In the warm, late afternoon sunshine of May 1st 1941, the Heinkel bombers of Hitler’s mighty Luftwaffe took to the skies once more.  This time their target was Liverpool.  Just hours later at 10:15pm the first bomb fell on Wallasey and the air raid sirens began to wail.

This wasn’t the first time Liverpool had been targeted during the Blitz, but nobody could have foreseen this would be the start of seven days intensive bombing designed to destroy Liverpool’s docks and crush the spirit of her people.  What would forever be remembered as the “May Blitz” was about to begin.

By the end of this long week, almost 700 aircraft had dropped nearly 900 tonnes of high explosives and well over 100,000 incendiaries.  1,453 people had been killed in Liverpool, 257 in Bootle, 28 in Birkenhead, 3 in Wallasey and thousands more had been seriously injured.  4,400 houses were destroyed in Liverpool with 16,400 seriously damaged and 45,500 slightly damaged.  Approximately 51,000 people had been made homeless in Liverpool and another 25,000 in Bootle where it was estimated only 15% of the local housing stock remained.

Out of all this terror and destruction, the spirit of the blitz emerged.  It has gone down in history as a spirit of straightforward stoic courage and endurance: a refusal by the people of Britain to collapse into the hysteria or madness expected by the enemy.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of that terrible week, and so presents an opportunity for us to remember those who lost their lives and also celebrate the enduring morale which kept the British people going during such testing times.  All funds raised during the weekend will be shared between two registered veterans’ charities; the Royal British Legion and D-Day Revisited.

Visit us again for frequent updates about the schedule of events which are designed to be fun for all the family.  In exactly 100 days we will launch the Liverpool Blitz 70 event which we hope will help to spread awareness about what happened and give the people of Merseyside a jolly good weekend of nostalgic blitz-themed entertainment!