Liverpool Blitz

Liverpool Blitz
Part of the Strategic bombing campaign of World War II

Bomb damage visible on Memorial to Heroes of the Marine Engine Room (photographed 2018)
Date1940–1942
Location
Result Liverpool heavily damaged by German air raids
Belligerents
 Nazi Germany  United Kingdom
Casualties and losses
Unknown 4,000

The Liverpool Blitz was the heavy and sustained bombing of the English city of Liverpool and its surrounding area, during the Second World War by the German Luftwaffe.[1]

Liverpool was the most heavily bombed area of the country outside London,[2] due to the city having, along with Birkenhead, the largest port on the west coast and being of significant importance to the British war effort. Descriptions of damage were kept vague to hide information from the Germans, and downplayed in the newspapers for propaganda purposes;[3] many Liverpudlians thus felt that their suffering was overlooked compared to other places.[2] Around 4,000 people were killed in the Merseyside area during the Blitz.[2] This death toll was second only to London, which suffered over 40,000 by the end of the war.

Bomb splinter damage on the lower section of the Titanic Memorial to Heroes of the Marine Engine Room, Liverpool, England

Liverpool, Bootle and the Wallasey Pool complex were strategically very important locations during the Second World War. The Port of Liverpool had for many years been the United Kingdom's main link with North America, and proved to be a key part in the British participation in the Battle of the Atlantic. As well as providing anchorage for naval ships from many nations, the port's quays and dockers handled over 90 per cent of all the war material brought into Britain from abroad with some 75 million tons passing through its 11 miles (18 km) of quays. Liverpool was the eastern end of a Transatlantic chain of supplies from North America. Other industries were also heavily concentrated in Liverpool and across the Mersey in Birkenhead.

Plaque on memorial to those killed on 21 December at Blackstock Gardens, Liverpool
  1. ^ "CITiZAN - Blogs - Raiders over the River Mersey". www.citizan.org.uk. Retrieved 9 August 2024.
  2. ^ a b c "Spirit of the Blitz - Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool museums". Liverpoolmuseums.org.uk. Archived from the original on 20 February 2022. Retrieved 18 February 2019.
  3. ^ Hodgson, G. R. "'Too ghastly to believe'? Liverpool, the press and the May Blitz of 1941" (PDF). Journalism Education. 4 (1). Association for Journalism Education. Source: LJMU Research Online, Liverpool John Moores University; see http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/1678/ for abstract and details. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 February 2019. Retrieved 12 June 2020.