North Strand Bombing 1941

Photographs illustrating some of the damage caused by the German bombing of the North Strand, 1941 accompanied by reminiscences of the bombing from Dublin City Archives' North Strand Bombing Reminiscences Oral History Project http://northstrandbombing.wordpress.com. Featured in the audio track in order of appearance are Ron Black, Alfreda O'Brien, Mike Connolly, Mairead King, Kevin Mullan, Olive Murphy, Noel Brady, Michael O'Higgins, Noel Fitzgerald (Interviewer: Marc Redmond). For more information contact cityarchives@dublincity.ie or telephone 01 674 4873.

On the night of 31 May 1941, four high-explosive bombs were dropped by German aircraft on the North Strand area of Dublin City. The casualties were many: 34 dead and 90 injured, with 300 houses damaged or destroyed. Charleville Mall Public Library was designated as the headquarters for the bombed area and City Architect Horace ORourke was in charge of the clearance project.

The 57 photographs in the North Strand Bombing Photographic Collection are housed in the Dublin City Library and Archive, 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2.
http://www.dublincitypubliclibraries.ie
The original photographs measure 28cm (w) x 20cm (h) .

The photographs of the destruction caused by the North Strand Bombing in May 1941 were commissioned by Dublin Corporation as evidence for the assessment of insurance claims. The work was entrusted to a local photographer, H. McCrae, of 152 Clontarf Road, who began work on 4 June and continued until the end of the month. Further photographs were taken in July and September, and the final photographs were taken on 31 October.

If you wish to purchase any of these photographs, please contact us at;

Dublin City Public Libraries
Development Office
Cabra Bibliographic Centre
Navan Road
Dublin 7
Tel. +353 1 6744842 / 6744843
E-mail: dublinpubliclibraries@dublincity.ie

Category:

Education

Tags:

• North Strand Bombing
• The Emergency
• World War II
• Dublin
• Dublin City Archives
• photography

[jratt2]

@Flamorgan Extraordinary, there's no record of it anywhere.

[jratt2]

@Flamorgan No they didn't. The bombing of Dublin happened in 1941, the numbering of headlands didn't happen until after the Americans joined the war and in the year before D-day, during 1943.

The Germans never knew about the Donegal Corridor.

[HLecterPHD]

@RichardElden You're an oddball. 

[mightymorton]

Luftwaffe had a go at the South a few times,They were so arrogant they prob wanted the free state to declare war on them so they had an excuse to invade.

[greenmustard1966]

of course it was a warning attack on ireland. nazi scum. poor belfast got it next.

[jratt2]

@dubbigot No there were no 'decoys'. The Luftwaffe had a very primitive direction finding device that involved flying along a radio beam on to the target. The British figured out a way of bending that radio beam and directing bombers off target. Churchill alleged, or at least he hinted, that he the British had directed the bombers from Liverpool to Dublin and that was why it was bombed. But as a far as I know he was just bullshitting, there's no evidence to support it.

[EricIrl]

Read " The Bombing of Dublin's North Strand, 1941" by Kevin Kearns.

It is the best account yet of these bombing. It makes use of Irish Government secret material that was only released in the 1990s.

It is now almost certain that the bombings were a deliberate attack by the Luftwaffe to punish neutral Ireland's assistance to Britain in the first year of the war - especially in relation to Dublin Fire Brigade's assistance to Belfast's Fire Brigade when Belfast was bombed a few months earlier.

[dubbigot]

the british set up de-coys off the south irish coast to divert the nazi planes over the irish mainland , they bombed dublin thinking it was liverpool , churchhill laughed about this years later ,,,,,,,,,, and never went on trial for war crimes ,,,,,,,, what a fuckin shock ,