The German air raids on Belfast of April and May 1941, and their consequences
type: CreativeWork
description: To the ordinary man in the street, Tuesday 8th April 1941 was going to be like any other wartime day in Belfast. Business would be carried on just as usual. The normal routine of going to work, coming home, going out in the evening would remain undisturbed. The war in fact seemed a long way off. The "Blitz" was something which happened in London or Coventry or Merseyside or Glasgow and which one read about in the "Belfast Telegraph" or saw on the newsreels at the cinema. The "Northern Whig" had been trying for a long time to make people aware that it could happen in Belfast; the Government had been doing its share of warning but the general attitude was "why take any notice?". Despite the warnings and the Civil Defence exercises the sirens had only blown for false alarms. Belfast after all was a long way off from mainland Europe and had totally escaped the Autumn "Blitz" of 1940. Tuesday the 8th April was to see that complacency shattered for the first time. The harsh reality of war was to visit Belfast in the way it had visited almost every other major urban area in the United Kingdom at some time in the last eight or nine months. The day had been pleasant and in the late evening there was an air of bustle in the blacked-out streets as playgoers, cinema and dance hall fans made their way homewards. Hundreds of dimmed torch lights weaved their way through the streets; the last dark ghost-like trams ground their way noisily to their destinations. Here end there could be seen a chink of light as doors opened or as people had forgotten to pull down their blinds. Suddenly the sirens walled. Buses, trams, even the trains stopped. Was this to be yet another false alarm? The wardens who had received prior warning had difficulty at first persuading people to go to the shelters. Most people just remained in their houses but thousands came out into the streets just to watch. A short time after the siren came the truth. This was not a false alarm but the real thing - a raid. S…
abstract: To the ordinary man in the street, Tuesday 8th April 1941 was going to be like any other wartime day in Belfast. Business would be carried on just as usual. The normal routine of going to work, coming home, going out in the evening would remain undisturbed. The war in fact seemed a long way off. The "Blitz" was something which happened in London or Coventry or Merseyside or Glasgow and which one read about in the "Belfast Telegraph" or saw on the newsreels at the cinema. The "Northern Whig" had been trying for a long time to make people aware that it could happen in Belfast; the Government had been doing its share of warning but the general attitude was "why take any notice?". Despite the warnings and the Civil Defence exercises the sirens had only blown for false alarms. Belfast after all was a long way off from mainland Europe and had totally escaped the Autumn "Blitz" of 1940. Tuesday the 8th April was to see that complacency shattered for the first time. The harsh reality of war was to visit Belfast in the way it had visited almost every other major urban area in the United Kingdom at some time in the last eight or nine months. The day had been pleasant and in the late evening there was an air of bustle in the blacked-out streets as playgoers, cinema and dance hall fans made their way homewards. Hundreds of dimmed torch lights weaved their way through the streets; the last dark ghost-like trams ground their way noisily to their destinations. Here end there could be seen a chink of light as doors opened or as people had forgotten to pull down their blinds. Suddenly the sirens walled. Buses, trams, even the trains stopped. Was this to be yet another false alarm? The wardens who had received prior warning had difficulty at first persuading people to go to the shelters. Most people just remained in their houses but thousands came out into the streets just to watch. A short time after the siren came the truth. This was not a false alarm but the real thing - a raid. S…
author: Davison, Robson Sinclair
language: eng
date published: 1979
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:55:18Z
provider: Queen's University Belfast
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Queen's University Belfast