Irish History Podcast

00:04 In the late summer of 1940, a lonely funeral took place in north-west Donegal, when a Chinese sailor Chu Ning Lai was laid to rest. His body had been found floating in the waters of Creavy Harbour, and when people looked through his clothes, it was obvious he had travelled far. They found a letter to someone in Shanghai, a coat made in Singapore, and an Indian rupee on his body. His life jacket had the markings of the SS Betty, a ship sunk in the Battle of the Atlantic two weeks earlier. 00:37 The discovery of his body was just one of numerous unsettling occurrences across Ireland that summer. While few had travelled as far as Tuning Lye... Hundreds of bodies had washed up on Irish beaches through that year, all casualties of the Battle of the Atlantic then raging in the waters to the northwest of Ireland. With each passing month, German U-boats sank more and more ships in an attempt to starve Britain into submission. 01:05 Indeed, week after week, Irish coastal communities found other haunting reminders of this brutal campaign on Irish beaches. These included empty lifeboats and perhaps most poignant of all was a disturbing final message stuffed into a bottle that read, Sole survivors of torpedoed ship. 01:24 Ten men in open boat. 01:26 Five men wounded. 01:28 Who these men were or what happened to them was anyone's guess. 01:33 However, for people in Ireland, they could take a certain degree of comfort from these victims of the war. Because people in Ireland were largely protected from such horrors. At the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Irish government in Dublin had declared itself neutral and Ireland had, by and large, been spared the worst effects of the conflict. There was no bombings, no battles fought and no tragedy, at home at least. 02:01 The victims, like Tuning Lai being buried along the west coast of Ireland, were people drawn from far-flung places. Ireland was safe, or so it seemed. 02:12 Then, in late August 1940, that sense of security was shattered when Ireland experienced its first attacks. It began when German airplanes attacked ships in the Irish Sea just off the coast of Ireland. And then on August the 26th, the sleepy village of Camp Isle in County Wexford, home to less than 200 people, was bombed by German airplanes. The village was wrecked. While optimists at the time hoped it was an accident, Irish military intelligence came to a far more disturbing conclusion. 02:48 They were convinced the attack was no accident. But why would the Germans bomb neutral Ireland? And if they did intentionally bomb the village of Campoil, why did they choose a target largely unknown outside of Ireland with no military significance? This podcast looks at the intriguing story of the bombing of Campoil in the summer of 1940 and why the Irish authorities were secretly convinced it had been an intentional attack and the far-reaching implications of that. 03:24 Hello and welcome to the Irish History Podcast. My name is Finn Dwyer. Before we explore the intriguing story of the bombing of Campoil, I just want to flag that supporters should now have more information on my plans for the supporters tour on Saturday, September the 26th. 03:40 Now, if you missed last week's show, basically on Saturday, September the 26th, I'm organizing a tour for supporters of the show on Patreon and Supercast, where we'll get to meet up in person, visit some really cool sites that will take us through a few thousand years of history. Also, if you're a supporter of the show, there's an exclusive video to accompany this episode with drone footage of the key sites and landscapes associated with this intriguing history. It also features some newspaper clippings from the time as well. That will be out on Thursday on patreon.com forward slash Irish podcast. 04:14 If you're not yet a supporter, you can subscribe there at patreon.com forward slash Irish podcast to get that and find out more about the tour. Sound on the episode is by Kate Dunley and additional narrations are from Aidan Crowe and Therese Murray. 04:36 Life in Ireland during the Second World War was at times surreal. While war raged across Europe and Asia, Irish people were in something of a bubble. As part of Irish neutrality, newspapers were heavily censored. They couldn't express anything that might be considered support for one side or the other, and analysis was extremely curtailed. Newspapers basically relied on official statements from both sides. It was often difficult to find out what was happening. You could get contradictory versions of the same event in the same newspaper. 05:10 And this often left readers uncertain as to what was happening. However, in the summer of 1940, the distressing course of events in Europe was becoming increasingly clear, even in the heavily censored Irish press. Newspaper reports in the spring had been talking about the German invasion of Denmark and Norway and then they progressed to discuss German invasions of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France in May. It was obvious, without any analysis, that Germany was winning the war and this led to rising concerns in Ireland. 05:42 As the harvest began in the early autumn of 1940, Germany was preparing to attack the United Kingdom and there was a growing sense Irish neutrality was going to come under extreme pressure. Indeed, by August, the war was already starting to spill over into Ireland and people were learning neutrality did not necessarily mean peace. This was keenly felt in the southeast when a ship, the St. Patrick, was attacked by German bombers just off the coast of Ireland. Now the vessel was registered in Britain and did fly a Union Jack but it was very familiar to Irish people given it operated a daily service between the port of Roslare in Wexford and Fishguard in Wales. 06:24 On top of that many of the crew were also Irish and when it was attacked on August 17th a sailor Moses Brennan from the town of Wexford was killed when a German bomber strafed the decks of the ship just off the coast of Ireland. Now he wasn't the first Irish casualty of the war but the fact that he died just off the Irish coast was alarming. The ship had been attacked in what was technically international waters but this was very much Ireland's backyard. Indeed in those weeks of August 1940 there was a rising sense in coastal communities at least that the war was closing in around them. 07:02 When Moses Brennan was buried on August 20th in the cemetery in Wexford town it would have been hard to convince his wife and two sons that they were living in a country at peace. Indeed when Brennan's crewmates on the St. Patrick went back to sea they were attacked the day after his funeral this time by three German bombers in the exact same position as the previous assault on the ship. Now luckily no one was killed on that day, but it was clear that the Germans were employing a strategy to try and cut off trade between Ireland and Britain. 07:35 Indeed, while anxiety was rising in coastal towns and villages, by this point, behind closed doors, the Irish military were becoming deeply concerned about this German strategy. A military report would note, 07:49 However, while the war was clearly edging closer to Ireland, life in many communities did continue as normal. 08:11 The village of Campoil for example was five miles inland and it felt like the safest place in Europe that summer. The war affected them tangentially at most. Now the captain of the ship the St. Patrick was from Arthurstown a few villages over but the war still felt remote and distant in Campoil. It was a picturesque and idyllic Irish country village located in rolling countryside dotted with medieval ruins. Indeed, the village itself, with a population of less than 200 people, was little known outside County Wexford and unheard of outside Ireland. 08:45 Now in a world ripping itself apart in 1940, you might think that was the best way to be, unnoticed and unknown. However, this would all change on Monday the 26th of August, when events in this sleepy village would make headlines in newspapers around the world. But on the weekend beforehand, there was no sense of the impending danger. Traditions that had regulated community life for generations continued undisturbed. Indeed, on that weekend, the people of Campile gathered to bid farewell to a well-known local farmer, John Power, who had died at home in his bed at the age of 80. 09:25 Now, he was laid to rest on Sunday, August the 25th, but his funeral was for many of the people of Campile, one of the last times they would know normality for a very, very long time. 09:44 Monday 26th August was a busy day in Camp Isle. The village's monthly fair was scheduled to take place the following Wednesday. However, the main activity in the village was always at the Shelburne Co-op, a major producer of dairy, meat and other agricultural produce. Camp Oile was small but it had proved to be an ideal location for this business. Not only was the village surrounded by rich farmland but it also had a railway station along the line that connected the ports of Waterford and Ross Lair and by the 1930s this co-op based in Camp Oile was selling produce not only across Ireland but to Britain and even the continent. 10:26 Now at 1.15pm on that Monday, August 26th, the co-op workers broke for lunch as they always did. About half the staff, 40 people in number, filed into the canteen in the co-op for their lunch. However, about 25 minutes later, while they were finishing their meal in blissful ignorance, two military planes were spotted approaching the Irish coast 30 miles to the east. They were observed from a lookout post at Carnsore Point, a distinctive headland often used by pilots to identify their position. 11:01 Now the planes were not immediately a cause for concern. They were clearly not Irish, but incursions into Ireland's skies by German and British pilots had been a growing problem since the start of the war. But Ireland had no air force to speak of and there was nothing really the Irish government could do about it. Most of the planes were simply lost and making their way home. However, on Monday August 26th, these planes took an unusual route. They were not flying towards Britain or indeed the continent. 11:32 Instead, they bypassed the strategically crucial port of Rosler Harbour and the town of Wexford to the north and followed the Rosler-Wartford train line inland and away from the coast. Now back at Camp Isle, the staff in the Shelburne co-op were oblivious to this. But the planes were travelling at several hundred miles an hour and within a few minutes they had moved 15 miles inland and were in the skies above a place called Ballyniti. Now Ballyniti is not that important in the story. Indeed, it's largely just fields. 12:03 But here the planes broke in formation. One feared slightly north and continued to follow the train line towards the village of Camp Isle. However, the second plane, although still at a considerable height, dropped four bombs on a place called Ambrose Town. This would prove to be one of the most perplexing events on what was a terribly tragic day. The four bombs exploded on impact in a field below, but this was really strange. There was nothing in that field bar the cottage of James and Joanna Hawkins. 12:37 The Hawkins home was completely wrecked in the bombing. Joanna would later explain, 12:43 I heard two terrific explosions, what appeared to fall on the house. 12:50 I don't remember any more as I believe I fainted. 12:54 All my delf and glassware, including a hanging lamp, were smashed and curtains on windows were torn. 13:02 The roof is badly damaged. All the windows were blown out. The walls cracked and the outhouse was also damaged. 13:11 Although devastating for the Hawkins family, the random nature of this attack, if anything, seemed to prove that these planes were lost. Why else would they drop bombs on a place like Ambrose Town? However, the second plane was reaching the skies over the village of Campile and what happened there would tell a very, very different story. 13:38 Still oblivious to what was happening at Ambrose Town, the staff in the Campoil Creamery had left the canteen by this point to enjoy a few minutes in the late summer sun before they had to return to work just after two o'clock. It was around 1.50pm when the second plane reached Campoil. and the sound of an airplane approaching from the south drew the attention of people across the village, and indeed many in the surrounding hinterland. It's hard to appreciate today, but airplanes of any kind were something of a rarity back in 1940 in Ireland. 14:11 In a village like Campile, it was perhaps something you'd only see a few times a year, so the appearance of this plane provoked more curiosity than fear initially at least, with people craning their necks and squinting eyes to pick out the plane in the skies above them. However, the airplane began to act in a deeply unsettling fashion. It circled around the village of Campoil and people on the ground began to grow uneasy. Patrick Cummins, a farmer who lived outside the village but was looking at the plane above Campoil, recalled what happened next. 14:46 I kept a close watch on the plane and after it had circled around the village it dived from a westerly direction towards the village. 14:54 Now Cummins' words don't fully capture what was happening or what it must have been like. For people on the ground in Camp Isle, this was terrifying when the plane suddenly began to nosedive towards the ground. Some in the village, including the local Garda, James Jennegan, thought the craft was actually falling from the sky. The pilot, however, was using a tactic known as glide bombing. He had circled the village to identify targets and then swooped down towards the ground to increase his accuracy. 15:25 From outside the village, that farmer who we've heard from, Patrick Cummins, watched on in horror as he witnessed three bombs fall from the plane when it was only about 250 metres off the ground. Indeed, some eyewitnesses claimed it was even lower. But Patrick Cummins recalled, 15:42 I noticed three bombs, dropping out of it and suddenly I heard a terrific explosion. The plane then rose out of the dive and went in an easterly direction. 15:52 While this was happening, Simon Murphy, the manager of the Shelburne co-op in the town, was on the ground as the bombs hit. When the plane had first appeared, he had been standing outside as you'll hear, but he thought little of it and went into his office to eat his lunch. He recalled what happened then. 16:11 I went into the office on the ground floor and heard a plane circling again very low. 16:17 I next hear a terrific explosion and immediately found myself sitting in the yard with my dinner knife and fork in my hands. 16:25 I had just commenced lunch when I heard the explosion. 16:28 This is an incredible eyewitness account. He literally had his knife and fork in his hand after he was blown through that window. Now from his vantage point outside the village, Patrick Cummins, the farmer, quickly realised the ordeal was not over. He had watched the plane dive down, drop bombs, then pull out of the dive, climbing back into the sky. But then he explained what unfolded next. 16:54 It then circled around to the right and dived again, towards the village. 16:59 This time I noticed one bomb dropped, and again I heard another explosion. 17:05 He went out of the last dive and disappeared in a southerly direction. 17:09 After this second attack, the situation on the ground was completely chaotic. The co-op did have a major refrigeration unit known as the coal store and the manager, Simon Murphy, thought this might be a place he would be safe. He explained, however, what happened when he went into the coal store. 17:27 I then rushed into the coal store and while there I heard another explosion. 17:32 I could not remain in the coal store because of ammonia gas that was escaping. 17:37 I then ran out into the yard There was glass flying in all directions and some of the staff were running around. I ran over to the other side of the road and into the field and laid down in some of the drills. 17:50 This act of fleeing into the fields was something many of the villagers did but it wasn't necessarily safe. The explosions at the co-op resulted in shrapnel sweeping across the wider area. Indeed one teenager had a very lucky escape when shrapnel penetrated the soil in the field beside him where he was lying down. Now after pulling out of the second dive, the pilot finally flew away to the southwest. He would follow the same path as the first plane that had dropped bombs on Ambrose Town and destroyed the Hawkins Cottage. 18:22 The two planes, minutes apart, crossed Waterford Harbour and flew out to sea over the small village of Dunmore East. This detail will become significant later on. Back at Camp Isle the damage in the village was immense. While the co-op had borne the brunt of the attack most houses in Camp Isle had sustained some damage. Windows were blown out, slates had been pulled off roofs and there was a large crater in one field. Meanwhile the railway station had been shattered and the train tracks had been mangled. However, at the co-op itself, the damage was phenomenal. 18:56 The canteen block, where dozens of people had been eating just minutes earlier, had been more or less destroyed, suffering a direct hit. And in the chaos that followed, villagers began to realise that three women, Mary Ellen Kent, her sister Catherine and Kathleen Hurley were missing. A search focused on the ruins of the canteen where Mary Ellen Kent and Kathleen Hurley worked and amidst the rubble they found the bodies of all three women. Catherine Kent had actually worked in the drapery on the site of the co-op but she had been delayed at work and taken her lunch late and she had been in the canteen when the bombs struck. 19:32 Now the three had sustained pretty horrific injuries. Indeed one of the victims couldn't be identified by facial features because her head had been partially blown away. Now as tragic as the deaths were in such a small community the situation actually could have been far far worse. Had the planes arrived a few minutes earlier the canteen which had been obliterated would have been full. Indeed many of those at the co-op at the time had two lucky escapes because after they had left the canteen they were standing around outside the co-op close to petrol tanks. 20:06 And during the attack, one of the bombs that weighed 250 kilos had crashed through the roof, then its weight dragged it through the floors beneath until it hit the ground floor, where it rolled out an open door and came to rest close to the fuel tanks. 20:22 Somewhat miraculously, however, it didn't explode. The detonator had been knocked off the bomb as it had crashed through the floors of the co-op. Now, three deaths in the scale of World War II might seem insignificant, but context is really important. And it should be said, at this stage of the war, civilian casualties, even in Britain, which was being bombed around the clock by this point, still remained low. The Blitz, the attacks on British cities, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, had not yet started because the Germans were concentrating their attacks on infrastructure and military targets. 20:58 So on the day Camp Eil was attacked, even though there was a massive German onslaught on Britain, only 36 civilians had died. Now I'm not trying to say those deaths are irrelevant or insignificant, but my point is that three people dying in one raid in one village was somewhat comparable. However, politically and militarily, the attack was a major event with potentially huge consequences. At the time of the raid, there was legitimate concerns it could actually be the opening stage of a German invasion of Ireland. 21:29 An eerie silence descended over the southeast in the following hours, but it did become clear it was a solo attack. Then all attention focused on one major question, and that was, was the attack an accident or was it intentional? If it was intentional, was Ireland then at war with Germany? Were more attacks coming? And why had they chosen Camp Isle, a tiny village that very few people outside of Ireland would ever have heard from? 22:04 Given the political significance and the degree of mystery surrounding the attack, it provoked several major investigations in Ireland. At a local level, inquests had to take place into the deaths of the three women. Then the police on Garda Síochána launched a major investigation and alongside that, Irish military intelligence also had to investigate the issue. Now the inquest into the deaths of the three women took place first and that would actually trigger what was a very concerning analysis for people in Ireland at the time because the inquest jury not only determined the cause of death but they also added the following line. 22:43 We find the bombings of Campile and Ambrose Town on August 26th, 1940 could not have been a matter of mistaken identity of the country due to poor visibility or an error in navigation. 22:57 While the jury were clearly saying the attack was intentional, at a local level at least there was no debate as to the identity of the planes involved in the attacks in Ireland. people right across County Wexford had clearly seen the distinctive German military cross on the plains. Indeed, on Tuesday, August 27th, the day after the attack, the Irish government released an official statement confirming that this was their position, that the plains were indeed German. However, they instructed the charge d'affaires in Berlin to make an official complaint and demand compensation. 23:32 Now, the demand for compensation is important because that's based on the premise that the attack must have been an accident if they're demanding compensation. Now, you might think this is somewhat strange given the Irish government's civilian and military investigators still had not reported. But I can kind of see where the Irish government were coming from in this. They desperately wanted that attack to be an accident because what was the alternative? Ireland couldn't really strike back at Germany or if it did it would have been obliterated and entering the war was something that wasn't really politically feasible at the time and something the Irish government were determined to avoid. 24:09 So I guess by saying it was an accident they're trying to set the narrative and allow the Germans a way out if it proved to be an intentional attack. 24:17 Now, in the days that followed, there was something of a vacuum in actual details as the police and the military prepared their investigations and reports. And we kind of see a somewhat conspiratorial understanding of the raid emerge in some quarters. The first proponent of this was the Nazi propagandist, William Joyce, better known as Lord Ho-Ho, He's the focus of an episode linked below, but his broadcasts were always monitored by Irish security forces. And in the days after the attack, he made a statement about the bombing of Camp Isle, which was recorded by the Irish military. 24:51 Their report said, 24:53 Speaking with great determination, the announcer denied that any aircraft had been over Eira and that, as the country was neutral, the German governments desired to remain friendly with it and further pointed out that the bombing of Eira would serve no useful purpose. 25:11 In denying that German aircraft had been over ERA, mention was made that the matter had been referred to the Air Headquarters, who had ascertained that no German aircraft had been over ERA on that date. 25:24 Now Lord Hoho was a completely untrustworthy source. Indeed, the idea that the German air headquarters, as was called in that report, would have answered his questions is fanciful. However, it is worth saying that his line of argument, you could say, has been pursued to what was its logical conclusion. And some have argued the attack was essentially a British false flag operation, basically to try and get Ireland to join the war. 25:49 Now we can dismiss this immediately. The attack was proven to be German in origin by Irish military intelligence and the Gardaí as we'll see and indeed their evidence was so emphatic that the Nazi regime did accept responsibility. However crucially this does not mean the attack was not intentional. We're going to look at that shortly but while we're on the whole issue of reactions I just want to explore a bit about the reactions to the attack in Britain. So it provoked commentary across newspapers in the United Kingdom. Many of the papers assumed it was the result of a navigational error on behalf of the pilots, but others did adopt a somewhat vitriolic attitude and implied that basically Ireland was getting its just desserts for declaring itself neutral in the war. 26:32 Now finally, five days after the bombing, the first detailed report was produced in Ireland when the Garthie submitted their findings to the government. Now this report, which is available in the National Archives, was pretty impressive in its scope. Over 100 people who had witnessed the planes between when they flew in off the coast and before they departed after the raids gave individual accounts. Many of these talked about what the bombings were like. There's lots of really interesting detail in this. For example, multiple people right across Wexford could see the clear German military markings on the plane and the Gardaí were also able to provide evidence from the unexploded bomb in the form of German markings on explosive casings. 27:15 So this all proved incontrovertible evidence that the planes were German in origin. Now, as an aside, this report did have one highly embarrassing mistake. In their investigation, the Gardaí also found an unexploded device of French origin in the fields around Campoil. They argued this was further evidence of a German attack because Germany was at this point occupying France, giving them access to French weaponry. However, it would later emerge that this was actually ordnance bought and used to by the Irish army before the war and accidentally left near Campoia when they had been out on manoeuvres. 27:52 However, as I say, the case against the Germans was incontrovertible and undeniable and the German government, as I said, did admit culpability. But the major question as to why it had happened and whether they had intended to launch this attack did remain. German officials did claim it was an accident but many behind the scenes suspected this was actually covering for another motive. Now this theory that the attack had been intentional even though the Germans said it was an accident was largely confirmed by Irish military intelligence when they finally weighed in on the matter in their report produced a few weeks later in September. 28:28 It was emphatic claiming that the attack had been intentional and they also provided motivations and reasons why they thought it took place. Now their report would never be made public at the time but it was categorical and extremely alarming for Irish politicians. 28:52 While the report of Irish military intelligence submitted on September 17th 1940 was extensive, it largely centred around the assertion that the attacks had been intentional. The case they made was pretty compelling, resting on a few points. The first was the fact that the weather had been really good on August 26th when the attacks had taken place and the pilots could not have been lost given they passed very identifiable geography and landmarks used by pilots all across Europe at the time. 29:21 The report read When first sighted these planes they were travelling in a direction course from the south-east. At that position the occupants had a clear view of a considerable portion of the Welsh coast and mountains. They could also see the east and south coast of Ireland for a considerable distance. 29:40 At this stage, elementary knowledge of geography would be sufficient for the pilots to know they were approaching Ireland. 29:47 They also pointed out the fact that the plane that attacked Camp Ile had circled over the village and appeared to be picking out targets before it launched into the dive bombing. Indeed, even the fact that they had employed that tactic of dive bombing was further evidence that the pilot knew they were over Ireland and not Britain. Again, that report reads... 30:08 He realised he would not be met with any ground defence fire. He would not have acted thus if he believed he was over England or Wales. 30:16 In what was another piece of compelling evidence, they also pointed out that both planes, even though they had separated to launch their respective attacks in Ambrustown and Campoil, still had followed the same path out of Irish airspace, which indicated they had a prearranged plan. Although we haven't spoken about it in some time, Irish military intelligence also had to factor in the first bombing, that of a seemingly random field in Ambrose Town. The evidence here is less clear cut. The bomber pilot hadn't dive bombed and his target couldn't have been more random, the cottage of James and Joanna Hawkins. 30:54 However, military intelligence would explain how this fitted into a plan when they explained what motivated the Germans to carry out boat attacks. 31:09 While we will look at what Irish military intelligence suspected the motivations of the attack to have been, it is worth saying that down the decades, people have continuously speculated what pushed the Germans to launch the attack. Now, you'll often come across a bizarre theory online that claims the Germans found butter wrappers from the Campoil Co-op on the beaches of Dunkirk. after the Allies had evacuated through that port and this pushed them to bomb the co-op in Campoil. Now that's not true. If German military policy was dictated by such petty concerns, they would have lost the war far quicker. 31:45 Irish military intelligence, however, developed a much more plausible explanation. And to appreciate this, we need to take a short detour through the stunning geography of the locality around Camp Isle to appreciate it. So Camp Isle sits on a railway between the ports of Rosler and Waterford. It's disused today, but this railway is one of the most impressive in Ireland. It crosses two major rivers, the Barrow and the Shore, over massive iron bridges and and then cuts through the Wexford landscape, passing the small station at Campile. 32:18 Before it reaches Ross Lair, it also crosses an impressive viaduct in the form of a triple arched bridge where the train line crosses two roads and a river. You'll be able to see all this on the video that will be on Patreon from Thursday. That's at patreon.com forward slash Irish podcast. But this railway was used to transport a lot of cattle and food to the port of Rosler from where most of it was exported to Britain. The Campoil Co-op was a pretty large complex on that rail line and was also central to this export industry. 32:50 Indeed, in the weeks and months leading up to the attack, they had exported a lot of poultry, rabbits and butter, amongst other things, to Britain. Now it's also worth factoring in the wider context. The Germans were preparing for a potential invasion of Britain and many of their attacks in that summer was about destroying infrastructure and sinking ships carrying supplies into Britain. This all led Irish military intelligence to argue that the attacks were in fact linked to the war in the Irish Sea and indeed the attack on the ship the St. Patrick which had led to the death of the sailor Moses Brennan which we covered at the start of the episode was also linked into this. 33:27 So they pointed out that the Germans had tried to attack shipping in the Irish Sea but they simply couldn't sink enough ships and this failure led them to target Irish infrastructure instead. 33:39 The report produced by Irish military intelligence read The motive for the attack was the destruction of the co-operative society premises at Camp Isle and the destruction of the railway to Rosslayer. 33:52 This not only explains the attack on Camp Oyle, but also helps us understand the more perplexing bombing at Ambrose Town. 34:01 This on the face of it was bizarre because the bombs were dropped in random fields, close to very little except the home of the Hawkins family. However, it is located a few hundred metres from the Ambrose Town Railway Viaduct. That was a weak point on the Waterford Ross Lair Railway. I mentioned it earlier. It's a large brick structure that crosses over two roads and a river beneath. But had that been destroyed, it would have taken a considerable amount of time, probably months, to repair. 34:28 Now, in terms of identifying Camp Oyle as a target, Irish military intelligence noted that German technicians and travelling salesmen had visited the co-op in the village through the late 1930s, and they argued that this had been fed into German military intelligence. Personally, I don't find that as conclusive as maybe it seemed at the time. In 1940, there was a tendency to massively exaggerate the competence of the German military, and to imagine Nazi Germany as a singularly focused military machine, a lot of recent research has revealed it was far more chaotic than was once understood. 35:05 However, overall, they did present a case that the target was the export infrastructure in the South East. And based on this, Irish military intelligence predicted further attacks in 1948. 35:17 We therefore would like to direct attention to the possibility of further and probably more determined attempts being made to destroy harbour and rail facilities throughout that coastline, because the chances of preventing exports reaching England from this country by means of destroying shipping have been rendered more remote by the increased vigilance of the British off the west coast of Wales and England. 35:43 While there were further attacks in Ireland during the Second World War, including the devastating bombing of the North Strand in Dublin in 1941, there were none focused on the southeast. The war at sea did continue and the St. Patrick, the ship we discussed earlier in the episode, was eventually sunk in the summer of 1941 off the coast of Wales. 36:05 Now, in this episode, you've heard the assessments made at the time, but it is worth factoring in that many Irish historians have dismissed the idea that the attack was intentional in the decades since. While I think the attack probably was intentional, I don't think the position of these historians is illogical. There are lots of examples of accidental targeting of neutral cities, most notably in Switzerland during the war. Indeed, on one occasion in 1944, the US Air Force bombed a Swiss city killing dozens of people. 36:36 When it comes to the bombing of Camp Pyle, the historian Michael Kennedy, who knows far more about the general history of the Second World War in Ireland than I do, dismissed the findings of Irish investigators as somewhat far-fetched. He has convincingly argued that if the pilots were lost, the cooperative buildings at Camp Pyle did look like military barracks. However, he doesn't really address why German pilots who had remarkable visibility on that day bombed Campoil when it should have been clear that they were over Ireland, not Wales or England. 37:10 He also doesn't really deal with the whole issue of why they employed a bombing strategy that seemed to indicate they wouldn't face return fire from the ground. Nor does he deal with the whole issue of why the pilots appear to have followed an agreed-upon flight plan where they both exited Ireland along a similar trajectory. 37:29 In my mind, Occam's razor, that basically argues the simplest answer is probably the correct one, suggests the attack was intentional. For it to be an accident, we'd need to explain away several elements of the evidence. Personally, I think the attack was a move that the Germans would have calculated at the time would cost them very little. They knew Ireland wasn't going to enter the war on the back of an isolated attack like this, one that they would ultimately deny, but would also send a clear message to the Irish government and about the risks entering the war while also inflicting damage on infrastructure crucial to the export of food to Britain. 38:06 Now even with this strategy in mind, the co-op in Campoil does seem like an odd, even random target. But from another perspective, it was a subtle message, one that could be denied, but one that was clear enough that Irish military intelligence were able to pick up the message. Had they chosen a larger target, one with a clearer message, say for example, the port of Rosler itself, that might have forced Irish politicians to take a stance, but the bombing of Campoil did allow them to essentially ignore the evidence in public at least. 38:38 I will say one thing that concerns me is the lack of evidence from the German side. As far as I'm aware there is no discussion of it in surviving German records. Now I will say I don't speak German and I don't fully understand how much German documentation was destroyed in the Second World War and whether it's possible that all documents relating to one incident like this could have been destroyed. So I can't really comment on that but it is worth bearing in mind. 39:03 Hopefully this gives you a sense though of where I stand. I think it was an intended attack but as I say there is some outstanding issues with the evidence and those who argue it was accidental do have a case to make. I will say I was really dubious about it until I actually read the Garda report and the military intelligence files. I think they're pretty conclusive. Now do let me know if you have any thoughts on this. If you want to find out more about it, I'd highly recommend reading The Campile Bombing that was published by the Horsewood Historical Society and includes a lot of primary material and witness statements in there. 39:37 If you want an even deeper dive, I'd recommend checking out the Garda report into the bombing and the related government files in the National Archives while the Military Intelligence Report is in the Military Archives. That also gives you a great insight into the events. For a broader context, check out Michael Kennedy's excellent Defending Neutral Ireland, The Coast Watching Service and Military Intelligence 1939-1945. That's a really great book and is an absolutely fascinating read. I can't recommend it enough. Now that's where I'm going to leave this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you're a supporter, keep an eye on Patreon. 40:09 For a video that looks at different aspects of this history, I've got... drone footage of Camp Oyle and the railway and how that was really significant at the time and some newspaper clippings as well. It's a really good addition to this episode. There'll also be updates about the tour in September there as well. Finally, a chat over on the comments on Patreon has led to an unusual topic that'll be coming up in the next few weeks. That's hoaxes in Irish history. If you've got any suggestions, do let me know. Until next time, slán.