Interned in Ireland

[Story]

An attempt to recover a Spitfire from a peat bog in Donegal will highlight the peculiar story of the men - both British and German - who spent much of World War II in relative comfort in neighbouring prisoner of war camps in Dublin, writes historian Dan Snow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924720

 

[djd]

Interesting link. Thank you

My grandfather was interned in sweden for a short while in 1943. It's interesting that the swedes allowed captured airmen to be repatriated to the uk while Ireland it seems did not.

 

[AmateisGal]

I was so excited to see this - not only because it's a terrific story, but because the pilot was from Nebraska.

 

[MisterCairo]

I'm reminded of the Royal Airforce crews held (comfortably) in Brazil, I think it was, during the Falklands War. They'd been forced to land due to some emergency, and neutral powers are entitled to keep such personnel from being re-patriated, lest they (the nation) be accused of partaking in hostilities.

 

[djd]

I believe as far as Sweden was concerned my grandfather and his pilot had to give an undertaking that they would not be combatants again. My grandfather was groundcrew after his return although he did also have some injuries. The pilot went straight back to flying and was killed on his next but one mission.

 

[Sgt Brown]

The news article mentioned that the camp was shut down and the prisoners returned to Northern Ireland. What about the Germans?

Tom

 

[Rathdown]

Interesting link. Thank you

My grandfather was interned in sweden for a short while in 1943. It's interesting that the swedes allowed captured airmen to be repatriated to the uk while Ireland it seems did not.

Sweden repatriated both allied and axis internees; as it was impossible for Ireland to repatriate axis internees, they were obliged to hold allied internees as well.

 

[Story]

Whole site on the K-Lines camp, including aircraft details.
http://www.curragh.info/klines.htm

 

[Story]

The news article mentioned that the camp was shut down and the prisoners returned to Northern Ireland. What about the Germans?

Tom

Small issue with the Germans.

THE GUILT-STRICKEN confession of an ex-Luftwaffe pilot, the schoolboy memories of an Irish-born British army officer and a pile of 50-year-old intelligence files have conspired to re-open the great mystery of Irish neutrality in the Second World War: why did Germany bomb the "open" city of Dublin on the night of 31 May 1941?

The attack on the North Strand in Dublin killed 34 Irish civilians and wounded 90, prompting apologies from Nazi Germany and claims by the British that de Valera's neutral Ireland was at last paying the price for "sitting on the fence" during the war against the Third Reich. After the war, Germany paid compensation to the Irish Republic for what it described as a military error, while British intelligence officers suggested that the German aircraft - en route to a target in the United Kingdom - had been deliberately steered towards Dublin by RAF experts who had "bent" the Luftwaffe direction-finding radio beams.

Now an elderly German - living in Canada and calling himself only Heinrich, but insisting he was one of the Luftwaffe pathfinder pilots on the night of the Dublin bombing - has broadcast an appeal for forgiveness over RTE, Irish state radio. He was asked to bomb Belfast, he said, but his two squadrons of 30 aircraft approached Dublin by mistake. "Please forgive me for this mistake which was beyond our control," Heinrich told reporter Micheal Holmes. "There was no wrongdoing on our side. Everybody was upset, not only the members of the [German] air force, but politically as well."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/why-the-nazis-bombed-dublin-1075966.html