Belfast — the Blitz of April and May 1941
7 April – 5 May 1941 · Belfast, County Antrim
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- 7 April – 5 May 1941
- Record type
- Historic bombing area
- Bomb type
- mixed
- Location
- Belfast, County Antrim
- Position accuracy
- Confirmed event, area-level point only (exact site not verified)
What happened
Belfast was raided four times in 1941. The Easter Tuesday attack of 15–16 April was the worst: around 180 bombers struck a city with almost no anti-aircraft defence, no night fighters and one of the lowest shelter provisions in the United Kingdom. On the night of 4–5 May the Luftwaffe returned with 203 tonnes of high explosive, 80 parachute mines and 96,000 incendiaries, and burned the Harbour Estate.
Casualty note
Published totals for 15–16 April 1941 conflict and are recorded here rather than resolved: approximately 987 dead (Wikipedia), over 900 (WartimeNI archives), and almost 750 killed or later died of wounds (NI War Memorial). More than 1,500 were injured, 55,000 houses damaged and 100,000 people left temporarily homeless. The Fire Raid of 4–5 May killed over 200 more. ALL of these are city-wide totals and belong to no single location. Individual sites with published tolls that could not be plotted because no coordinate was obtainable and several of the streets no longer exist: Hogarth Street, 70; Ohio Street and Heather Street, 60 or more; Percy Street shelter, possibly 40; Atlantic Avenue shelter, 38; Church of the Holy Trinity, Unity Street, 17 to a parachute mine; 4 Ballynure Street, 14 in one house, eight of them one family; Burke Street, all twenty houses flattened and all occupants killed, number unstated. A mill wall collapse killed around 35 — sources place this at the York Street Mill and in the New Lodge, and it may be one incident counted twice.
Also worth knowing
Éire was neutral, but on the morning of 16 April Taoiseach Éamon de Valera sent fire brigades north from Dublin, Dún Laoghaire, Drogheda and Dundalk to help. Belfast's own defences were so thin that the city had only around 20 anti-aircraft guns in place on Easter Tuesday.