Liverpool Blitz Memorial
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Liverpool Blitz Memorial
This memorial has a mother clutching her baby with one arm while reaching up the steps to her son who is preoccupied with his toy aircraft (which appears to be a twin engined bomber of some type).
Around four thousand civilians were killed during the bombing of Liverpool.
Great sculpture and memorial..
nice shot,ian..love these..that twin engine bomber resembles the german heinkel he-111..wonder if it’s symbolic that it gets plucked from the sky by the victims on the ground..?
Really like this. Not been to see it yet 🙂
Looks like a Blenhiem ! Seems odd for a youngster from Liverpool to have a toy German aircraft at that time but it probaly is german due to the subject matter of the sculpture .
Not seen this before Ian . A great angle that hightens the young lads precarious position .
Are you going to the BotA celebrations 24th-28th may in liverpool ….apparently theres gonna be around 25 Naval ships from a load of nations and they are gonna sail away in a procession on the 28th.
Blenheim was a plane in the Royal Air Force ,
Looks like a 111 to me – wrong wings and tail for a Blenheim anyway. I think that it’s representing the child’s innocent curiosity in the thing that’s trying to kill them – he’ not playing with a toy ‘plane in a real sense, he’s reaching up to the attacking aircraft as if it’s a toy. Sorry to be arty farty but that’s what I take from this sculpture. My girlfriend’s from Liverpool and her uncle’s enduring memory of the May Blitz is that someone nicked his bomb fragment collection when they had to evacuate. His mother’s enduring memory was all the people who were killed because the neighbourhood bomb shelter was a railway viaduct arch which happened to be a primary target for the Luftwaffe.
Fantastic POV..Excellent shot and info..
Many thanks everyone.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasujoba44] Thanks mate, I never knew about that. Yes I will try to. Not sure about the aircraft.
Like Mick [http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickb6265] at first I thought it was an He111 because of the general shape and the engines being level with the cockpit but the trailing edge of the wing doesn’t cut in near the root as it does on an He-111, nor does the trailing edge angle forwards slightly. It’s not a Blenheim either because the leading edge isn’t straight and again the trailing edge isn’t angled as it is on a Blenheim (and the engines are not level with the cockpit). Nor is it a Mosquito. I think the sculptor just made a model of a bomber of no specific type. But I’d like to think it is something definite!
looking at that,its deffo a sculptures efforts at the he-111,ian…
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickb6265] That’s what I thought it was when I first saw it….
Agonizing testimony of war…Great picture.
Nicely shot.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/micheleciavarella] [http://www.flickr.com/photos/stiemer] Hi Michele, hi Simon. Thank you both.
great shot, Ian
Smashing job Ian, well arranged shot and I really like what you’ve done with the colour.
I think the sculptor was probably aiming for a Heinkel looking aircraft, perhaps there’s something in the lad reaching out to it?
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/gastephen] Thanks Graham
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/highy] Cheers Al. Not easy to get a good angle showing it as a whole. I liked it best against the Liver Building. One layer is B&W, the other sepia. Are we agreed on it being roughly designed on a Heinkel then!
yep….!..
Very well captured and processed Ian.
Nicely shot Ian. Looks like a very fluid sculpture, quite impressive.
thats a lovely bit of sculpture
I thought it was a Mosquito, but the wings are on ‘backwards’…
very touching scultpure, esp. given that the wee boy is out of reach of his mum. well that just invokes separation anxiety for any mum knowing that this represents a time when bombs were falling. 4000 – that is a LOT of innocent people. I know Europe got it’s fair share from allied bombing, but still you have to wonder how it all was justified in the end …
… it could be a single tailed P38 .. lol
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/janspencer] [http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarscot] [http://www.flickr.com/photos/angwickham] [http://www.flickr.com/photos/scansfield] Thanks guys.
I like it because it depicts a woman and her children. The war was a man made thing, young men killing other young men on behalf of older men. But women and children bore the brunt, they were killed and injured and they lost their fathers and husbands and had to pick it all up and start again afterwards, always have done.
The emergence of bombers during the First World War meant that in the 1920s and 1930s civilians were terrorised by the threat because "the bomber will always get through."
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/maycontaintracesofnuts] I’m almost finished reading ‘The Unknown Soldier’ by Neil Hanson .. i’ve been reading other books around it so’s taking me a while .. however, I’ve just read the part where, in 1920 they return the Unknown Warrior [as he was then i believe] back to the UK – and how initially they weren’t going to let any ‘common’ folk / bereaved into Westminster. Thankfully someone clever said something and they elected some 800 family members [women] that had lost either all their sons & husband, all their sons, their only son .. and so on. It was the first real recognition [formally anyway] of the effect of the war on women. A most riveting part of the book, describing the home journey, the Cenotaph and the hundreds of thousands of visitors for days on end. very cool.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/angwickham] Funny, I was thinking about that story only the other day, of how the unknown soldier was chosen at random by a senior officer or statesman (you will know who having just read it) from 3 coffins containing unknown men.Yes you are quite right in what you say, women were – very gradually – being seen more as equals. We are still not there though, 100 years on.
Wow, this is awesome Ian, an amazing statue set against the Liverpool building!!!
Congratulations on Explore!! I hope you are keeping OK!!!;-)
Terrific shot!
Lovely composition and colouring, really highlights the memorial and Liverpool backdrop. There’s something similar in Leeds, with the child with his toy plane, will have to have a closer look
This is a very well and originally designed sculpture. Expressive, but free of pathos. I’m sometimes tired with "classic" war memorials…
And the model in the boy’s hand indeed looks like a stylized silhouette of He-111, it is the shape of the leading edges which suggest the sculptor might have had Heinkel in his mind.
Well captured, Ian. I like the muted colours too.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/maycontaintracesofnuts] The grave of the unknown soldier when back filled after exhumation for transit to St Pauls Cathedral, the grass never grew back correctly and I believe is still a different shade of green than all those around it, even after all these years.
Oh by the way it is definitely a Heinkel HE111 :-))
great photo Ian
Awesome! Keep up the good work.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/maycontaintracesofnuts] my memory is shite, even though i just read it, i believe it was four coffins from major battles and soil from the sites as well. but yes, the ‘chosen one’ was therein picked at random from those four [who were in a way pre-determined to be at least BEF by where they were fighting].. .. ok, because i’m ‘thorough’ i’ve gone back to the book – ae, 4 to choose from. the selection made by Brigadier Wyatt in the presence of Lieutenant Colonel E.A.S Gell. honestly – i’d recommend anyone to read Chapters 23,24,25 of The Unknown Soldier – telling of his return home, very very good reading. So well written.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardtierney] that’s fascinating info! and i’d take your word on i.d anyday 🙂
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/maycontaintracesofnuts] .. speaking of statues, there is the ‘mother and dead son’ statue in Berlin [mentioned in the book] – have you seen it?
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/angwickham] Ah, 4. Ok.
But I have not seen that statue in Berlin?
I suspect standing before this would be very moving …
If you’re ever in Leeds, search out the Arthur Lewis Aaron statue, he got a VC.
Beautiful tho the statue is, the powers that be sited in (hid it?) on a roundabout on the outskirts of town where about 17 lanes of traffic converge.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/damianlappin/8732070626/
On the roundabout next to Millgarth nick…
Its not a toy aeroplane, if it were it would be held the other way round no child holds a toy aeroplane like that. It is a Henkel 111 bomber and the boy is reaching up to try and grasp it in innocent excitement. The mother on the other had has a look of terror as she tries to protect her baby and bring her son to safety. A very moving memorial.
The artist himself describes it as a toy airplane. See Tom Murphy’s page about it here
Why is it almost an exact model of a German Heinkel 111 bomber right down to the asymmetrically glazed nose with the offset gunners position, strange choice for a child’s toy aeroplane