On the mild clear night of April 15th, 1941, 13-yearold Sammy McBride left the cinema and headed home to north Belfast. It was Easter Tuesday, and as a treat Sammy had been allowed to visit the city's Alhambra Theatre, where he had laughed until he cried at the antics of Laurel and Hardy in the movie Saps At Sea. It was around 10.30 p.m.
"As I was crossing Royal Avenue someone said to me that they were expecting a raid," remembers Sammy, now 74. "But at that age the world is your oyster. I dandered along at my own speed."
He made his way to the home of a family friend on the Shankill Road. "She said to me: `You had better hurry home son, they think it is going to be bad' . . . I got on the old tram and as I was passing the top of the Crumlin Road an incendiary fell in front of the Holy Cross chapel. The bombs started falling then. It lent wings to your legs, and I set off home to the Ardoyne like a jet-propelled," he recalls.
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the worst of three raids the Luftwaffe made on Belfast between April 7th and May 5th. During these attacks 56,000 homes were destroyed and just over 1,000 people killed. Thirteen lost their lives in the first raid on April 7th and almost 200 perished when 205 German bombers dropped 237 tons of high explosives in the final raid on the city on May 5th.
The five-hour Easter attack began at around 11.30 p.m. on April 15th and continued through the early hours of the next morning, leaving a trail of destruction and a death toll of around 800 in a city declared the most undefended in the United Kingdom. More than 100,000 people were to flee Belfast after the attacks.
Later a Luftwaffe pilot described for German radio listeners the mood before the raids: "We were in exceptional good humour knowing that we were going for a new target, one of England's last hiding places. Wherever Churchill is hiding his war material we will go . . . Belfast is as worthy a target as Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol or Glasgow."
In the event it was the residential areas of north and east Belfast that endured the brunt of the bombing. Derry and Bangor were also hit in a bombardment causing death and extensive damage to lives, property and industry.
NORTHERN Ireland was totally unprepared. There were no fighter squadrons, no balloon barrage and only 20 anti-aircraft guns when the war began. Crucially, there were only four large public air raid shelters in Belfast and none in the rest of Northern Ireland.
Edmund Warnock, secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs, summed up the official attitude to the possibility of a German attack as Hitler advanced across the Western Front: "The government has been slack, dilatory and apathetic," he said. Commentators have noted that the preparation of the government of the day amounted to the execution of 32 potentially dangerous animals in Belfast Zoo, the blackening of the Stormont parliament building and the sandbagging of the Edward Carson statue outside it.
Sammy McBride and his family emerged from their home the morning after the Easter raid unscathed, having crouched all night under the stairs, like many scared citizens of Belfast, listening in terror as the high explosive bombs, incendiaries and parachute mines rained down.
Whole rows of terraced houses were obliterated, and there was carnage in the Antrim Road and New Lodge areas.
In the air raid shelters, Catholic and Protestant youths were reported to have taunted each other at first with rival songs and slogans. But when the worst of the explosions were heard both sides began singing Oh God Our Help In Ages Past and Nearer My God To Thee. When a bomb fell 15 feet from one air raid shelter on Percy Street, the walls and the roof were blown off. Thirty people died.
Bombs rained down all over the city. York Street Mill, one of the largest in Europe, was split in two. It fell on to two nearby streets; 170 people were injured and 46 killed. Another bomb hit the telephone exchange on the corner of Oxford Street and East Bridge Street, cutting off all contact with Britain and the anti-aircraft operations control room.
Dr Eamon Phoenix, political historian and senior lecturer at Stranmillis College in Belfast, said the massive raid of 180 bombers resulted in the highest mortality rate of any city in Britain and Ireland, outside of London. "There were mass burials . . . Before that the bodies were removed to the Falls Bath. The swimming pool was drained and the bodies laid out there and in George's Market to be claimed," he said.
At around 4.30 a.m., as the corpses were piled on to army lorries and Belfast glowed in the light of more than 100 fires, a telegram was sent to Dublin requesting assistance. Eamon de Valera, who had been woken up when the telegram arrived, agreed and within two hours 70 men and 13 fire engines were on their way from Dublin, Dun Laoghaire, Dundalk and Drogheda.
Historian Brian Barton, author of The Blitz, Belfast in the War Years, said the decision was viewed as a "courageous and generous response" given Irish neutrality.
The Irish Times of April 21st, 1941, reported de Valera commenting on the raid while making a speech in Castlebar, Co Mayo. He said help had been given "wholeheartedly . . . They are all our people". An hour after the May 5th raid began - this attack devastated around two-thirds of the Harland and Wolff shipyard - fire crews were again sent from Dublin and Dundalk.
Last week, in the run-up to the anniversary of the Easter raids, survivors of the Belfast blitz have been reliving the nightmare through the media. BBC Northern Ireland transmitted nightly programmes, culminating in a 90-minute re-creation of events on Friday night.
A former Luftwaffe pilot, Gerhard Becker, now aged 85, who led the bombardment of Belfast, was one contributor to these programmes. He still had his personal logbook from the time and described circling the city in May, before bombing the docks area.
"It was attacked as a military target but, with the bad weather, it was hard to make out the docks and port . . . I accept that also very many bombs would have fallen on residential areas," he said, adding that war was the worst thing that could happen to mankind.
The 60th anniversary has spawned many wartime testimonies. Writing to the Belfast News Letter, St Clair McAlister recorded his parents' story. During the first raid, their home off the Shore Road was destroyed and, while they managed to move into another house nearby, that was also wiped out in the next major raid.
"Again they were left with only the clothes they stood up in," wrote McAlister. "They could have been forgiven for thinking Hitler had some personal dislike".
Another correspondent, John Alex Martin, lived on a farm in Donaghadee and recalled how "we were left without our roofs, doors or windows. The brick wall between my parents and my bedroom broke off and came down on myself and a neighbour lad in the bed". Somehow they were uninjured, but the legs of the bed came through the ceiling.
That year he ploughed up two incendiaries, which he still has. "Father made lovely halters from parachute ropes and mother underclothes from the parachutes, lovely pale blue silk," he remembered.
Speaking to The Irish Times this week Ms Mary McLeland, aged 88, who lived on the Woodvale estate in Belfast, remembered the "spirit of togetherness" as Protestant and Catholic neighbours helped each other through the horror of the raids.
"We were all brothers and sisters in it," she said. "When Clonard Monastery opened its doors to offer shelter they didn't ask where you were from."