(1)

'WW2 in North Mayo:

What Defence Forces Coastwatchers saw from Look Out Post 63 (Teachaín a' Watch).

Heritage Week talk, Ceathrú Thaidhg,

18 August 2018

Dr Michael Kennedy

It is a real pleasure to be back with you here in the Seanscoil in Ceathrú Thaidhg and to join you for this Heritage Week talk. Thank you Treasa and Amelia for planning and organising this event and thank you all for inviting me.  When I was first in Ceathrú Thaidhg this time last year we had a discussion where I stressed the historical importance of LOP 63 Teacháin a’ Watch.  I want to build on that today by explaining what the Marine and Coast Watching Service was, what its personnel saw and why the work of the coast watchers, particularly at LOP 63, was so important for Defence Forces intelligence gathering in the Second World War. I am going to talk about Teachaín a’ Watch within the context of the ‘North Mayo Corner’, that all important area of belligerent operations identified by the Irish military as stretching from Downpatrick Head south to Achill, and the general Coast Watching Service. I will look at what the men at the Look Out Post saw, paying close attention to one particular episode which had a defining impact on the Battle of the Atlantic and marks out Teachaín a’ Watch as of particular historical importance. Then I will hand over to Amelia who will bring us over to Teacháin a’ Watch and introduce us to what the LOP saw through records from its logbook. So I will do the background, covering 1939 to 1941 – I am not going to cover ferry flights or D-Day, and then leave it for Amelia to cover the specifics on site to give a unique insight into what the coast watchers at LOP 63 saw as we relive their observations in the very place they made them.

(2) The work of the team up at Teachaín a’ Watch fed into the very highest levels of Irish foreign policy during the second world war. The local men from this community were neutral Ireland’s eyes and ears during the second world war. They were on our frontline. Quite simply, they guarded neutral Ireland.  The rediscovery of the Éire Sign on Bray Head close to Dublin made national and international headlines earlier this month.  Éire signs and LOPs and the work of the coast watchers awakens imaginations and interest in Ireland’s Second World War.  The restoration and research work on LOP63 is so important in developing the twentieth century history of this area and developing heritage in the context of tourism and the wild atlantic way.

(3) So I’ll start with an overview of the Coast Watching Service and its 83 LOPs of which Teacháin a’ Watch was one.  They were placed at ten to twenty-mile intervals along the Irish coastline from Ballagan Head in Louth to Inishowen Head in Donegal.  (4) LOP 63 at Portacloy had 62 at Erris Head to its left and 64 at Downpatrick Head to the right.  The 83 locations ensured that no stretch of the Irish coastline was left unguarded during the second world war.  The volunteer coastwatchers kept a six-year watch on the skies and the seas around Ireland from September 1939 to June 1945 using their eyes and ears, telescopes, binoculars and, most importantly, local knowledge.  Through the coastwatchers, G2, the Defence Forces’ intelligence wing, could find out in real time by telephone the situation along all sections of the Irish coast on land, sea and in the air.  The LOPs were Ireland’s early warning system. 

Coastwatchers were fishermen, boatmen, those with farms by the seashore, in short, those who were involved in seafaring.  What made the Coastwatch work was its very simplicity, it was a local information gathering network where each link in the chain covered a small specific area and had a limited number of tasks to perform.  Thus a standard format of information could be logged and relayed to Dublin.  A routine everyday information flow, even of relatively low-grade data, to G2 and Air Defence Command HQ built up an elaborate picture of the conflict around and over Ireland during the Second World War.  (5) Head of G2 Colonel Liam Archer, who was later to become Defence Forces Chief of Staff, attached ‘the greatest importance’ to information from the Coastwatching Service.’[1]

The reports of the Coast Watching Service recount the Second World War from a day-to-day level as it occurred in Irish coastal waters and skies.  The logbooks of the Coastwatching Service are a war diary of Ireland’s involvement in the Second World War.  They provide a contemporary account of the conflict that took place in Irish skies and Irish territorial waters during the Second World War.  Archer’s successor as head of G2, (6) Colonel Dan Bryan, knew just how important a chain of coastal listening posts would be to building up a picture of enemy operations in the vicinity of Irish coastal waters and skies.  Without regular reports from LOPs, G2 would have been blind to events around the Irish coastline.

(7) We know much more about LOP 63 than other posts because of the training notes kept by Volunteer 208352 John Burns who served at the LOP.  Burns was drilled on the importance of the post logbook, the document Treasa will tell us about during the site visit. It provided the raw intelligence material analysed by Command Intelligence Officers.  The logbooks are the most important historical legacy of the M&CWS.

During training Burns learned first aid, signalling, maritime practices and the identification of types of ships, as well as basic meteorology.  His notes show that he had consulted Admiralty charts to work out depths in the vicinity of Teacháin a’ Watch.  The water in Portacloy Bay, to the right of the LOP was 4 fathoms, beneath the LOP, which is 200 foot above sea level, the sea was 12 fathoms.  The trade route out to sea was 30 fathoms.

The most intricate drawings and notes in Burns’ notebooks concern mines.  As numerous accidents during the war were to show, mines would prove the most dangerous hazard along the Irish coastline to military and civilians.  Burns noted the exterior and variations in type. 

Coastwatchers paid much attention to the recognition of aircraft.  Training discussed generic aircraft identification techniques.  Burns noted how an ‘aircraft flies at 5 miles a minute’ and a ‘bomber at 4 miles a minute’; in addition ‘bombers [had a] heavy volume tone [and] fighters [a] sharp tone.’  He was to note four physical characteristics of any aircraft passing his post, which he summarised as ‘WEFT’, or Wings, Engines, Fuselage and Tail.

If an aircraft crashed in the vicinity of the LOP the Coastwatchers were instructed to first ‘call [a] priest or other such clergyman [and] treat survivors kindly.’[2]  They were to ‘inform survivors that they are in Eire.’[3]  This approach had its tougher side.  Officers would search the plane to ensure that ‘all maps and documents are to be collected [and] also pay books [,] identity disks etc’,[4] ensuring, if it had not been destroyed by the crew, a useful supply of intelligence material.  This important role of the Coastwatcher in intelligence gathering was taught detail.  They were guarding the extremities of Ireland’s territory in the land, on the sea and in the air.

So we can tell from Burns’ notes what the men at LOP63 were tasked with.  They were to watch for and record air and marine traffic around the post, look out for mines and shipwrecked mariners or survivors from air crashes. And they were to do so specifically with intelligence gathering in mind. Most of all they were to act as an invasion watch.  The possibility of an invasion of Ireland remained very real through the Second World War.

(8) Anticipating that a European war was imminent, teams from the Defence Forces reserves took up positions along Ireland’s coastline in late August 1939.  It was little, but it showed that Ireland was serious about its neutrality.  The Irish High Commissioner in London emphasised to Britain that de Valera had informed the German Minister in Dublin that ‘he must not think that [the] Irish shore could be used for any German purposes – propaganda – espionage – etc.’[5] The coast would be under 24-hour observation.

(9) Corporal Ted Sweeney who commanded LOP 60 overlooking Blacksod Bay recalled: ‘we started from scratch.  We had no barracks, no hut or anything.  We worked an old British outpost that had been burned down … no shelter at all.’[6]  The OPW and the Department of Defence arranged for huts like Teacháin a’ Watch to be built.[7]  Though the posts were small in size, thirteen foot by nine foot, the operation to build seventy-six posts and recondition eight posts around the coastline of Ireland was one of the most widely spread engineering exercises undertaken by the Defence Forces during the Second World War. 

Ireland’s frontline forces perched in their cliff-top and headland posts provided an almost immediate and eventually highly detailed picture of events on the sea and in the air off the coasts of Ireland.  (10) On a good day the Coastwatchers on Erris head could see over twelve nautical miles to the horizon, while their colleagues 700 foot up on Moyteoge Head on Achill Island at LOP 59 could see almost 30 nautical miles.  Faced with vast expanses of the grey North Atlantic to monitor, they were warned to

be alert and attentive and [to] guard against the feeling that nothing is likely to happen.  Bear in mind always that you are the outpost of the Country’s defences and on your alertness, powers of observation and quickness in sending information to the proper message centre depends the success of the defensive measures taken to defeat enemy activities.[8] 

The primary duty of the Coast Watching Service was passive defence, to keep a constant watch along the coastline for enemy air and naval activity, forces poised to invade Ireland and potential fifth columnists, who sought to assist invaders.  Their early-warning reports would give the ill-equipped Irish Army valuable extra time to ensure that ‘suitable defensive action may be taken.’[9] 

(11) (12) (13) When in operation the eight-man team at each LOP was equipped with a telescope, binoculars, silhouettes of aircraft and ships, a logbook, signal flags and lamps and a bicycle.  A fixed-point compass card was added in the autumn of 1940 as the Battle of the Atlantic intensified to allow accurate bearings to be taken by posts of ‘attacks on vessels in the vicinity of our shores.’[10] 

Reports from LOPs (14 and 15), now the nerve endings of Ireland’s front-line defence, were channelled to a central command in Dublin and as plots were built up a picture emerged of Allied and Axis strategy in the Battle of the Atlantic.  The intelligence picture built up indicated what routes of belligerent craft could be regarded as routine, where infringements were most likely to take place and the impact of weather and the changing seasons on traffic.  A state of alert that could be regarded as normal was also developed. 

(16) The second world war at sea began 250 miles north-west of Malin Head on the evening of 3 September 1939.  The liner Athenia, bound for Montreal with 1,418 passengers ands crew, was torpedoed without warning by U-30.  One hundred and twelve of the Athenia’s passengers and crew were killed.  The survivors were rescued by British destroyers and landed at Galway. 

Reports to G2 show that the waters and skies around Ireland were relatively quiet from September 1939 to the summer of 1940. But following fall of France in June 1940 and the opening of French Atlantic bases to Admiral Dönitz’s U-Boat force the war around the Irish coasts changed dramatically.  Germany now commanded the entire European Atlantic coastline.  Britain was isolated on all sides except the west.  A decisive U-boat campaign off Ireland would close Britain’s remaining flank. 

(17) From June 1940 to autumn 1941 the Battle of the Atlantic was waged directly off the western coast of Ireland.  Shipping crowded around Bloody Foreland and Malin Head.  The area became a hunting ground for U-Boats during what, due to the mounting successes, their crews dubbed ‘the Happy Time.’  Convoy battles and losses of up to two ships a day in the operational area of the U-Boats and their aerial reconnaissance partners in the Luftwaffe with (18 and 19) its FW 200 Condors made the roughly 250 square miles off Bloody Foreland a killing ground.  For the second half of 1940 Ireland was on the front line of the Battle of the Atlantic.  From 1941 on the conflict moved further west, making it more remote from the Irish coast watchers. 

(20) The human cost of war at sea was also becoming evident along the Irish coast.  In August 1940 alone twelve ships were torpedoed off the Irish coast and 41 lifeboats and 13 rafts put ashore on Irish territory with 132 survivors being rescued.  Slowly too the bodies of the dead arrived on Irish beaches to be found by the Coast Watchers, the LDF and local inhabitants.  From the end of July to the end of December 1940, 220 bodies were washed up along the Irish coast, hauled into currachs by local fishermen and on occasion recovered from the base of cliff faces by Gardaí and Coastwatchers descending on ropes to retrieve bodies.  Ted Sweeney at Blacksod recalled how ‘eventually we started to have rafts washed ashore and there were some dead bodies, there were rafts and old lifeboats coming, and, not many came ashore here, but there were quite a lot of bodies.’[11] Close to where we are today, the body of 25 year old private John H Warham was found at Kilgalligan on 2 September 1940 (21 and 22). He was one of the many dead from the sinking of Aradora Star which were washed onto Ireland’s shored in August and September 1940. He is buried in Belmullet.

How well did the coastwatching service perform in this first stage of the Battle of the Atlantic?  Did their reports give G2 a reliable, indeed correct, so far as the later historical record shows, picture of events in the North Atlantic off Ireland’s coast?  Colonels Archer and Bryan were interested in broad brush strokes ‘pointing out tendencies’ to provide ‘a general picture of the situation rather than a record of all happenings.’ [12]  The Coast Watchers were proud of their abilities; Michael Brick, at Brandon Point LOP, recalled ‘we would be right above any craft that entered our vicinity.  A gannet could not land on the water unknown to us.’[13] 

The M&CWS had little difficulty providing information that showed to G2 that the Battle of the Atlantic had intensified following the fall of France.  The Coastwatchers also had little difficulty indicating that the conflict had moved from the southern to the northern cones of approach to the Western Approaches in the autumn of 1940. They identified the killing ground of the German U-Boats extending 500 miles off the Donegal coast and the ‘ceaseless patrol on the Northern shipping routes’ kept up by RAF Coastal Command.[14]  Through the reports of the Coastwatching service the weekly disposition of British and German forces around the Irish coasts and their activities as regards violations of Irish neutrality could be estimated with some degree of accuracy.  Convoy routes, strengths and marine and air escorts were known to G2.  Also known were the intentions of the aircraft of RAF Coastal Command and the Condors of the Luftwaffe.  The information gathered following the fall of France did give a relatively accurate view of the trends of the Battle of the Atlantic off Ireland. 

As 1941 began G2 could see the growing importance of Derry as a naval base to the British with the arrival of destroyers given to the British by the United States.  Large amounts of aerial activity were now taken as a sign that convoys, becoming larger and more heavily escorted than previously, were expected along the Donegal coast.  What began as a one-off incident would, following repeated occurrences, be put into a pattern and finally be identified.  G2 could extrapolate from these command area reports what was expected to be the normal state of events off the Irish coast and so unusual activity became more obvious.  In late 1940 the RAF had begun the construction of a seaplane base at Castle Archdale on the shores of Lough Erne in Fermanagh in Northern Ireland.  In early 1941 flights from Castle Archdale along the Mayo coast were becoming normal.  British aircraft were ‘observed almost daily off the coast of Mayo, Sligo and Donegal and crossing our territory between Ballyshannon and Finner when moving to and from their base in Lough Erne.’[15]

            This leads me in to the final point I want to make, perhaps the most important two sightings by LOP 63 during the Second World War. With the agreement of the Irish government, flights from Castle Archdale were given access to the Atlantic Ocean through an (23) air corridor beginning at the border at Belleek, passing over eight miles of Irish territory to the sea at Ballyshannon and out over Donegal Bay to the edge of the Irish territorial waters.  The diplomatic groundwork to allow the RAF to fly along the ‘Donegal corridor’ took place in discussions between External Affairs and the Air Ministry in December 1940 and January 1941, the details of the arrangement being finalized in a meeting between de Valera and the British Representative in Ireland Sir John Maffey. 

By April the patrol areas of aircraft flying the corridor were known to be between Annagh Head in Mayo and Rossan Point in Donegal and then westward over the Atlantic.  Access to the ocean along the corridor saved a trip of almost 200 miles and approximately two hours flying time to get to the same position west of Donegal Bay.  But what did this shortcut achieve?  Did the operation of the ‘Donegal Corridor’ significantly benefit the British war effort?  One episode in which LOP 63 is critical provides an answer.  The ‘Donegal corridor’ and the flying boat base at Castle Archdale played a central role in the sinking of the German (24) battle cruiser Bismarck on 27 May 1941 in one of the most memorable naval engagements of the Second World War. 

British forces had been hunting Bismarck since receiving a 20 May intelligence report from the British naval attaché in Stockholm that two German battleships had entered the North Atlantic from the Baltic, British aircraft, battleships and cruisers had been seeking the Bismarck and the cruiser Prinz Eugen.  (25) Bismarck sank the battleship Hood, the most famous ship in the Royal Navy on 24 May.  She escaped an air strike from Swordfish aircraft from the aircraft carrier Victorious on 25 May and, after evading pursuing British vessels for almost a day, seemed to be heading for the certain safety of France.  It was of the utmost importance that the British find and sink the Bismarck.   

To regain the trail of Bismarck, two (26) Catalina flying boats from Castle Archdale were sent to search for her off southwest Ireland.  The first Catalina, Z of 209 Squadron was airborne at 0345 on 26 May.[16]  A second Catalina, M of 240 Squadron took off from Lough Erne an hour later.  Both aircraft passed along the Donegal Corridor and climbed out over Donegal Bay.  They turned west.  Z/209 had to descend to 500 feet due to poor visibility.  It then took a westerly course off Eagle Island at 0430 to the start of its patrol point 400 miles to the south-west.[17]  M/240 followed almost an hour later.  (27) The LOPs along the north Mayo coast each saw two Catalinas passing their positions on the night of 25–6 May 1941.[18]  Despite poor to moderate visibility, the LOPs along the south Donegal and north Mayo coast observed and tracked the Catalina flying boats ordered from Castle Archdale to search for the Bismarck.

Z/209 was airborne at 0345 BDST (0245 IST).  LOP 64 spotted an aircraft at 0327 IST[19] passing three miles north of the post heading west at an estimated altitude of 4,000 feet.  Seven minutes later and seventeen miles to the west, LOP 63 saw the same aircraft.  LOP 62 then picked up this aircraft, identifying her in the pre-dawn twilight of a short summer night as a twin-engined high-winged monoplane, a good description of a Catalina, flying at approximately 1,000 feet.  The final sighting was from Annagh Head LOP at 0348 IST, as Z/209 passed south-west in moderate visibility at approximately 2,000 feet an estimated six miles to the north-west. 

Had the two Catalinas not been able to use the ‘Donegal Corridor’ they would have had to fly north through Northern Ireland and around the Donegal coast wasting valuable time in their search for Bismarck.  This would have allowed the German cruiser time to sail further east and closer to the long-range Luftwaffe air cover and U-boat cover that would protect her across the Bay of Biscay and into Brest.

Z/209 sighted Bismarck at 1030 in poor visibility and radioed her position, almost 600 miles to the south-west of Annagh Head where her crew had last seen land at 0430 over neutral Ireland.  After the aircraft from Lough Erne had spotted Bismarck a torpedo attack from aircraft from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal jammed one of Bismarck’s rudders allowing British ships to catch up with her.  Bismarck was finally sunk on 27 May. It was a defining point in the Atlantic Theatre.  The brunt of the battle of the Atlantic would now fall on the U-boats and the role of the surface raider would decline.[20] 

The coastwatchers at LOP 63 and elsewhere along the Mayo coast were unaware of the role played by Z/209 in the hunt for Bismarck and afterwards G2 remained unaware that such an important part in the hunt for Bismarck had taken place off Ireland’s shores.  As far as the coast watchers were concerned, Z/209 was just another Coastal Command patrol; they never realized the importance of the aircraft or of the second Catalina, M/240.  But thanks to the record keeping of LOP 63 and its neighbouring posts, almost 80 years later their log book reveals its secrets, and I am sure Treasa will have other for us when we visit Teacháin a’ Watch.

(28) Regular soldiers maligned the Coastwatchers as an unarmed, poor quality, semi-civilian volunteer force not subject to the life of the regular soldier.  But the account of the sighting of the aircraft that sighted Bismarck showed what they could do. By selecting locals as coastwatchers the Defence Forces acquired a specialist group with a pre-existing detailed knowledge of a given section of the coastline.  This was the knowledge that only a lifetime of living by the coast could give and which barrack training could not provide.  G2 appreciated the skills of their men along the coast. As one memorandum put it, these men combined ‘an extensive knowledge of the peculiarities of the coast in the vicinity of their posts with a reasonably good appreciation of the different types of seagoing craft.’[21]  Living locally, the men of the Coast Watch knew what craft were expected to operate in the vicinity of their posts and once in operation the Coast Watching Service ensured that ‘under normal conditions of visibility no surface craft can approach our coast unobserved at any intermediate point between LOPs.’[22]  (29) By the end of the Second World War the Coastwatchers at LOP 63, like their comrades at the 82 other LOPS, had become, in the opinion of the Department of Defence ‘an integral part of the defences of the State.’[23] They have left us an important record of neutral Ireland’s Second World War. Now I’ll hand over to Amelia. Let’s go and explore their sightings and the very reports of what they saw around and over us almost 80 years ago from Teacháin a’ Watch.

[1] MA G2/X/318, Archer to Lawlor, 29 September 1939.

[2] MA Owen Quinn Papers, training notes of Volunteer J.P. Burns.

[3] MA Owen Quinn Papers, training notes of Volunteer J.P. Burns.

[4] MA Owen Quinn Papers, training notes of Volunteer J.P. Burns.

[5] TNA PRO DO 35/1107/9 WX1/78, minute by Eden, 1 September 1939.

[6] MA, Owen Quinn papers, typescript ‘Interview with Ted Sweeney’.

[7] NAI DF S7/2/40, MacMahon to McElligott, 8 September 1939.

[8] MA G2/X/318, ‘Instructions for Personnel Manning Coast Watching Posts’, September 1939.

[9] MA G2/X/318, ‘Instructions for Personnel Manning Coast Watching Posts’, September 1939.

[10] MA G2/X/318, Archer to Lawlor, 20 August 1940.

[11] MA, Owen Quinn papers, typescript ‘Interview with Ted Sweeney’.

[12] MA G2/X/315 part 2, Archer to Intelligence Officers, all Commands, 10 July 1940.

[13] MA, Owen Quinn Papers, Brick to Quinn, 10 July 1994.

[14] MA G2/X/315 part 2, Togher to Archer, Western Command report for November 1940.

[15] MA G2/X/315 part 2, Western Command Monthly Report, November 1941.

[16] TNA AIR 27/1294, 209 Squadron Operations Logbook, entries for 26 May 1941

[17] Report of Scouting and Search of PBY-5 No. AH545 ‘Catalina’ for Bismarck 26 May, 1941, at www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq118-3.htm (accessed 30 March 2006). 

[18] TNA AIR 20/1329, Coastal Command aspect of the Bismarck Episode, undated.

[19] All times and descriptions are from the post logbooks.

[20] The Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau remained to be attacked.  The ships attempted to make a dash along the English Channel on 11 Feb. 1942.  Spotted, the Scharnhorst was seriously damaged as it reached German waters on 13 Feb., the Gneisenau was attacked in Kiel on the night of 26-7 of Feb. 1942 and the Prinz Eugen was torpedoed on its way to Trondheim in Norway on 23 Feb. 1942, but survived the war.  The British press had, at the time, speculated on the possible use of the radio set in the German legation in Dublin in aiding the flight of the two ships (See Walshe to de Valera, 15 Dec. 1943 (NAI DFA Secretary’s Files A2) and Walshe to de Valera, 17 Feb. 1942 (NAI DFA Secretary’s Files, A25)). 

[21] MA G2/X/318, ‘Memorandum on Coastal Observation’, no date.

[22] MA G2/X/318, ‘Memorandum on Coastal Observation’, no date.

[23] NAI OPW A115/21/1/1939, Industry and Commerce to OPW, 23 April 1956.