Ireland's Secret WWII airfields (2005 Zombie)

Hey, interesting thread.

I’ve heard Belmullet/Valentia played a major role in determining the date of the D-Day landings when I was in school around 10+ years back.

But I’ve become rather skeptical of the claim in the intervening years.

With the vast shipping fleets and the huge aerial resources at the allies disposal, I think any role Ireland could have played in delivering weather information to the allies (especially in 1944) would have been quite superfluous.

I could be missing something – i.e. perhaps certain equipment available at these locations wasn’t easily adapted to maritime or aviation use.

Any opinions?

Not direct evidence ,but surely if Met information from ground sites was used as part of the D-day preparations , info from IAAC met flights would have been made available to the Allies as well?

http://www.met.ie/about/weatherobservingstations/belmullet.asp

Rathduff Airfield – certainly existed

I cannot quote evidence from books. My information comes from much closer to home.
One of my family J M ‘Piare’ Edwards lived and ran Rathduff Stud until she died in 1997. Her father had moved to the stud from Ogbourne Maizey in Wiltshire [near Marlborough]. He had been in the army in India and had retired to Ogbourne Maizey to train horses for his younger brother, George Edward[e]s, the theatre mogul. Suffering a serious [and early] road accident, Major John Edwards moved to Rathduff just outside Golden. He died in the mid-20s leaving a much younger wife and a daughter to run the stud.
I remember visiting Piare on many occasions, last of all in the mid-1990s. She told me of events during the war that totally amazed me and I had heard nothing more of them until reading this forum thread. Piare told me of a time during the war [when she was about 18] when British officers had landed and held various meetings at the stud. One of these officers had been very dashing and handsome – the reason she had told me the story, I think.
Apparently these landings happened several times during the war and this handsome officer was never far away.
I know that this is not what some would call evidence worthy of being called proof – but it is the truth.

Well …when I started this topic way back in 2005 I had no idea the interest (and debate!) it would generate …still going strong c.3 years later!!

Brian, with regard to the met reports, I recall reading about this in a Donal MacCarron publication – if memory serves me I believe it was ‘Wings Over Ireland – A History of the Irish Air Corps’. It stated that met information was ‘broadcast (radioed?) freely to the RAF’ …or words to that effect.

Earlier in this thread there were a number of references to the met flights made from Baldonnel during the war, and of the data being broadcast to the RAF. I think there were at least two requests for source of this statement but none has been forthcoming.

I have an interest in this subject as I’m (slowly) compiling a history of the RAF Met Flights (not the Reconnaissance Squadrons which were totally different). Single seat aircraft of the RAF Met Flights made thrice daily vertical ascents over their base stations recording a variety of met data; so far as I’m aware this information was never broadcast from the aircraft by radio as a number of computations had to be made on the ground before it was ready for use.

Aircraft from Baldonnel made similar ascents, in their case once daily, but it would have still been necessary for the aircraft to land before the data were disemminated.

Thanks to Tony (Kearns) I’ve seen documents from the Military Archives in Dublin, and although these imply the data from the met ascents were made available to the British military, there is no definite statement confirming this. Had the data been made available it would have found its way to the Central Forecast Office at Dunstable for plotting on upper air charts, but although I’ve seen a fair number of these in the Met Office Archives I’ve yet to see anything plotted over Baldonnel. I’ve also been fortunate to talk to a number of people who would have plotted the data had they been available, but none can remember anything coming from Eire other than the upper air radio-sonde data from Valentia.

So, can we ask the question again of those who state the data were broadcast to the RAF – what is the source of the statement. I’d love it to be true but nothing I’ve seen as yet has convinced me.

Brian

N.Rankin,Churchill’s Wizards,Faber,08,P.240:May,1940:WSC “offered (a) United Ireland as the prize of joining the war on the Allied side. But (DEV) wanted neutrality more than unity; N.I could see nothing beyond itself, and the historic opportunity passed.” Never seen that before (there’s a cross-ref, not attribution, to R.Fisk,In Time of War,1983)

My wife’s grandfather, born in the South before partition, joine dthe British Army in the late 20s, served throughout the 30s and was captured at Dunkirk, spent the next 5 years in a POW camp. Lived the rest of his life in Scotland. And he was a vocal an Irish republican as they come!!

Great thread. I missed this the first time round. Secret airfields or not I think that it is factual that thousands of southern Irish men joined the British forces to fight the Axis. Especially in the RAF and Army. There was certainly in my view a difference between what was publically said by DeValera’s government and what actually happened. The medal tally speaks for itself. If I recall a young Dubliner was KIA last year in Iraq having joined the Irish Rangers. If I’m honest I think the Irish goverenment doesn’t support the war in Iraq but there will always be young Irish men seeking adventure in the British armed forces as the same opportunity simply doesn’t exist in the small Irish defence forces. Either way I’d like to thank them and say well done.

On a slightly different tack, I wonder whether the current generation of British (let alone Irish) would have the stomach for a war on the WW2 scale. Our troops are already fighting British born ememy in Afghanistan. Will there ever be a national unity of spirit and determination as there was back then, or was that a myth as well ?

Steve

Forgotten

Ireland had just faught a war of independance, a civil war, an economic blockade by the UK over importation of food stuffs during the thirties, we had an infantry based army, no naval forces to speak of, avery run down air corps.

We were not able to take part. Investment in further conflict would have anhilated what was left of the country Dev Alera was all to familiar with this and reckon that any other hardship would be blamed on the Brits,

he took a brave stance and yesas the war progrees were were more biased towrd in our neutrality but at the time we had just gained occupation after 800 hudered yeras. the traty ports would have invited enemy action as most of these are close to entres of population and services and the supports in state could absorb no more. Many went to fight, lost a young relative myself in the RAf, but the country as a whole was not ready for way and Dev as leader had responisibilty to protect his own citizens.

Alertken – very succinct and a slightly different, but interesting, take on things.

By the 1970s, the Republic was paying more per head population on defence than the UK was (not that you could guess by looking at the equipment the Irish armed forces had to use) – almost all of it related to patrolling the Border..

1. December,22 Irish Free State, 26 Counties, sovereign Dominion, certain British forts and sovereign base areas Berehaven, Cobh, Lough Swilly. Freedom of movement across the border to the 6 Counties, citizens free to reside and vote anywhere in the geographic entity “the British Isles”. deV opposed, Austin Chamberlain and Churchill members of the negotiating team.
2. 1938: the Right hoping the Bolshevik menace would be dealt with by the fascist menace, so Brit policy of appeasement, to deflect Hitler East. Unstuck March,38: Austrian Anschluss creates one master of the Continental land mass. Neville Chamberlain’s mind is in the East, does not need problems at his back. It would have been good to go out from Atlantic Ireland after U-Boats, but deV could not comfort the oppressor of the 6 Counties. NC got on with it.
3 Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement, April,38:
– freedom of movement, residence, work across the border;
– by October,38 all UK Forces gone. It would have been diversionary to try to operate against the will of the host’s elected leader. Might the festering locals have turned off the water supply? RN Cobh would have been bombed, bombarded, maybe assaulted in 1940.
(Now) Eire citizens would be exempt from £ currency control, and remained free to remit even after all other holders of £ were controlled, 4 September,’39. NC chose no conscription in Ulster: introduced elsewhere UK, eventually embracing grandmothers.
4 Free spirits chose: stay at home and feed UK, move North or to the Mainland, to build airfields, aeroplanes, man Harland’s shipyards, wear Allied uniform. Fondness for England’s enemy shrivelled after the examples of Norway, Holland &tc, &tc. Neutrality was no soft option: U-boats sank anything pointing east, so Eire was vulnerable to starvation and currency collapse. Most folk knew UK’s defeat would produce one united Ireland, run by a Quisling serving a Gauleiter in London.
5 It’s a fun, harmless English sport to bad-mouth Paddies, but not on this field. Have a go instead at April,49, when the Republic was formed…and so was NATO. RoI offered to join if Truman cared to boot us out of the 6 Counties. His mind was in the East, so through the Soviet era my taxes paid to defend RoI’s odd form of Socialism.

Doing some checking up on the exploits of Brendan “Paddy” Finucane, I was very pleased to see that a memorial garden and plaque in his honour was revealed at Baldonnel in 2004.

It is really great to see that these Irish men who fought and died for democracy are finally getting due recognition in their homeland.

I’m glad to see that this topic has garnered so much interest!

Suffice to say that Ireland was ‘neutral on the side of the allies’ during WWII – end of story.

Spit – that communication was was already discussed earlier in the thread and put in its proper historical and political context.

As ever, facts speak far louder than opinions. Count up the number of Irish individuals who won VCs, DSOs, DFC, MMs and the odd Purple Heart etc compared to those who won the Iron Cross.

BBC Radio 4 ran a very good documentary a few months ago which was all about Ireland’s “neutrality”. Try and search it out on the Radio 4 “Listen Again” facility.

Hi
My wife is S/IRISH and she informed me as well as being (so called) Neuteral They were only one of two countries who on hearing about Hitler’s death sent a communication expressing their SORROW and offered their CONDOLENCES ???.That to me stinks of Pro AXIS sentiments. (Please excuse any spelling mistakes)

What a fascinating thread. My wife is Irish and the view that has always been protrayed to her, by family members and teachers, though not via any documented evidence, was that Ireland was in general ‘neutral on the side of the Germans’. (Anecdotes abound of U-boats refuelling in Irish ports before going out to sink British shipping etc.) This thread I think very much gives the lie to that (or at least some of it).

I think the unfortunate thing is, as Eric Mc pointed out, that support of the British during the war by individuals and state alike, didn’t fit with the ‘ourselves alone’ history of the Irish Republic that’s grown up since independence in which, perhaps quite rightly, the emphasis is on freedom from the British oppressor. This seems to have led to a bit of denial around the contribution of the Irish in the war. I heard on Irish radio a little while ago of an Irish Spitfire ace who felt compelled to keep his medals in a drawer and not speak of his involvement in the war until very recently because he felt it would lead to animosity towards himself and his family. While some Irish were probably ‘neutral on the side of the Germans’ purely for ‘my enemy’s enemy…’ reasons, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth that those who took the opposite view, fought and died to save Europe, have been downplayed, overlooked and ignored.

Hi Eric
You are quite correct. The Hudson though of US construction was operating with 233 Sqn RAF. It was purchased after protracted negotiations, aircraft were never “interned”. Threre were no US service personnel interned. Aircraft which were salvaged and returned to the Allies was charged to and paid for by the Allies.When aircraft were refuelled and allowed to depart, the fuel was usually replaced by double the amount, not a bad deal.
Tony K

The only American aircraft “pressed” into service in Ireland during the war I can think of is the single Lockheed Hiudson.

gwrco,
Would you be kind enough to quote the names, authors and publishers of the books that you refer to in your posting?
Tony K

Re: Irelands neutrality

🙂
Hi gang!

Have been reading the above posts which have intrigued me, but to add to the fray, there is an excellent softback book out in various bookshops on the coastal defence of the whole of Ireland, including it’s ports. what a lot of bods do not know is that during WW2/’the emergency’ (for those in Eire), British troops of the Royal Artillery & infantry were based in a few of the coastal defence forts/batteries. The purpose of this was to not only train the Irish Defence Forces, but to predominantly provide protection and cover to all Royal Navy ships (including British merchants), that were moored in the coastal loughs such as lough swilly.

The book also shows a couple of photos of british soldiers marrying local irish girls in Eire!

In the book on the history of the Irish Air Corps, the authors do state that RAF aircraft which had landed in Ireland were also pressed into service as part of their air force, including a few american aircraft too!

Hope this wee snippet gives a bit more knowledge & info about Britains involvement with Ireland during WW2!

tim