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

Stop the trolling. It is a fact there would have been a barometer on each of the 400 to 600 ships in the North Atlantic on any given day in 1944, and rest assured they took very regular readings. The 6000 staff of the UK met service in 1944, plus the thousands of met staff in the other services, would not have relied exclusively on a weather report from the lighthouse in Mayo for the success of the D-day landings. You do not quite understand the planning and professionalism that went in to D day if you think so.

Never said we did not send the weather reports. The lighthouses were subsidized by the British anyway. They also had weather reports from thousands of other stations. Weather was very important during the war: that is why the met office had a staff of 6,000 in 1944.

We got oil and coal from them during the war so they supported us there.

Im sure there was a barometer on board, ships moving with differing objectives, varying positions, not consistent. Even one of the two weathership's readings had to be discounted as they became unreliable.

But you're the expert, maybe write to the Royal Meteorolgical Society, the BBC and the House of Representatives among others to correct the record. Bloody treacherous Irish, infiltrating those organisations! I was going to include met eireann who have a lot of information on this event but you would discount them as being part of Irish propaganda anyway.

Irish neutrality IMHO was the best of a bad lot of choices at a time of great peril for this country and western civilisation. The US and USSR were the overwhelming contributors to allied victory. The US with its huge industrial capacity and the USSR with the massive defeats inflicted upon Germany, 3 out of 4 German casualties were on the eastern front. The US and USSR entered the war when they were attacked, not before. Britain and France did declare war in Sept 1939 but didn't engage Germany by land until they were themselves attacked May 1940. Britain did well to hold out in 1940 but crossing the channel was beyond German capability, as demonstrated by the huge preparations and dominance required for D-Day.

Im out of this thread, its an interesting topic on a lot of levels but I'm done debating with trolls.

We aided the Allies in more important ways than that actually. Anyway, met reports from Ireland were useful but they had thousands of weather reports from elsewhere, and each of the 400 to 600 ships in the Atlantic had a barometer. Ask any mariner, they always took regular readings, hourly if I recall correctly. Some would have had military and met trained personnel too.

Incredible the naivety of people who think the expert planners of D-day would have left the biggest and most important amphibious landing in history, (there were 7000 vessels involved, and 13,000 allied aircraft ) depend solely on the weather report of a civilian in Mayo, who with all due respect could have been sick, replaced by a newbie, drunk, distracted while taking the reading, made a mistake, had a hangover, gone to a wedding and had an inexperienced person fill in , had a mis-reading or equipment malfunction, whatever.

But believe whatever you want to believe.

Nearly as naive as thinking Dev was naive enough to be trusting good friends with Hempel the Nazi Party member and Hitler's rep and diplomat who must surely have known about Hitlers's extermination camps, what was happening in Europe and Hitler's final solution. Not credible to think he did not. If Dev was betrayed by not being told about the the extermination camps / final solution by Hempel, why did Dev stay good friends with him and honour him after that? Would'nt have made sense, so obviously Dev knew all along too.

Even Irish America was appalled.

Ships could and did signal aircraft during WW2. Whenever ships did not want to break radio silence, they could use a variety of visual and electronic methods to communicate with friendly pilots. To give but just one example, ships sometimes used focused, directional lamps (Aldis lamps) to send Morse code. As the crow flies, it is only 75 or 80 miles from Lough Erne to Belmullet. Could be done in about a quarter of an hour by a Mosquito if required, which had a top speed of about 400 mph. Ships also used weather balloons extensively during WW2.

Allied ships did take barometric pressure readings on an hourly basis during WW2, alongside other weather metrics like temperature, wind, and visibility. It was all logged and gave ships warning of incoming storms etc, so they could sometimes have time to alter course or secure decks before striking severe weather.

Also, the Allies operated 16 weather ships in the North Atlantic and six ships in the tropical Atlantic. Do you think they all took their summer holidays in the run up to D-day?

And some people think the expert planners of D-day, with its 7000 vessels and 13,000 aircraft, relied on the weather report of a civilian lighthouse keeper in Mayo for its success? lol.

How seriously they took the weather can be gauged by the fact the U.K met office had a staff of 6,000 in 1944, and no doubt the other Allies had plenty of met people too.  

16 weather ships, in May...1945. You forgot that bit, the war was over! In June 1944 there was 2 weatherships available to Stagg, only one providing reliable readings from 600 miles west of Ireland.

Waffle about visual comms when jmcc pointed out that your 400-600 ships wouldn't have broken radio silence to transmit weather readings.

As for the imaginary flight from lough Erne, maybe it hooked up with the imaginary weather ship 5 miles off the Mayo coast that you posted about.

Anything to diminish the reports from Blacksod lighthouse! The historical record is very clear, just let it go.

As noted already, if ships did not wish to break radio silence ( they could for some emergencies) they were other ways of signalling, for example by morse code using lamps.

"Every naval vessel and merchant marine ship carried signal lamps (often called Aldis lamps or Morse lamps) to flash messages in Morse code. Visual signaling was vital for communicating orders or course corrections without breaking radio silence and alerting enemy submarines"

This was frequently done. The met office were also said to have used data gathered from special recce (reconnaissance) flights, ship observations, UK weather sites and pinched what they could from the Germans – once they broke their weather codes.

The Irish Times covered the award from Congress.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/us-honour-for-98-year-old-woman-whose-mayo-weather-report-changed-d-day-landing-1.4598678

Francis McM tried to misrepresent its significance, waffled about the Congressional Gold Medal and then waffled about imaginary flights being signalled from imaginary ships. This Irish contribution saved Allied lives. Historical facts are inconvenient for Francis.McM's anti-Irish neutrality and anti-de Valera agenda.

I said the Americans do have a funny way of looking at things sometimes, meaning they sometimes have been accused of taking severe historical liberties. Take the film U571 foe example. It gives the impression the Americans were the first to capture a naval Enigma machine.

The film depicts an American crew capturing the first naval Enigma machine. In reality, this was achieved by the British Royal Navy, months before the U. S. even entered WW2. The crew of HMS Bulldog boarded the German submarine U-110 in May 1941 to capture an intact Enigma machine and crucial codebook. And Polish people helped the British with the Enigma before that. Even Tony Blair said the American production was an insult to the Royal Navvy. So how America chooses to remember the war a few generations on is open to debate.

And just like that it is on to another diversion to a fictional movie that is irrelevant to the thread. Ironically, the scriptwriters probably knew more about Enigma than Francis McM.

I was just pointing out the reality of the Congressional Gold Medal versus some other of tens of millions of medals, as some people seem to think a medal is a medal.

I am well aware the Mosquito was not a seaplane: I mentioned it as it was the fastest two seater airplane the Allies had in 1944, and I mentioned it could cover the distance between Belmullet and the geographical area of Lough Erne in about a quarter of an hour. It could fly well over 400 mph and the distance as crow flies is only 75 or 80 miles. Had the Allies wanted, weather information could be relayed without breaking radio silence from a professional met person on a ship near Belmullet to St. Angelo is about 15 minutes.

Do you really think the Allies, with a combined total of 20,000 vessels and planes or whatever for D-day, would risk everything by relying one ONE weather report from a civilian (part time postal clerk, part time weather observer) in Belmullet? That the UK met office staff of 6,000 and thousands of other met people in the Allies were all waiting on that one report from Mayo?

You mean the reporter for BBC NI on 4th of June 2026 reported that in 1944 " on 4 June, confirmation came from Belmullet when Ted Sweeney reported: “Heavy rain and drizzle cleared, cloud at 900 feet and visibility on land and sea very clear.” It is implied in the report thar the decision to postpone D-day was made because of Belmullet alone, even though the Allies had reports of weather from hundreds of locations.

Somehow I think the Allies had other confirmation as well that at that point in time off the coast of Ireland the rain and drizzle cleared and "visibility on land and sea very clear". They were not going to let a combined force of 20,000 vessels / aircraft depend on the weather report of a part-time postal clerk / civilian weather reporter, for obvious reasons.

They were a bit more professional than that. Still, believe what you want to believe though. Why not get US backing to make a film showing the 6,000 staff in the UK met office, as well as thousands of other Allied met staff, were all anxiously waiting for the weather report for D-day to come through from someone looking out the window in Belmullet? And hoping it was the regular postal clerk / weather reporter there, hoping she had not the day off and got someone else to fill in for her?