybe 123 merchant ships, short Harland, the aircraft manufacturers

built the sterling bombers and more important in the Battle of Atlantic the short sandal and seaplanes so not only did they build those they built I think it was 80 million aircraft components you had the Mackey's foundry

which was one of the major manufacturers for 40 millimeter anti-aircraft shells you had the linen mills which over the course of the war produced 200 million yards of canvas. And the rope works produced a quarter of a million tons of cordage. This is a rope for the Royal Naval.

This is a huge amount. And even when you come into the fall of France, and then, of course, you have the convoys coming out through North Island. Belfast gets established as a Royal Naval base, and it becomes, what's the word for it, an assembly area for convoys. So when you look at it in those terms, you're like, of course it's going to be on a target. And you're not even considering the troop concentrations, not the barracks and the aircraft bases that are being manufactured across the North. I suppose it's maybe in retrospect,

you're going to wonder what were they thinking, but I think there was possibly a level of cognitive distance and they just, like anyone else, didn't want the warrior out, but it was coming whether they liked it or not. Unfortunately, the lack of preparedness is shocking. Well, yeah, let's talk about that. Very few deep bunkers in London. That's why everyone took to the underground stations but presumably it was much

much worse than in belfast well you wouldn't believe it like the politics at the time the government just wasn't prepared for it at all it was more concerned with local issues but even the relationships between that's government not around and the government in great britain things like the 1937 air raidid Precautions Act, which under its terms, it sort of set out the obligations for local authorities for air raid precautions. Northern Ireland was excluded from that. So the laws that actually would have gave resources for that,

Northern Ireland was set aside from that. It was like, well, you sort yourselves out. And then this followed down all the way through the strata of everything that should have been prepared. There was pre-recruitment for the ARP and the Auxiliary Fire Service. The ARP actually in itself was seen as, what were the descriptions of it? Sort of like busybody fusspots. People that would come around and annoy you and rap in your door about the blackout joke.

There's so little enforcement of the blackout. Or just at Hayherst, there's something like 15,000 prosecutions. Just enough time about blackout infringements. Flights would take off from the nearby orphanage all the way up to see what about blackout infringements flights would take off from the near-eye orphanage all the group to see what the blackout was like where do we even start like it was just ridiculous put it this way i'm probably jumping ahead by the time the first raid comes in may the lighthouses in belfast lock are still lit the shelter provision was appalling there's something like 25 percent of the population in belfast had a shelter of 60 000 eligible for free shelters

4 000 had them in belfast there's 700 public shelters that were built but like i said it could take about 25 percent of the population and these were built in narrow streets and they were appalling there was just these narrow surface shelters now to be fair we couldn't have underground shelters in belfast because belfast the way the hydrology has got a very shallow water table. So you dig into the ground, a meteor, and it floods instantly. So no ambition shelters there. But what shelters they did build basically became an annoyance.

And they just got busy, turned into areas for antisocial behavior. They turned into essentially areas for prostitutions and pimps to ply their trade. There was courting couples getting up to their nocturnal alliances. They were also used for like public toilets. So with the extent that doors were put on someone, they're literally locked up, which defeats its purpose. Then the next and more tragic element of it is the evacuation procedures for children.

Now, one of the common features that you would see coming up in the history of the Blitz in Great Britain would be the evacuation of children into the country. Now, in Belfast, there were 70,000 children were eligible, and they did try. There was an initial drive to have children sent to the countryside and all those 70,000, 17,000 registered on the day they were meant to turn up, 1,000 turned up. and one of the key features that people who were coming from England that were subject to the Blitz were coming to Belfast and going, where are all these kids from?

The street was full of kids compared to, you know, urban areas in Great Britain. Unfortunately, that would be reflected in the casualties to come. And the lack of preparedness even comes as far into the military side of it. The anti-aircraft defences were visible. Belfast was defended by 16 heavy anti-aircraft guns and six light, which was like less than a quarter of a similar size city in Britain. There was no night fighters, there was no searchlights, there was barrage balloons, and that was about the limit of it. But ultimately, Belfast was just exposed. There was nothing stopping either psychologically or

physically. They were completely unprepared for what was to come. So there was a probing raid, wasn't there, on the 7th, 8th of May. Was that a wake-up call? I wish you could say it was, but unfortunately there was bad weather over Great Britain and so some bombers had diverted to Belfast as a secondary target because of the clear weather. They're not quite sure how many attacked. It was about 13

tracks and the raid started at midnight and lasted until about just after half three. Now Belfast wasn't exactly hard to find because like I said, the lighthouses were lit, and the detection of them was very poor, apparently, when the raids started. People described as they heard the aircraft, then they heard the guns,

then they heard the siren. Because of the clear weather, they dropped flares to identify their targets. The guns opened up, and even the Germans in their later reports described the anti-aircraft defenses as scant. They even got to the point where they could dive bomb their targets.

But because they could see the targets very well, they could hit the dock area with great accuracy. Soon you had like wood storage yards where it blazed. There was actually a Sterling fuselage yard. It was 50 Sterlings fuselages destroyed. By the time the raid was over, about 15 were killed. But what actually it did instill is it actually instilled a false sense

of what was to come because of the small amount of damage, relatively speaking, and the small amount of casualties. People started to think, maybe this is okay, maybe Belfast can take this. And even in the press, they said, oh, this cordon of steel put up by the anti-aircraft fire. The only thing the anti-aircraft guns hit there was three of their own barrage balloons. But it gave this false idea of what was to happen.

And also because it was so well targeted by the Germans, very few people actually used their shelters. And in fact fact people came out of their doors and gathered in the street and talked about the bomb and speculated like well where do you think they're hitting and no they said it was almost like speculators of football match and they just totally glossed over any sort of dangers and created this really really dangerous illusion for what was to happen you listen to dan snow's history hit talking about the terrible blitz on Belfast during the Second World War. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And so tell me, what did happen? When are the heavier raids?

Well, it eventually comes to Easter. By that stage, you'd seen a shift in German targeting. They were hitting important centres like Bristol and Tyneside and things like that. And what we end up seeing is even local government is saying we're definitely going to get hit. To the extent that they decide they have to actually hide it from the public, there's definitely going to be something happen. But even on the radio, eventually you have Lord Ha Ha.

One of his transmissions says there would be Easter eggs for Belfast. So definitely they knew something was happening and there'd been German reconnaissance aircraft over belfast and so eventually on the night of this 15th to 16th of april that's when the germans actually came now what we can say is the alert started about at about 10 40 and about an hour later the reports say that you'd hear the drone those planes coming from the south and what they did actually flown out or carting a bay and or comp the irish sea but what was also noticed is that there was actually cloud cover you'd hear the drone, those planes coming from the south. And what they did, they'd actually flown out, they were carting a bayonet over the Irish Sea. But what was also noticed is that there was actually cloud cover over Belfast.

So actually part of it, the third of the bombers that were destined for Belfast didn't attack. So what they describe is the bombers come up and they hear this low drone and that comes up and passes to the east of Belfast. And then about six miles north of Belfast, it turns, and the German bombers start coming back down to the northeast, coming down Belfast Lock. One of the things they described is it's very hard to hide Belfast from the air

because you can't black out the water. And basically where the water ends, even with an effective blackout, where the black starts, that's where the city is, and that's where the industrial area is. So targeting-wise, it was an easy target to find, but the cloud cover, in this case, had caused problems with the german pathfinders now the german pathfinders turned up about an hour later after the alert started and they were the

first of about 180 bombers to reach belfast but the thing is because of the cloud cover and there was also a smoke screen operation these one of the first things that happened with the raid when the alert started was these smoke dischargers started to belch out what was described as this black clawing smoke which actually blacketed large sections of the industrial area, which also that and the cloud cover meant that the Pathfinders dropped their targeting fliers and targeting incendiaries to the west and the north of the city. And what was actually described by one of the raid wardens on time

was quite eerie because at first you saw these bright magnesium fliers come down. He actually wondered why you needed a blackout at all because one of the descriptions was you'd read a packet of cigarettes it was like daylight in belfast just as the raids started so once actually the bombers start coming you see the first of 203 tons of high explosives 29 000 in centuries fall on belfast 87 of those are the parachute mines now these horrific 1500 kilogram bombs are parachute mines that slowly descend and the effect on these closely packed terrace houses houses was absolutely devastating. What's also worse for Belfast is that what little defences existed. One of the earliest bombs, I think about one o'clock, just as the raid was

really starting to reach its worst, one of the bombs hit the central telephone exchange, instantly knocking out any sort of targeting data that was being sent to the anti-aircraft batteries. So they all fall silent. And so then the bombers get to attack without any hindrance at all. What was it like on the ground? You've recorded some personal stories about the individuals caught up in it. It was appalling. Now, the emergency service were pushed beyond limits.

They said people just didn't know how to behave. They said that the population, because they weren't used to this sort of thing, they actually clustered in groups together in houses because they didn't want to be alone. The dying in certain places was just appalling. The reports coming in through the ARP, people knew that something terrible had happened. You get things like Hogarth Street, where 70 people were killed.

Atlantic Avenue, 40 people killed. In Ballynewish Street, there's 30 people killed. In one house, there's 16 people taken out of it, all dead. The York Street Mill, they'd had this great wall out there. I know this from personal stories from family up there they remember ray street there was a large six-story wall that went around the mill and a parachute mine collapsed this and fell on vare street and sussex street killing over 40 people and then the percy street shelter a parachute mine hit it and descriptions again from family members they said there was one actually

saw and they said it was like a butcher shop. For my own personal end, these stories actually proliferate all across Belfast, where I had a nun who was a rail warden. And they'd been to a dance in the Ulster Hall. The crowd inside the Ulster Hall had been told there was shelter in the building. But her team said they had to go to their Trinity Street church post because that was what they had to do. And they're all 18, 19 kids. And so they made their

way up and even in accounts later on jimmy daugherty who wrote about post 301 on the raids and he said he saw the trinity street wardens coming up and going to their post and they went to their post the trinity street church and he actually saw the parachute man drift down towards it and hit the spire of the church and of course went off devastating results the church collapsed and killed everyone on the trinity street wardens post apart my aunt a friend that was with her but she was so badly injured that she ended up in one of the temporary mortuaries and falls by i think it's only actually someone coming past seeing these lines of bodies the stories actually come out from her are awful the person that walked past noticed that this girl was still alive and so she was actually taken from rows of corpses

and taken to hospital but the stories that were coming out of the temporary mortuaries were just traumatic, to say the least. The hospitals were inundated with unprecedented level of casualties. In one example, they said that the dead on the ally were getting brought to the hospital. And in one case, I get this from Jimmy Doherty's account. And he said there was just this large, misshapen package arrived at the mortuary. And there was just a label on it that said woman and five children he said some of the things he'd seen dj couldn't recount for years and these stories again pass through social memory and these stories are replicated time and time again across

north and west belfast because this raid and it was the part from london it was the bloodiest night of the blitz ultimately i think the final count for the number of casualties, and even then, it's disputed as about 744 were killed in the raid and that's just the civilian casualties. But as awful as it was and as traumatic as it was, the stories that come out again and again and again the horrors that were visited on the streets are something that Belfast has never

seen and never has seen in those sort of numbers. But there was also stories that came out that actually fills you with some sort of faith in humanity. One of the stories is that around 4 o'clock in the morning, when the emergency service was entirely overwhelmed, a cable went out and was sent to Devolaire in the south asking for assistance. And so, again, he asked the Dublin Fire Brigade, could they get volunteers? And so there were 75 men volunteered to come north in 13 engines. And that's the Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, Drogheda and Dundalk fire brigades.

Came north and started the raid in about nine in the morning and they helped out. When I say helped out, there was fire crews that were just exhausted by working throughout the night and so they took over their duties up on Crumlin Road up in North Belfast and they worked throughout the day helping with rescue and this is actually when bombs are still going off. There's something like 10 to 20% of the bombs dropped during the raid were delayed action bombs. So just because the planes had passed overhead didn't mean the danger wasn't still there.

And these crews worked as volunteers in the city up until I think it was 8 o'clock was the last one was withdrawn, even because they couldn't risk having crews from a neutral country in case the Germans came back that night. The effect was devastating on the city. And like I said, temporary mortuaries were set up in St. George's markets and Petersell Baths and Falls Public Baths.

And you had lines of hundreds of bodies. For days afterwards, you had people file past these bodies looking for relatives. Just that part alone is so traumatic. And many of those people would have been homeless, right? I mean, something like 100,000 people had damaged homes? 100,000 people were made temporarily homeless. Over half the housing stock in Belfast

was damaged or destroyed. The effect on public morale was devastating. One of the examples of when people went to the temporary mortuaries, there's one woman there who was a nurse during the Somme, and she said she hadn't experienced anything like this. The war and the nature of the way these people had died stripped all level of dignity off them. And we're talking like men, women, children that were killed,

of which a third of them were children, because again, there was no evacuation. And even then, there was a huge amount that weren't identified. I think I see statistics of all raids in Great Britain. There's something like 560, 570 were buried unidentified. In just this raid in Belfast, 130 to 140 remained unidentified and ended up buried in two mass graves in the City Cemetery and Milltown Cemetery. And the effect on morale was devastating what you end up seeing was a mass evacuation as people in

their tens of thousands that night started to make their way out of the city by the end of april you're looking at about a hundred thousand by the end of may you're looking at which are 200 000 people had left the city and even that night people who were staying in the city still went out and slept in the countryside. Tens of thousands clogged the roads almost and every avenue at a time just to sleep in ditches and hedges. The fear was basically all encompassing

in the fear that the German bombers would come back. Wow. And did the German bombers come back? They did come back. What I can say is at least the shock also did galvanise things like the ARP.

But the Germans had considered the attack a failure because they'd largely missed there was some damage to the harbour estate the main brunt of the bombing raid and having done

Zwischenhausen which the Germans were not actually looking to target but they did they come back on the 4th and 5th of May in what we call

the fire raid and the reason for that is like the sirens go off at midnight and of course they get descriptors against these low rumble coming up overhead

about one in the morning. Now, it's a much shorter raid. It only lasts about two hours, but it's far more intense. The Germans actually turn up this time and it's cloudless, clear skies for miles in all directions. So Belfast is not hard to find. They come in the same flight path and make it a northeastern approach. And they get their targets over the course of the raid, which again, like I said, only lasted two hours. They dropped 237 tons.

And this time, whereas we said the last time there's 36,000 incendiaries dropped, this time there's 96,000 incendiaries are dropped on this cloudless night, which is massively impact on the harbour state and the shipyards, on the aircraft factories. And within no time at all, you have vast swathes of the harbour state that are in inferno. Ships in the shipyards, three corvettes that are near completion, they're destroyed. There's three supply ships that are sinking on their moorings. There's fires, they just consume workshops, areas

of the shipyard. One German, he describes on his approach that he can see the glow of Belfast from 200 kilometres away as he approaches. Belfast is something that really can't be described. To say that there wasn't any civilian councils in this raid would be absolutely wrong. The very nature of strategic bombing at the time was that inherent inaccuracy meant that even with a well-targeted raid that hit mostly the targets they were looking for, there's large areas of streets

in the east of the city that sat adjacent to the shipyards that they were also hit as well. And again, you get the same repeat of entire streets being demolished by things like parachute mines but in this case they were much fewer still a large amount there was 202 people were killed much less than the east of tuesy and there's a couple of different reasons for that one was there was a better knowledge of what would happen people had fear in them and they actually used the shelters that were provided. There's also the fact that there was such a large amount of people that left the city

so with the evacuation it reduced the number of people that would potentially be killed or injured. Believe it or not there was people much stronger at the aircraft defence in this raid than the last. Even the Germans actually mentioned themselves that the active defences were more effective and also what you're looking at is the

accuracy of the attack because it fell largely on industrial areas and also a lot of the incendiaries fell on the commercial part of town so there's huge tracks of the center in belfast where the commercial shops were all went to the blaze high street bridge street all the big shopping streets there's huge tracks so just ended up in absolute inferno and it even reports when they were coming in from the auxiliary fire service just said there is nothing we can do the hastles of bombs had actually ruptured much like the other raids had ruptured large amounts of the water mains frequently the water pressure just dropped and they had nothing to fight the fires even if they

could the fires were just one fire joined into another fire joined in until just a huge conflagration that there's photographs that show this that are available online, that the fires were some be believed. But that actually even asked to be asked this time. There was no need for a cable from the north. The volunteer, Devaler, actually issued an order that when he first heard there was a raid, he just issued the order straight to the Dublin Fire Service, gather volunteers.

And in this case, you also saw a repeat down. This time they had 130 men volunteer to come up in fire tenders and ambulances and did the same thing again when they came up and helped out and helped fight the fires and returned the next day and then the following night

after that the Germans still weren't done with Belfast but this time there's a much much smaller raid perhaps three planes attacked the night after that I leave those

as casualties there was 22 killed but that was the last of the raids on Belfast In other cities in the United Kingdom the Blitz is memorialised it's talked about it's

taught in schools that's not as much the case in belfast why is that it's hard to actually say to be honest straight after the raids there was a huge amount of bitterness because there was such a collapse of public services and the way it was reported there was lots of the usual things about how belfast can take it and belfast stands united against the germ and people didn't believe this at all as far as they were concerned. Certainly after the Easter Tuesday raid and the lack of defence, they felt quite abandoned

and they felt that they were disgusted with these sort of reports, that there was no Belfast can't take it. No, because there was just such a shock and it was so traumatising. There should be thousands of these stories and there are thousands of these stories that permeate Belfast and they have to exist.

But for some reason, maybe is it because later history of Belfast and they have to exist but for some reason maybe is it because later history of Belfast sort of there was no the silence that you got after all one of the common things is people don't talk about these things certainly even in England Great Britain when people have wartime experiences normally it takes years for these things to come out possibly Belfast didn't get that because Belfast's later traumatic issues sort of moved on to that and people just want to forget about it but certainly collections elsewhere in the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum and we would work with people and encourage them to contact us to try and bring out these oral histories and bring them to us they can contact us and we would see these oral

histories as a key component these people's stories people's family histories and we would like to try and bring those together before they're gone to try and rebuild and build up on people's understanding of just what happened and how people felt both during the raids and after the raids. One of the things actually I find quite strange and quite puzzling is that Belfast, even though there were so many people killed,

over 950 died in the raids, there's no public memorial to this day you'll find memorials about the titanic and all the rest of that titanic there's something like two or three people from belfast that in titanic but something that devastated belfast possibly because you'll have large sections south belfast and maybe parts of west belfast and parts of the city that essentially were just ringside did the devastation happen because it was so concentrated perhaps there's a whole dichotomy of experiences it's hard actually to say why when it is such a traumatizing experience but hopefully we can actually change that to try and get a proper

public memorial that helps people remember just what happened and what people suffered and perhaps it's things like the troubles it's not taking all the air away from remembrance that that's where the focus of remembrance is but it but something that hopefully we can actually bring into fruition a proper and fitting memorial to people that died and the people that suffered and what was definitely

one of Belfast's darkest hours. Well thank you very much Jim for talking to us about it and for all the work you're doing it's an extraordinary story.

Thanks for coming on the podcast. If people want to learn more where do they go? I'd say the first place to go, Northern Avon Memorial has a

website, niowarmemorial.org they can go on there and they can find out about the Belfast Blitz there's blog stories and there's contacts I'd say the first place to go, Northern Avon War Memorial has a website, niowarmormorial.org. They can go on there and they can find out about the Belfast Blitz. There's blog stories and there's contacts where they can come to us if they have stories or family stories that they want to have recorded and archived for future generations

or even things that we've had people come in with just objects from the Blitz that they want to record or sometimes donate. They can go there and we're more than happy to hear from them. Thanks for all the work you're doing there people can go to

ni1moral.org thanks so much for coming back on the podcast Jim thanks for having us back