Is Irelands neutrality stance in WW2 unfairly criticized? (see Mod note 217)

It is not remotely the ‘facts’.

It’s the pathetic pleading of a fantasist in the hope somebody will chime in to support you.

Think up something new

If anything I said was not the facts, you would be the first to point out what the facts were, but you cannot, you were caught out every time.

You claimed "most of the Allied countries turned their backs on refugees".

I pointed out "Not saying they could'nt or should'nt have done more, but there were about 70,000 Jewish refugees who were accepted into Britain by the start of WW2, and an additional 10,000 people who made it to Britain during the war. We let in extremely few, even though we had plenty of space and were an agricultural country capable of growing food."…. to which you had no answer.

What most of the Allies did do - in fact what all of the Allies did do - was work to defeat the Axis powers. And help liberate the people / prisoners held in terrible conditions by the Nazis and Japanese etc.

It was more than a weather forecast, it was hourly air pressure readings from a single fixed location. The allies had 2 weather ships hundreds of miles out to the west of Ireland but readings from one became unreliable on morning of 3rd June. Weather ships had to contend with tides, currents the u boat threat all contributing to the difficulty maintaining a fixed position, hence leading to a lack of consistency. There was considerable disagreement between US and UK forecasters about whether to go ahead on 5th June, the US being in favour, UK not so. The Bemullet readings were key to postponement which undoubtedly saved many lives as acknowledged by US afterwards.

Typical of you to denigrate an actual key contribution we made to saving lives while indulging theories about lives lost due to our neutrality.

Did what we could which like others was limited? Rubbish, most joined the Allies before war end. The neutral countries are grey on the map.

Even neutral Portugal gave the use of the Azores to the Allies as a base.

Rubbish. The Allies had ships all over the North Atlantic, inc just 5 miles from Belmullet if they wanted to. They could anchor if they wanted to. By June 1944 they also had sonar / ASDIC etc to help combat the U-boat threat. In 1944 the UK mt office reached its wartime peak with a total strength of approximately 6,000 personnel. They were not going to put the D-Day invasion - the largest seaborne and amphibious invasion in history - at risk by relying on one weather report from a lighthouse in Belmullet…..for all they knew, the lighthouse keeper could have been sick that day / injured/ had a hangover / made a typo or whatever. Belmullet was just used to confirm what the 6000 professional meteorologists knew already, who had collected data from thousands of sources.

By all means, believe the Irish propaganda that the weather report was critical to the success of D-day. Its importance is greatly overstated given there were 6000 personnel in the UK Meteorological Office then, and you can be sure the Americans and Canadians had met. people too.

If that is all our government did to help liberate Europe it was not very much, giving the weather from the lighthouse in Belmullet.

Hundreds of thousands of Irish people made contributions to D-day in their own way, directly and indirectly. More than a few paid with their lives.

It is your criticism which was debunked. The 5070 (British sailors lives lost as a result of Irish neutrality) number came from the Dominions office in London which was involved in war-time planning, and got its information from the British Admiralty.

Nice story with Timmy Mallot and that Irish forecast.

RTE news: An absolute joy: Timmy Mallet completes cycle around Ireland

https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2025/0616/1518737-timmy-mallet-completes-cycle-around-ireland/

Are today's forecast or weather less predictable than back then. Because I wouldn't trust a forecast today like that.

More pseudo-scientific bolloxology based on a made-up number. Not a British Admiralty number. Apart from being from a poster that has a long history of having his claims debunked, the fact that the Germans were reading BAMS messages about convoy routing resulted in convoys being targeted. This fact would probably not have been known to the people making up the number.

That fact more than any exaggerate claims about the unavailability of the Irish Treaty Ports cost lives. The BAMS messages were being read from the start of the war to at least 1943. Dimbleby mentioned the seriousness of the breach in that BBC video clip posted upthread. But to Francis McM, it is just a soccer match and those lives lost are the score.

I never mention a soccer match. The Allies also had Enigma, you should read a few books on it some time. It was not all one way.

You treat these lives lost as the scores in some kind of soccer match. Enigma was used primarily by the Germans not the Allies.

I have read many books on the subject. The Allies did not have a general solution for Enigma and could not read every Enigma message. There were times when the Allies were periodically locked out of reading some variants of Enigma traffic such as when the U-boats changed from the three rotor Enigma to the four rotor Enigma. Allied shipping losses increased. The way that you treat those lives lost as some kind of soccer match score to pursue your anti-de Valera and anti-Irish neutrality agenda is disrespectful to their memories.

Overstated by bbc.com on 3rd June 2024 ?

The Irish lighthouse keeper who gave D-Day the go-ahead

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyjj7dddvmjo

Or by the US House of Representatives

In June 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives honored Maureen Flavin Sweeney with a special medal and placed a proclamation of her achievements in the U.S. Library of Congress.

If you read many books on the subject you should remember that the German Navy transitioned U-boats from the standard 3-rotor Enigma to the 4-rotor version in early 1942. Yes, that threw Allied codebreakers at Bletchley Park into a long blackout for the critical U-boat naval ciphers but that was overcome in late 1942. The British captured an M4 machine and codebooks from a U boat, which allowed codebreakers to reverse-engineer the wiring of the new 4th rotor.

WW2 was far from a soccer match and having known a few of the people involved very well, the last thing I can assure you that I would want to be is disrespectful to their memories. I do not think the British authorities, in calculating losses during the war, are or were disrespectful to their memories either.

In 1944, there were generally 400 to 600 Allied ships in the North Atlantic on any given day. As well as land based stations throughout these islands, more than a few of those were also capable of making a weather report if needed.