1939 in Wales

This article is about the particular significance of the year 1939 to Wales and its people.

Incumbents

March-November - Aneurin Bevan is temporarily expelled from the Labour Party.
27 April - Ely Racecourse in Cardiff closes.
1 June - The submarine HMS Thetis sinks during trials in Red Wharf Bay, Anglesey. At least 98 men are lost.
Late August - Most paintings evacuated from the National Gallery in London, many going to Penrhyn Castle at Bangor and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth; the latter also houses manuscripts, prints and books from the British Museum.
3 September - World War II: Declaration of war by the United Kingdom on Nazi Germany following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September.
September - The Urdd opens Ysgol Gymraeg yr Urdd, the first-ever Welsh-medium primary school, at Aberystwyth. In its first year the school consists of just seven pupils and one teacher, Norah Isaac.
October - Construction at M. S. Factory, Valley in Flintshire of tunnels for storage of chemical weapons begins.
The first war-time civilian evacuees arrive in Wales.
Vickers-Armstrong opens an aircraft factory at Broughton, Flintshire, later taken over by De Havilland.
A government report shows that seven of the thirteen Welsh counties have the highest incidence of tuberculosis in the whole of England and Wales.
George Maitland Lloyd Davies becomes President of the pacifist group Heddychwyr Cymru.
Talybont Reservoir in the Brecon Beacons is completed to supply Newport.
Sea Roads is constructed in Penarth in the Modernist style.

August - For the first time ever, both chair and crown are withheld at the National Eisteddfod.
4 October - Poets Lynette Roberts and Keidrych Rhys marry.
John Roberts Williams becomes editor of Y Cymro.

At the outbreak of war, the BBC was to transmit a unified service, including programs in the Welsh language. One of the few Welsh-language broadcasts to survive is a daily bulletin of world news at 5 pm. It was broadcast before the daily news in English at 6pm.
The BBC radio comedy series It's That Man Again begins its ten-year run. From 1940 to 1943 it will be broadcast from the BBC Wales studios in Bangor, Caernarvonshire, north Wales, where the BBC's Light Entertainment Department is temporarily based.

Rugby union
*4 February – Leslie Manfield gains his first senior cap in the match between Wales and Scotland.