The
Liverpool Blitz was the
heavy and sustained bombingThe Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II. While the Blitz hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 consecutive nights...
of the city of
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and its surrounding area, in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, during the Second World War by the
GermanNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
LuftwaffeLuftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1933 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956.Schweizer Luftwaffe is also the name of the Swiss Air...
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
,
BootleBootle is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, in Merseyside, England. It is
4 miles to the north of Liverpool city centre, and has a total resident population of 77,640....
and
WirralWirral or the Wirral is a peninsula in North West England. It is bounded to the west by the River Dee, which forms the boundary with Wales, and to the east by the River Mersey. Both terms "Wirral" and "the Wirral" are used locally , although the merits of each form are the subject of local...
were the most heavily bombed areas of the country outside of
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, due to their importance in the British war effort. The government was desperate to hide from the Germans just how much damage they had wreaked on the ports and so reports on the bombing of the area were deliberately kept low-key.
The
Liverpool Blitz was the
heavy and sustained bombingThe Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II. While the Blitz hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 consecutive nights...
of the city of
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and its surrounding area, in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, during the Second World War by the
GermanNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
LuftwaffeLuftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1933 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956.Schweizer Luftwaffe is also the name of the Swiss Air...
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
,
BootleBootle is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, in Merseyside, England. It is
4 miles to the north of Liverpool city centre, and has a total resident population of 77,640....
and
WirralWirral or the Wirral is a peninsula in North West England. It is bounded to the west by the River Dee, which forms the boundary with Wales, and to the east by the River Mersey. Both terms "Wirral" and "the Wirral" are used locally , although the merits of each form are the subject of local...
were the most heavily bombed areas of the country outside of
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, due to their importance in the British war effort. The government was desperate to hide from the Germans just how much damage they had wreaked on the ports and so reports on the bombing of the area were deliberately kept low-key. Over 4,000
LiverpudliansLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
lost their lives during the blitz, dwarfing the number of casualties sustained in other bombed industrial areas such as
BirminghamThe Birmingham Blitz was the heavy bombing by the Nazi German Luftwaffe of the city of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, beginning on August 9, 1940 and ending on April 23, 1943.-Damage:...
and
CoventryThe Coventry blitz was a series of bombing raids that took place in the English city of Coventry. The city was bombed many times during World War II by the Nazi German Air Force...
. This death toll was second only to
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, which over a more sustained period suffered 30,000 deaths by the end of the war.
Liverpool, Bootle and the
Wallasey PoolWallasey Pool was a natural tidal inlet of water that separated the towns of Wallasey and Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula, England. Originally flowing directly into the River Mersey, it was converted into the sophisticated Birkenhead Dock system from the 1820s onwards by land reclamation, with...
were
strategically very importantStrategic bombing during World War II is a term which refers to all aerial bombardment of a strategic nature, which took place between 1939 and 1945, involving any nations engaged in World War II...
locations during the Second World War. The large port on the
River MerseyThe River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....
, on the north west coast of England, had for many years been the United Kingdom's main link with American destinations and this would prove to be a key part in the British participation in the
Battle of the AtlanticThe Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaignof World War II,...
. As well as providing anchorage for naval ships from many nations, the Mersey's ports and dockers would handle over 90% of all the war material brought into Britain from abroad, with some 75 million tons passing through its of quays.
Preparations for war
The
evacuation of childrenEvacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II were designed to save the population of urban or military areas from Nazi German aerial bombing of cities and military targets such as docks. Civilians, particularly children, were moved to rural areas thought to be less at risk...
at the start of the war, in September 1939, was a pre-emptive measure to save the population of urban or military areas from German aerial bombing. The evacuations were organised by the Liverpool Corporation and though some children were transported to smaller towns nearby, many went to rural areas in
North WalesNorth Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales, bordered to the south by Mid Wales and to the east by England.It comprises the island of Anglesey, the Llŷn peninsula and the Snowdonia mountain range, together with the catchments of the Rivers Conwy, Clwyd and Dee with the River Dyfi...
and
CheshireCheshire ; also known, archaically, as the County of Chester) is a ceremonial county in North West England. The traditional county town is the city of Chester, although Cheshire's largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Widnes, Runcorn, Macclesfield,...
.
The Christmas blitz
The first major air raid attacks began towards the end of 1940 against Liverpool and Wirral, with over 300 casualties sustained to air raids by the end of the year. 365 people were killed between 20 – 22 December often due to direct hits on air raid shelters; for example one shelter in Durning Road was destroyed with the loss of 166 lives and in the north of the city, 40 died when a bomb struck railway arches on Bentinck Street, where local people were sheltering.
The bombing decreased in severity after the New Year.
The May blitz
The first bomb landed upon
WallaseyWallasey is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England, on the mouth of the River Mersey, at the northeastern corner of the Wirral Peninsula...
, Wirral, at 22:15 on 1 May. The peak of the bombing occurred from 1 – 7 May 1941. It involved 681
LuftwaffeLuftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1933 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956.Schweizer Luftwaffe is also the name of the Swiss Air...
bombers; 2,315 high explosive bombs and 119 other explosives such as incendiaries were dropped. Half of the docks were put out of action inflicting 2,895 casualties and left many more homeless.
One incident on 3 May involved the
SS MalakandSS Malakand has been the name of at least two ships, both of the Brocklebank shipping line, named after the Malakand area of the Indian sub-continent.One SS Malakand was a 7,000-ton cargo liner built by Harland & Wolff in 1905...
, berthed in the
Huskisson DockHuskisson Dock is a dock on the River Mersey, England which forms part of the Port of Liverpool. It is situated in the northern dock system in Kirkdale. Huskisson Dock consists of a main basin nearest the river wall and two branch docks to the east...
, which was set alight by a
barrage balloonA barrage balloon is a large balloon tethered with metal cables, used to defend against low-level attack by aircraft by damaging the aircraft on collision with the cables, or at least making the attacker's approach more difficult. Some versions carried small explosive charges that would be pulled...
that had somehow drifted free and had caught upon the ships upperworks. Despite valiant efforts by the fire brigade to extinguish the flames, the fire spread to the ship's cargo of 1,000 tons of bombs which exploded. The blast destroyed the dock itself and caused a huge amount of damage to the surrounding quays. The explosion was so violent that some pieces of the ship's hull plating were blasted into a park over away; fortunately, casualties were few.
BootleBootle is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, in Merseyside, England. It is
4 miles to the north of Liverpool city centre, and has a total resident population of 77,640....
, to the north of the city, suffered heavy damage and loss of life. Over 6,500 homes in
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
were completely demolished by bombing and a further 190,000 damaged.
Today one of the most vivid symbols of the Liverpool Blitz is the burnt outer shell of
St Luke's ChurchSt Luke's Church in Liverpool, England, is located on the corner of Berry Street and Leece Street opposite the top of Bold Street. It was designed by John Foster, and construction of the building began on 9 April 1811, with consecration taking place on 12 January 1831.On Monday, 5 May 1941, St...
, located in the city centre, which was destroyed by an incendiary bomb on 5 May 1941. The church was gutted during the
firebombingFirebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs....
but remained standing and, in its prominent position in the city, was a stark reminder of what Liverpool and the surrounding area had endured. It eventually became a garden of remembrance to commemorate the thousands of local men, women and children who died as a result of the bombing of their city and region.
Those dark days had also been illuminated, too, by bright flashes of heroism. Heroism such as was displayed by a group of ten LMS railwaymen who, heedlessly, took their lives into their hands when, on the night of May 3, an ammunition train in a siding at Clubmoor was set alight. A 34 year old goods guard, George Roberts GM , was later awarded the George Medal in recognition of the leading part which he played in this heroic mass life saving affair, All along the train wagons were exploding, but the men calmly uncoupled the rear section before the flames had spread to it and shunted it out of danger. 34 year old John Guinan, though officially off duty, rushed from his home in nearby Witton Road to the scene of the disaster, and continued uncoupling wagons despite repeated and violent explosions. Signalman Peter Stringer also displayed remarkable courage for, after being blown from his signal-box, he went grimly back to it to get on with the dangerous and complicated job of shunting.
1942
The last German air-raid on Liverpool took place on 10 January 1942, destroying several houses on Upper Stanhope Street. By a quirk of fate one of the houses destroyed was number 102, which had been the home of Alois Hitler Jr., half brother of
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
and the birthplace of Hitler's nephew,
William Patrick HitlerWilliam Patrick "Willy" Hitler was the nephew of Adolf Hitler. Born to Adolf's half-brother Alois Hitler, Jr., and his first wife Bridget Dowling, William later moved to Germany and subsequently escaped, eventually going to the United States where he fought against his uncle in World War...
. The house was never rebuilt and the whole site eventually cleared of housing and grassed over.
Notable Victims
- Mary Lawson
Mary Elizabeth Lawson was a stage and film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to her performances on stage and screen, Lawson was known for her romantic affairs, including with tennis player Fred Perry and her future husband, the married son of the Dame of Sark...
, film and stage actress
- Francis William Lionel Collings Beaumont
Francis William Lionel Collings Beaumont , also known as F. W. L. C. Beaumont or “Buster” Beaumont, was the heir to the Seigneur of Sark, a Royal Air Force officer, film producer and the husband of actress Mary Lawson...
, heir to the Seigneur of Sark and RAF officer
External links