United States Armed Forces in Northern Ireland During World War II (2008)

United States Armed Forces in Northern Ireland During World War II Francis M. Carroll Although it is now more than sixty years since the end of World War II, many still live under the shadow of that great conflict. For millions in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, things were, in Yeats's phrase, "changed, changed utterly." In the context of Irish Studies, the war presents a particularly interesting historical problem. Under Eamon de Valéra, Éire declared its neutrality and officially stayed out of the war, despite the urgings of Great Britain—to which Ireland was still formally linked through the Commonwealth, at the very least—and of the United States, to which Ireland had powerful kinship, sentimental, and economic ties.1 Northern Ireland tends to be characterized in this discussion as something of a pawn—a territory claimed by Dublin, "held" by London, governed by Unionists at Stormont, and rather ambiguously offered up by Churchill as a possible reward for southern Ireland should it enter the war.2 However, while these geopolitical issues hung in the balance there were practicalmatters of great military urgency. In the circumstances Northern Ireland assumed extraordinary importance, not only to Great Britain but also to the United States. Northern Ireland was, in the words of John W. Blake, "the Atlantic bridgehead" for American forces in the war in Europe. [End Page 15] After the situation in Europe had steadily deteriorated over several years, Britain and France went to war with Germany on September 3, 1939, over the German invasion of Poland. Following the defeat of Poland in a matter of weeks, the war in the west was confined largely to naval operations throughout the rest of 1939 and early 1940. However, dramatic German military operations in April, May, and June, 1940, brought almost all of Western Europe, including France, under Nazi and Fascist domination. Britain and the Commonwealth stood alone and in quite desperate circumstances. British ground forces been defeated in France and barely rescued at Dunkirk. The fall of France allowed German submarines to operate out of French ports on the Atlantic—thus intensifying the war at sea—and the German Luftwaffe also commenced a devastating bombing campaign across Britain (the "Blitz"), including Belfast, in April of 1941. The United States, like Éire, had declared its neutrality in September, 1939, although under elaborate "cash and carry" provisions it did sell munitions and supplies to Britain throughout the so-called "Phony War" period of 1939–40. However, with the fall of France and the states of northern Europe in the summer of 1940, the Roosevelt administration began to view the survival of Britain as America's first line of defense.3 Soon, the United States began to assist Britain and the Commonwealth and to assume something of the burden of the war, and to get the nation on a war footing. These included the destroyers for-bases deal in September, 1940; the introduction of conscription in October, 1940; the passage and implementation of Lend-Lease in March, 1941; the growing assumption of the defense of Greenland and Iceland in the North Atlantic; and the provision for American destroyers to escort convoys out to the mid-Atlantic in the summer and autumn of 1941. In addition, the United States government, together with the British, attempted to persuade the Irish government to enter the war, or at least to cooperate to the extent of allowing the British to use some of the bases along the Atlantic coast for anti-submarine operations. President Roosevelt went so far as to send his special representative, Col. William J. Donovan, commander of the largely Irish-American New York 69th Regiment in World War I (soon to be appointed head of the Office of Strategic Services), to influence de Valéra, but without success.4 Both Britain and the United States turned to Northern [End Page 16] Ireland as the most northwesterly part of the British Isles from which to base antisubmarine patrols and to create the transatlantic bridgehead.5 The Lend-Lease program put in place in 1941 permitted vast amounts of equipment to be shipped to Britain. Among the most urgently needed items were the PBY Catalina...