Ливерпульский блиц: немецкие бомбардировки во время Второй мировой войны.

German bombing of British port city during WWII

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. Liverpool was the most heavily bombed area of the country, outside London, 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; many Liverpudlians thus felt that their suffering was overlooked compared to other places.

The first major air raid on Liverpool took place in August 1940, when 160 bombers attacked the city on the night of 28 August. This assault continued over the next three nights, then regularly for the rest of the year. There were 50 raids on the city during this three month period. Some of these were minor, comprising a few aircraft, and lasting a few minutes, with others comprising up to 300 aircraft and lasting over ten hours. On 18 September, 22 inmates at Walton Gaol were killed when high explosive bombs demolished a wing of the prison. 28 November saw a heavy raid on the city, and the most serious single incident, when a hit on an air raid shelter in Durning Road caused 166 fatalities. The air assault in 1940 came to a peak with the Christmas Blitz, a three night bombardment from 20–22 December.

A series of heavy raids took place in December 1940, referred to as the Christmas Blitz, when 365 people were killed between 20–22 December. The raids saw several instances of direct hits on air raid shelters; on 20 December, 42 people died when a shelter was hit, while another 40 died when a bomb struck railway arches on Bentinck Street, where local people were sheltering. The first bomb landed upon Seacombe, Wallasey, Wirral, at 22:15 on 1 May. The peak of the bombing occurred from 1–7 May 1941. It involved 681 Luftwaffe bombers; 2,315 high explosive bombs and 119 other explosives such as incendiaries were dropped. The raids put 69 out of 144 cargo berths out of action and inflicted 2,895 casualties. Liverpool Cathedral was hit by a high explosive bomb which pierced the roof of the south east transept before being deflected by an inner brick wall and exploding mid air, damaging many stained glass windows. Another landed on the front steps without exploding but incendiaries destroyed equipment in the contractor's yard at the west end. One incident on 3 May involved the , a ship carrying munitions which was berthed in the Huskisson Dock. Although its eventual explosion is often attributed to a burning barrage balloon, this fire was put out. However flames from dock sheds that had been bombed spread to the Malakand, and this fire could not be contained. Despite valiant efforts by the fire brigade to extinguish the flames, they spread to the ship's cargo of 1,000 tons of bombs, which exploded a few hours after the raid had ended. The entire Huskisson No. 2 dock and the surrounding quays were destroyed and four people were killed. The explosion was so violent that some pieces of the ship's hull plating were blasted into a park over 1 mile (2 km) away. It took seventy four hours for the fire to burn out. The seven night bombardment resulted in over 6,500 homes being completely demolished by aerial bombing and a further 190,000 damaged leaving 70,000 people homeless. Bootle, to the north of the city, suffered heavy damage and loss of life. One notable incident here was a direct hit on a Co op air raid shelter on the corner of Ash Street and Stanley Road. The exact total of casualties is unclear, though dozens of bodies were recovered and placed in a temporary mortuary which itself was later destroyed by incendiaries with over 180 corpses inside. The Times on 5 May 1941 carried the following report: "The Germans stated that Saturday night's attack on Liverpool was one of the heaviest ever made by their air force on Britain. Several hundred bombers had been used, visibility was good and docks and industrial works, storehouses and business centres, had been hit. In addition to many smaller fires, one conflagration, it was claimed, was greater than any hitherto observed during a night attack."

After the raids in May 1941, the German air assault diminished, as Hitler's attention turned towards attacking the Soviet Union. 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 Hitler and the birthplace of Hitler's nephew, William Patrick Hitler. The house was never rebuilt and the whole site was eventually cleared of housing and grassed over. By the end German bombs had killed 2,716 people in Liverpool, 442 people in Birkenhead, 409 people in Bootle and 332 people in Wallasey.