The Belfast Blitz - 80 Years On

This month’s episode of the Historical Belfast Podcast is brought to you in conjunction with the Northern Ireland War Memorial museum on Talbot Street who have kindly given me access to their oral history archive. I am also extremely grateful for the research and writing of the late historian Jonathan Bardon on this subject and, as such, this episode is dedicated to Dr Bardon.

80 years ago, in the course of 4 Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War, lasting 10 hours in total, 1,100 people died, over 56,000 were homes damaged, and 100,000 people were made homeless.

The first attack on Belfast came on the night of 7th April. The docks area was attacked with great accuracy, though residential housing was hit too. The ‘docks raid’, as it became known, was small in comparison to the Easter Raid which followed on the night of 15th April, and the focus of this episode.

Northern Ireland War Memorial - World War II Museum Belfast (niwarmemorial.org)

Delia Murphy - The Spinning Wheel: (4) Delia Murphy - The Spinning Wheel - YouTube

Blitz sound effects: (4) LONDON BLITZ 1940 - ORIGINAL AUDIO - YouTube

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 1:04

I was getting confirmed and traced church and Durham Street and failed fast. And just ran up. But we're in the church now when uh the minister is taking through everything. And the next thing is belt. And the minister says we'll have to stop. And go you have to run, get home as quick as you can, you know. So we've had to run up the rough road to Drew Street. But at the moment, Drew Street and the end of the road, and you remember the deep dungeon park face and had a run through this road. I don't know what your village you are or anything, but it's just the castle. We walked in the house in my way to my weight face. My way to lovely house 14. Oh my god, there's an angel coming to bless us coming to save us.

SPEAKER_00: 2:05

I don't know if the left of the joint American army. I was here j I was the IRP during the blitz. We weren't too bad. It was only two big ex two big explosions. That makes the rest was on the sandry bombs. You just put them through the window. I was here for the big rear. Two big rears. I was here to the reaction. The rear started about eleven o'clock. I put the road. I went to the pass. The red started the stars at one. I got the chromic square. I took off the board backwards. Running off to the ribbon road. And it was taking ice out of the posts. It was starting at the corner of the ribbon road underneath underneath the bridge. And I said, It didn't change, it just put the helmet on and my gas mask, and that was all. And then the raids started then. It didn't end till about five o'clock in the morning. The planes come over and trolls.

SPEAKER_02: 3:59

Those were the voices of Harriet Smith and Terry Dixon giving their account of the Belfast Blitz in 1941 to the Northern Ireland War Memorials Oral History Project. This month's episode of the Historical Belfast Podcast is brought to you in conjunction with the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum on Talbot Street, who have kindly given me access to their oral history archive. I'm also extremely grateful for the research and writing of the late historian Jonathan Barden on this subject, and as such, this episode is dedicated to Dr. Barden. Eighty years ago, in the course of four Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War, lasting 10 hours in total, 1,100 people died, over 56,000 homes were damaged, and 100,000 people were made homeless. The first attack on Belfast came on the night of the 7th of April. The docks area was attacked with great accuracy, though residential housing was hit too. The docks raid, as it became known, was small in comparison to the Easter raid which followed on the night of the 15th of April and the focus of this episode. The Easter raid remains Belfast's single greatest tragedy in its history. Hundreds died and many more were injured. It was the greatest loss of life outside of London in a single night raid during the blitzing of the United Kingdom. Earlier in the day, on that Tuesday, a large crowd had turned out at Windsor Park to watch Lindfield take on distillery. However, few, if any, of the spectators would have noticed a lone Luftwaffe Junker aircraft circling the stadium. So preoccupied would they have been with the game as Lindfield went down 3-1 to the whites. For the first time since the war began, Northern Ireland's capital city was Adolf Hitler's primary target. Some had predicted it would come, but most weren't listening. The reasons for targeting Belfast are plain. Harland and Wolf was one of the largest shipbuilding yards in the world and constructed many ships for the Royal Navy, including aircraft carriers such as HMS Formidable and HMS Unicorn, cruisers such as HMS Belfast and HMS Penelope, as well as 131 other naval vessels. At the same time, Short Brothers made the Short Sunderland Flying Boat and the Short Stirling long-range heavy bomber. Mackeys was a prime supplier of anti-aircraft shells, while the Siracco works at Bridge End produced heating and ventilation equipment for the underground munitions factories in Britain. I've been chatting to Alan Freeburn, who is the collections officer at the Northern Ireland War Memorial, and he elaborated on some of the reasons why Belfast was targeted in 1941.

SPEAKER_01: 6:45

Yeah, so initially Belfast, you know, as the war started, Belfast wasn't really a target. But as the war developed, you know, so you're going through the events of 1939, 1940, through the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, and then into the beginning of the Blitz period, it was inevitable that Belfast was going to be bombed. You know, it made sense for strategically for a number of reasons. It almost it's almost a cliche, you know, but it was targeted primarily for the docks, the bit what we today what we call Belfast Harbour State. You know, so much was concentrated in this area. You know, I when I'm talking to groups, I like to sort of use analogy. You know, it's a bit like a funnel. You know, you've got the whole of Northern Ireland, though, Northern Ireland's um industrial and economic agricultural output, and it's all going through the port of Belfast. So it's all coming through the six counties back through into Belfast. So it's where it all narrows together, and it's all concentrated there. So you obviously had the heavy industries like Hondam Wolf, which at the time was one of the largest shipyards in the UK. So they weren't only there they weren't only building ships, they're obviously repairing and refitting not only ships for the Royal Navy, but also commercial ships as well. Um, you had Schwartz there, Schwartz Aircraft Factory, and there through the war, they produced some of them flying boats and sterling bombers. But there was also a number of other large industries located nearby. So you had the Roadworks on East Belfast, they're on the Conswater, York Street Spinning Mill, and tobacco uh Gallagher's Tobacco Factory in North Belfast. And additionally, all the infrastructure in Belfast too made it a target. So within the harbor state, you had the harbor power station, which is an East Twin Islands. Um you have all their major railway yards. So you have Adelaide, you have what was Great Victoria Street, you have the B C DR there, you have on York Street as well, the LMS there. So there's a lot of you know strategic targets in the area. So all the goods that were produced in Northern Ireland that would have been exported to Great Britain to get the war effort, they would have flowed primarily through the port of Belfast. So as well as that, then the harbour was also a base for trawlers and escort or convoy escorts as well. So there's there's a whole reason why it was targeted, and it was only really with the fall of France where the Luftwaffe were able to occupy airfields in northern France and Belgium and the Low Countries that Belfast came to be within range for the Luftwaffe.

SPEAKER_02: 9:01

Despite this, the Northern Ireland government did not appreciate until it was too late that an aerial attack was possible or even likely. Belfast's defences were hopelessly insufficient, with few anti-aircraft guns, lack of searchlights, too few firemen and air raid wardens, as well as inadequate air raid shelters. Unlike other UK cities, the people of Belfast were physically and psychologically unprepared for an oncoming blitz. And so, after a dull day in Belfast, the sky began to clear on Easter Tuesday evening as 180 German bombers took off from aerodromes in northern France. Their crews had closely studied photographs taken five months previously by a Luftwaffe reconnaissance plane, and they memorized their principal targets. The Verft Harland and Wolf Limited, the Tankstelle Cornswater, Das Flugzeugwerk, Short and Harland, Das Kraftwerk, Belfast, De Grossmühle, Rank and Co. I always knew that my A and G C S E German will come in handy someday. It was never in doubt. Belfast codename was ETAP, which translates from German to mean a stage or a heat of a race. Take from that what you will.

SPEAKER_01: 10:21

Well, Germany it already demonstrated that Belfast was within range. Belfast lock at that point in the summer of 1940 had been frequently mined from the air by the Luftwaffe. And even on one occasion, the Condor even went on to drop incentivary bombs on Bangor in September 1940. So there were there was enemy activity in the skies over Northern Ireland. They were regularly performing reconnaissance fights over the city, taking photos for intelligence, and they identified a number of targets. So funny enough, these target folders survived the war, and they're actually held by the Imperial War Museum. Anyone can go on their website and you can just search um you know Belfast or Target Folder, and you'll see a whole list of the UK-wide of these targets across the UK, but there are Belfast specific ones. So you things they have target folders for places such as Shorts and Horn the Wolf, the power station in the harbour, uh Victoria Barracks, Ranks Floor Mill, and even the waterworks. So these folders obviously are composed of aerial photography, but there's also photographs of the buildings themselves as well. So they're incredibly detailed. Um and it's not just Belfast, you know, these places um also all the airfields across Northern Islands are identified. There's a place like Lorne, Hollywood, which I assume I hadn't actually seen it, but I assume it probably means Palace Barks. Um you have Dunjum, which I assume is probably Bally Kenner without seeing it, and then also Gary as well is also included in these target folders. Additionally, in the museum here at the War Memorial, we hold an original full colour target map of Belfast. So it's actually based on an ordinance survey map of the city. And forgive my German, but it is entitled Stadtplan von Belfast, which I'm pretty sure just translated to City Map of Belfast. And it was used by the Pfla or German intelligence to highlight targets and landmarks to aid their pilots when flying over the city. So on the map, you have those targets that I've already mentioned. So Horn the Wolf, Shorts, uh Palace Barks, but also landmarks things. So a place like City Hall, um, Inst is identified on it, Stormont Coins as well, as are all the main railway stations in Goodyear, so Adelaide, um, what the day is central, the LMS, the BCDR. Um, and it even goes down to identifying each mill in the city. So over all the sort of the rivers and the waterways in West Belfast, there's little purple circles with an I in the middle of it, and they are the mills, so a lot of them West Belfast, lots of them in East Belfast as well. And then again, also the waterworks are identified as well.

SPEAKER_02: 12:51

As they approached the Yards Peninsula, the German raiders dropped to 7,000 feet. The pilots were in high spirits, one remembered. We were in exceptional good humour, knowing that we were going for a new target, one of England's last hiding places. Wherever Winston Churchill is hiding his war material, we will go. Belfast is as worthy a target as Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol, or Glasgow. At 10 40 PM, the Ariath Sirens in Belfast began to wail. The elite Pathfinder Squadron, Kampfgruppe 900, led the first wave of bombers. The city glowed as flares ran down from the sky. These were followed by incendiaries and explosives, including 76 landmines designed to rip through the concrete and steel of factories. They floated down in silky green parachutes onto the cramped housing of Inner North and Inner East Belfast. It is thought that the Germans mistook the waterworks for the docks. The result was terrible destruction and carnage for the new lodge, Antrim Road, Lower Shankle and Newton Horge Road areas. 203 metric tons of bombs and parachute mines, along with 800 firebomb canisters, were cast down by those 180 German bombers. In Varyan Gardens and Van Dyck Gardens, 130 homes were destroyed, and in one house, eight members of the Danby family were killed. York Street spinning mill, the largest of its kind in Europe, was sliced in two. The collapsing six stories obliterated 42 houses in Sussex Street and Veere Street. In Balinure Street, a bomb struck a house and nine people were killed. At the Ulster Hall and Bedford Street, the legendary Irish folk singer and song collector Delia Murphy was in the midst of a performance when the raid began. She continued singing through the bombing raid, perhaps saving many lives, as the sturdy built venue was safer than many of the nearby Air Raid shelters. However, some of her audience decided to take refuge in Percy Street, but a parachute mine fell next to it, and 30 people were killed. At 1.45am, a bomb fell at the corner of Oxford Street and East Bridge Street, wrecking the city's central telephone exchange. All contact with Britain and the anti-aircraft control room was cut off. As a result, the defensive guns now fell silent, too afraid that they might shoot down the RAF's hurricane fighters, which, unbeknown to Belfast, had actually been withdrawn by Fighter Command. For the next two hours, the Luftwaffe attacked Belfast entirely unopposed, with bombs falling at a rate of one every minute. Around 140 fires raged across the city by this point. One eyewitness recalled the sky was red, pure red. You would have thought that someone had set fire to the world. Then, to make matters worse, the water pressure fell away in areas where the pipes had been cracked by explosions. One Luftwaffe pilot described how he saw Belfast. He spoke of whole blocks of buildings set on fire, pouring out smoke, flashes of lightning from exploding bombs coming towards us hundreds of metres in the air. From his home in East Belfast, John Clark McDermott, the Minister of Public Security, watched as flames engulfed the city. At 4 15 am, as he heard the crash of his shattered windows, he crawled under his desk and made arrangements to seek help from Neutral Era. This was not McDermott's first experience of high drama at Easter time. On Easter Monday 1916, he and a friend, Robert Orchard, decided to take a day trip to Dublin, which, as a consequence of the Easter rising, resulted in the two men being stranded in Dublin for a week before walking to Drocada to get a train back to Belfast. At 4 35am, a telegram was sent by Railway Telegraph to Dublin. Eras Taoiseach, Eamon de Villera, was awakened from his sleep by Belfast's plea for help, and he agreed without hesitation to send aid to Northern Ireland. Altogether, 70 men and 13 fire engines from Dublin, Dunleary, Drocheda, and Dundock made their way north.

SPEAKER_01: 17:40

Yeah, so during the Easter raid, the sort of situation was escalating and it's starting to not get out of control, but sort of realise the scale of the problem they're facing. So a message was sent via the Railway Telegraph Service to Dublin about half four in the morning. And the reason why it was sent by the Railway Telegraph Service was because the phone lines had been destroyed. And it was basically sent to Dublin asking for assistance from the Irish Bar Brigades. This message was then related to Tishok, him in Devalea, and he was actually woken up from his sleep and he pondered over it for a bit and he gave authority for the firefighters to cross the border to come to Belfast's aid. The intricacy of it was it was quite a delicate diplomatic matter. Um, you know, Ireland were still trying to maintain the impression of strict neutrality um sort of between the German the Germans and the Allied powers as well. But eventually, 70 men on 13 fire engines came from Dublin, Dundalk, Chocoda, and Dunere. Um and they crossed the border. Now it's it I think it's important to stress these men were all volunteers. They all volunteered and they were reassured before leaving that their pensions were still eligible in the event of injury or death uh when they were in Belfast as well. So when they left, they were the roadblocks were ordered to be moved to quicken their journey. And there's a count of them speeding through Lisbon um on the way to Belfast at about 60 miles per hour with flights on masks. So they first left Dublin, I think, at I think it was quarter about quarter past six in the morning, and they were in Belfast for just shortly after nine o'clock. So I think it's 9:20. So about three hours later, they were there, which is pretty good going, even by today's standards. You know, never mind the fact they were crossing the international border, they had a blackout to contend with. And even then, you know, this is 1941. You know, they weren't they weren't exactly flying up the road, but um, it was pretty good going, even by today's standards. So they stayed all day. Um, they were requested, they were asked to see if they could stay and help overnight with the what was remaining of the fires and had to put them out. But the their decision was made in the evening following the raid that the southern units were to return home because they were fearful that there were you know there could be a fallout raid the next night on Belfast, and they didn't want you know a diplomatic fallout, let's say, of um Dubliners or uh the people from Maine from Dundalk, a man from the south, to be killed by a German bomb in Belfast. You know, it would have created a sort of a diplomatic issue, I'd say. So they were went back down um home that night. Additionally, there was a crash evacuation after the raid. People fleeing Belfast, a lot of people getting on the train going um down south as well. So the Irish Red Cross provided humanitarian aid, so they welcomed and accommodated lots of evacuees from Belfast at the train stations at the Dock, Johora, and in Dublin as well.

SPEAKER_02: 20:16

As they approached the outskirts of the city, the southern firemen saw smoke and flames rising hundreds of feet into the air. Horrified by the carnage, John Smith, Belfast's chief fire officer, was found beneath a table in the Chichester Street Fire Station, weeping and refusing to come out. Smith was not the only one to be crippled by fear. An American man seconded to Short and Harland by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, was far from impressed by his fellow workers. In a letter to his parents in California, he wrote You've heard about how tough the Irish are. Well all I can say is that the tough Irish must come from Southern Ireland because the boys up in Northern Ireland are a bunch of chicken shit yellow bastards. 90% of them left everything and ran like hell. Short and Harlands, the aircraft factory that built Stirlings here, had 300 volunteer firefighters in the plant. After the raid, they were lucky to get 90 of them. In light of this quote, I asked Alan Freeburn to elaborate on how individuals and authorities responded during the Easter raid.

SPEAKER_01: 21:26

There was certainly systematic or institutionalized failures. Um it's not a coincidence that the fire chief, John Smith, was replaced with Ben White, who was previously the chief of the auxiliary fire service immediately following the Easter Chief Raid. Um, Smith was reported to have been found crying under his desk at his headquarters on Chichester Street during the raid. Um but at the same time, you know, the fire service, they were more limited by their equipment. You know, their equipment in Belfast wasn't standardized, and there wasn't enough hose length to reach the lagon. It was only when the fire, the relief fire service from you know Glasgow and Liverpool that came over that they had enough hose length to reach the lagon to help with the water flow. Um I know it's an issue that the southern firemen they encountered, you know, not only did their equipment not match their northern counterparts, but even you know, different stations in Belfast didn't have the same equipment either. So it was it's really flawed by that. You know, there's also reports before the Blitz that there wasn't enough firemen, you know, they were on a recruitment drive. But even then they were they say they were the double in size, you know, they only recruited half of those that they were allowed to recruit. So there wasn't there wasn't enough firemen either for certainly an event or a raid that scaled off these issues they raid. Saying that though, there were you know there were a number of firemen who did leave Northern Ireland early in 1941, so they went to initially I think it's January, February 1941. They went to London initially, and then they went to the southwest. So they were in, I think off the top of my head, they were in Plymouth getting training of real, real, real blitz experience. So they I know there's certainly one man, um, we have his diary here on the loan at the minute in the museum, and he was a part of it, and he went there and he came back and he's kept his diary. He talks about the the real he was based up in Ardoyne fire station, and actually the fire engine he actually drove is uh is on display actually at the minute, or on permanent display, rather, I should say, at the transport museum over in Colchor as well. But I mentioned previously that you know the fire chief was replaced with with um the chief of the auxiliary fire service just to reinforce that sort of sense of sort of institutional failure. After the May raid, I know we're concentrating on the institution raid, but after the fire raid in May, the the deputy um ARP officer for Frank Hazlitt he replaced the ARP officer for Belfast, who was a major Hamill. Um and he as I say he rather euphemistically retired and retired in sort of speech marks. Um and he was replaced by his deputy, Frank Hazlit, volunteer reads in May. So there were you know lessons that were learned and things weren't done right, let's say, and there wasn't the right leadership and things like that as well. But I think it's also important to remember that you know the majority of these men and women have volunteered for the civil defense services. They they were volunteers, you know, not that many of them were in prepared professional roles. And you don't, you know, you like to think, you know, people like you or myself, you know, we were in that situation, you know, you like to think how you would react, but you you know, you you won't know about ever having gone through it yourself. So as a volunteer, and you're looking after your local area as well, you know, your sort of first thought would probably just kind of put yourself in their shoes, you know, your first thought is going to be, you know, your own family and looking after them and things as well. But I know there are stories of uh air raid wardens sloping off or firemen on the way or John Smith hiding under his desk and such, but several people were commended for their brewery during the Easter Shoes Day raid. Um, yeah, there's a number of RUC officers who were commended, and there were a number, again, a number of ARP messengers, and these ARP messengers were young boys, they were um boys who'd volunteered from the uh Boys Brigade or the Scouts on their bicycles to run messages between ARP posts uh or their their headquarters. Um again, members of the Exilary Fire Service and air raid wardens, they were also commended for their their deeds and their rivery during that raid as well.

SPEAKER_02: 25:22

At 4 55 AM on Wednesday the 16th of April, the all clear finally sounded. At dawn a thick yellow pall covered Belfast as exhausted air raid wardens, firefighters, and ambulance men clawed at the rubble to retrieve survivors. The writer Sam Hannibal remembered, we wrestled with street doors blown halfway down hallways. From under the stairs of a house we extracted an old woman, still clutching a miniature union jack. Corpses and severed limbs were piled high onto British Army lorries. Many of the dead were brought to the public baths on the Falls Road. As more arrived, the pool was emptied so that 150 corpses could be laid out. One attendant at the Falls Road Bath remembered how one coffin contained a young mother with her two dead children, one in each arm. One lovely girl of sixteen lay in a coffin in her white confirmation robe with blue silk ribbon and black hair. Thinking back to the oral testimony at the beginning of this episode, that could so easily have been Harriet Smith there in her confirmation dress. Elsewhere, 255 corpses were laid out in St. George's Market. I asked Alan Freeburn to elaborate on the process for dealing with the dead of the Blitz.

SPEAKER_01: 26:40

Yep, so as the raid progressed and in the aftermath of the raid, private mortaries like Melville's on the Townsend Street, Legombank Mortary, and even the mortaries in the hospitals, so at the Mator at the Union Infirmary, they were full. So bodies were taken to St. George's Market and to the public baths on the Falls Road and St. Peter's Hill as well. So the bodies were laid out in these places, and the public were asked, basically invited to come in and identify the bodies that were there. Um there's a good account in Emma Duffin's diary. Um she was a VAD nurse based out at Strand Millis, and she sort of recorded her diary about the processes in George's Market, and she talks about how in St. George's Market, men um coffins of men inside them were laid out on one side of the market and women and children on the other. And only small groups of the public were allowed to come around at one time. So nurses and the men and women who volunteered at the market, um, I assume they were self-defense volunteers, they would have gone around with each group of the public and would have lifted the lids off a coffin for the public to try and identify who was inside it. So she says there was there was men watering the ground with disinfectant from watering pots. And she notes it was a wise precaution as the place smelt. Um and as each person was identified, the nurses would have put the name of the body on the coffin and it was removed to the side to be taken away by their relatives for burial. Um she notes that on some coffins the notes were written in chalk, such as where the body was found, maybe a rough description of who or what they contained. So it's important to remember that something how sort of gruesome and awful it would have been. You know, in these coffins it wouldn't have been whole bodies. There's reports of particularly charred bodies as well, maybe a human hand or you know, human remains. Uh it's it's not sometimes not very pleasant reading, actually. It's hard to imagine just what it would have what it would have been like. Um at the Falls of Roadbath, it's the same sort of process. You know, when space ran out as though there, the actual swimming pool was drained, and the bodies were let out on the bottom of the pool as well. The public invited to come in unidentified. And I know Jimmy Doherty, um, he was there for a bit um helping to he was an airing warden in North Belfast trying to help people identify their relatives or the people who were unidentified at that point. I know he mentions um when he arrived at that there was a human hand just waiting sitting at the door. You know, it wasn't associated with anything, it's just that was his first sight when he arrived there to help out. But the thing was, after a few days, um, for health and sanitation reasons, um, the bodies lay for identification for five days. And on the 21st of April, those that were not identified or claimed, they were taken away to be buried in mass graves. There are three mass graves in Belfast for those killed in the Blitz. There is one at Milltown, and there are two at Belfast City Cemetery. So there's one at City Cemetery for those who are unidentified and unclaimed, and there is another for those who were identified but were not claimed by their relatives. So that might be because maybe the relatives didn't have the means for private burial, or maybe there was a fact that maybe a whole family were killed, and there was nobody to claim the burial or the bodies anymore. Um and the way that sort of identified was if there's any sort of religious items, if there's a crucifix or anything else, they would have gone to Milton and been buried in Milltown. So there are a number of bodies. I know in Bethel City Cemetery, sorry, there are 154 unidentified um and 123 of these. Are from the Easter Tuesday raid, and 31 are from the May raid, and then there are 34 victims that are unclaimed buried in the mass grave of the city sanctuary as well. I just want to throw out as well, though, that for the Easter Tuesday raid, you sort of see the figure of there was about 900 or 1,000 people killed during this raid. But that figure has been inflated over the years. I don't know, you know, I don't I don't know where originally from, but it's it's it's not that high. There's about just a short of a thousand people killed altogether over the over the Belfast Blits, and that includes those who were killed in New Nords and in Bangor and in Derry as well. But for the Easter Tuesday raid, there were about it's between 748 and 750 people that died a result of enemy action on Easter Tuesday. And then, as I said, with just under a thousand people across the whole of the four raids or across Northern Ireland died across the four raids as opposed to more.

SPEAKER_02: 30:58

Meanwhile, widespread looting and panic reigned. One of those interviewed for the NI War Memorial's oral history project, Tom Hammer, lightheartedly recalled how as a nine-year-old boy he endeavoured to make the most of the situation.

SPEAKER_03: 31:14

McKenna and McGinley was hit on Dever Street. It was a big bottling firm, you know. Uh Soul Lemonade. I remember it getting hit. But that was about um five or six hundred metres away from us, you know. Shaking, you know. The sky was lit up, completely lit up of an orange. New name the colour, it was in the sky that that night. The very next night we were first on the scene. I was uh I was about 9 a.m. Coming nine. And the first thing we did about five or six of us went down into this place in Devast. There was a store, a toy store. It was either in the corner of uh Farden Street or College Court, I think there was one called, led on to Castle Street, it got a direct hit. And we had the answer that there as nine and ten year olds along a fifteen-foot wall at the rear of the premises, and there we scrambled all through the rubble. I found little led soldiers on a card. There was about nine or ten on a card, uh, building blocks, uh, even dolls, you know, little girls' dolls, and toys of every description, and there I was filling. I had a jargon on, jargon was really thing, corduroy jargon with a zip on it, and I had the zip down and loaded, floated with all the toys, pulled up the zip, backtracked along the 15-foot wall at the rear of the premises, and scarbored home with all the toys.

SPEAKER_05: 32:54

That was exciting. That was exciting.

SPEAKER_03: 32:56

So that was an adventure. That's why I didn't mind the war. And a few or uh one or two bricks as you were walking, edging your way along the wall, one or two bricks would fall out. Made the journey all the more huddles on the way back again.

SPEAKER_00: 33:09

And what what did you do with all the toys?

SPEAKER_03: 33:12

Well, I played with them. And I think I sold some of them too, you know. Um I remember selling to the fella next door, he was the same age as myself, uh, called uh Sean Ealy. And I remember selling him a little cart of soldiers for six months. That was six pence, which are two and a half pence by the des money. So he got a cart of soldiers for six pence.

SPEAKER_02: 33:33

In the 24 hours after the Easter raid, 220,000 people fled the city. Around 6,000 terrified people arrived in Dublin from Belfast, including an air raid warden still wearing his helmet. In the days that followed, tens of thousands poured out of the city for the countryside. Children clutched their favourite dollies, many brought with them their pets from budry guards to tabbies, reported the Belfast Telegraph. It was an en masse exodus. It introduced those in the countryside to the extreme deprivation of the people from Belfast. Moya Woodside's sister, living 30 miles from Belfast, complained of the quote, appalling influx from the slums the day after the raid. The whole town is horrified by the filth of these evacuees and by their filthy habits and take-it-for-granted attitude. The smell is awful. They don't even use the lavatory. They just do it on the floor. Grown-ups and children. Of those that stayed in Belfast, 40,000 had to be put up in rest centres, while 70,000 had to be fed in emergency feeding centres. However, the official response of the authorities to the crisis was, on the whole, underwhelming. One reaction from the Ministry of Public Security was to issue an order on the 19th of April to, quote, destroy all dangerous animals at the zoo immediately. Consequently, two RUC marksmen were dispatched to Bellevue Zoo. The head keeper, a man called Dick Foster, stood by with tears streaming down his face as the executioners proceeded from cage to cage, dispatching the animals. 33 in total, as well as a vulture. On the following Monday, many of the unclaimed dead were buried in mass graves. Protestants in the city cemetery, and Catholics identified by rosary beads and other emblems in Milltown Cemetery close by. On this, the 80th anniversary of the Belfast Blitz, the Northern Ireland War Memorial have organised an exciting programme of events. I asked Alan to tell us about the plans.

SPEAKER_01: 35:43

Yeah, so obviously our usual preparations are what we usually would have done for the anniversary of the Blitz, which you mark every year, has been affected by COVID. But this year we are going to have a private wreath line ceremony at the mass graves at Milltown and the Belfast City Cemetery. And again, there is a memorial in the museum. We'll have a private wreath line ceremony there. All being well. Our new website will have launched by then, hopefully. And on that, there'll be a memorial page to the victims containing a short biography of the victims. And where available there will be a photo as well. So it's just not, you know, it's not just going to be a list of names in the previous cases. It is there actually is a bit more personal, a little bit more about the person. And in some cases, there'll be a you'll be able to put a face to the name as well. We are also reprinting the names in of all those who were killed in the Blitz in the major papers. So in the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News, and the newsletter, just like the just like the death notices basically were at the time, you know, as a result of every action, and then you would have had the names listed and the family notices basically as well. Um, additionally, we have uh a couple of partnerships on the go at the minute as well. Um, firstly, worth mentioning is we have a lecture series with the public records office. Um, so it'll be looking at different aspects of the blitz, including the victims. Um Emma Duffin I've met about, um the firemen who we've talked about as well, and what sources exist at the public records office and in Prony, along with what NI Screen holds as well. On top of that, the second project that we have launched this year, I'm sure maybe some people have seen it as well, is we have started working with the geography department at Queen's University on that map that I was talking about earlier, the Luftwaffe map, the Stadman von Belfast, to plot. Um, basically it's gonna be an open open source um web map of, and it's that that Luftwaffe map is gonna be the base layer. So on that map, we are plotting the victims of the Belfast Blitz. So it's gonna give you know a different visual representation of how Belfast was affected, and it's it's as well as that, there are a number of different layers we're looking to add to that as well, including photographs, um, aerial photographs as well, just to show how Belfast was affected, both physically but and how the people of Belfast were affected as well. So it's it's still in its early days, um, but it is ongoing at the minute. Um, additionally, as that we also have a couple of sort of craft packs as such that we have released as well. So the first one is a pack for primary schools that's full of um facts and firsthand accounts and craft activities as well. So it's designed for primary school for teachers to pick up for their classes for their school children who have just came back this week. And then as well as that, there are reminiscence packs for community groups and care homes. So within that, there are again there are you know um crafts, first hand accounts and facts and so on, but there are also a CD of songs and spoken memories as well. So we're really trying to target all the different sort of audiences we can, um, particularly trying to overcome the barriers that COVID has obviously brought this year, um, trying to get around that as much as possible.

unknown: 38:59

Merily, cheerily, noiselessly we ring swing.

SPEAKER_02: 39:04

Thank you as ever for listening to this edition of the Historical Belfast Podcast. If you enjoyed it, I would encourage you to check out the previous 12 episodes and share them on your social media. Also remember to leave a review if you're listening on platforms like Apple Podcasts. It helps me get up the charts and get the podcast uh to the people who need to hear it. My thanks again to the Northern Ireland War Memorial for working with me on this episode, and I hope to see some of you down at the museum as soon as the circumstances permit it.

SPEAKER_04: 39:41

The maid shakes her head on, her lip plays her fingers, steals up from the seat, lungs to go and yet lingers, a frightened glance stands on our drowsy grandmother, puts one foot on the stool, spins the wheel with the others. Now the wheel round, slowly and noise, heard now the wheel sounds, noiseless and light to the latches above her. The maid creeps the lips to the arms of the lover. Noise, noise, no the wheel swings, noise, no the ring rings, and the ring and the wheels stop the ring moving through the growing love.