Coventry Blitz
Coventry Blitz | |||||||
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Part of the Strategic bombing campaign of World War II | |||||||
Winston Churchill, the Mayor J. A. Moseley, the Bishop of Coventry M. G. Haigh, the Deputy Mayor A. R. Grindlay, and others visiting the ruins of Coventry Cathedral in September 1941 | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Nazi Germany | United Kingdom |
The Coventry Blitz (
Background
At the start of the
During the
Like many of the industrial towns of the English West Midlands region that had been industrialised during the
Air raids
August to October 1940
There were 17 small raids on Coventry by the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain between August and October 1940 during which around 198 tons of bombs fell. Together, the raids killed 176 people and injured around 680.[4]: 151–152 The most notable damage was to the new Rex Cinema which had been opened in February 1937 and had already been closed by an earlier bombing raid in September.[5]
On 17 October 1940, Second Lieutenant
One notable casualty of the October raids was
14 November 1940
The raid that began on the evening of 14 November 1940 was the most severe to hit Coventry during the war. It was carried out by 515 German bombers, from
The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped
Coventry's air defences consisted of twenty-four
At around 20:00,
In one night, more than 4,300 homes in Coventry were destroyed and around two-thirds of the city's buildings were damaged. Most of the city centre was destroyed. Two hospitals, two churches and a police station were also damaged.
An estimated 568 people were killed in the raid (the exact figure was never precisely confirmed), with another 863 badly injured and 393 sustaining lesser injuries. Given the intensity of the raid, casualties were limited by the fact that a large number of Coventrians "
Although the city centre suffered the heaviest raids, districts of the city including Stoke Heath, Foleshill and Wyken were also heavily bombed.[16][17]
The raid reached such a new and severe level of destruction that Joseph Goebbels later used the term coventriert ("coventried") when describing similar levels of destruction of other enemy towns. During the raid, the Germans dropped about 500 t (490 long tons; 550 short tons) of high explosives, including 50 parachute air-mines, of which 20 were incendiary petroleum mines, and 36,000 incendiary bombs.[18]: 120 [19]
The raid of 14 November combined several innovations which influenced all future strategic bomber raids during the war.[18]: 118 These were:
- The use of pathfinder aircraft with electronic aids to navigate, to mark the targets before the main bomber raid.
- The use of high explosive bombs and air-mines (blockbuster bombs) coupled with thousands of incendiary bombs intended to set the city ablaze in a firestorm.
In the Allied raids later in the war, 500 or more heavy four-engine bombers all delivered their 3,000–6,000 lb (1,400–2,700 kg) bomb loads in a concentrated wave lasting only a few minutes. At Coventry, the German twin-engined bombers carried smaller bomb loads (2,000–4,000 pounds (910–1,810 kg)), and attacked in smaller waves. Each bomber flew several sorties over the target, returning to base in France for more bombs. Thus the attack was spread over several hours, and there were lulls in the raid when firefighters and rescuers could reorganise and evacuate civilians.
The British used the opportunity given them by the attack on Coventry to try a new tactic against Germany, which was carried out on 16 December 1940 as part of
Coventry and Ultra
In his 1974 book The Ultra Secret, Group Captain F. W. Winterbotham asserted that the British government had advance warning of the attack from Ultra; intercepted German radio messages encrypted with the Enigma cipher machine and decoded by British cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park. He further claimed that Winston Churchill ordered that no defensive measures should be taken to protect Coventry, lest the Germans suspect that their cipher had been broken.[22] Winterbotham was a key figure for Ultra and supervised the "Special Liaison Officers" who delivered Ultra material to field commanders.[4]: 155
Winterbotham's claim has been rejected by other Ultra participants and by historians. They state that while Churchill was indeed aware that a major bombing raid would take place, no one knew what the target would be.[23][24]
A few days before the attack, Ultra had identified Mondschein Sonate (Moonlight Sonata) as a probable code for a planned group of attacks on three possible targets over several possible days. The targets had the code names Einheitpreis, Regenschirm and Korn. The day before the Coventry raid, a prisoner mentioned Regenschirm (umbrella), which was assumed to mean umbrella man (Neville Chamberlain) who was born in Birmingham, it would be bombed on 19/20 November. Einheitpreis (unit-price) was identified later, which was tied to sixpence at Woolworths, meaning Wolverhampton. Korn was unidentified at the time.[8]: 101 Peter Calvocoressi was head of the Air Section at Bletchley Park, which translated and analysed all deciphered Luftwaffe messages. He wrote "Ultra never mentioned Coventry. ... Churchill, so far from pondering whether to save Coventry or safeguard Ultra, was under the impression that the raid was to be on London".[25]
The scientist Reginald Victor Jones, who led the British side in the Battle of the Beams, wrote that "Enigma signals to the X-beam stations were not broken in time" and that he was unaware that Coventry was the intended target. The British were yet unaware that the Luftwaffe had moved from their pilots manually listening to the signals to an automatic narrow-band receiver on board, which caused jamming countermeasures to be ineffective. Jones also noted that Churchill returned to London that afternoon, which indicated that Churchill believed that London was the likely target for the raid.[26]
Since 1996, the Ultra decrypts for the period have been available in the UK National Archives.[27] Between 07:35 GMT on 10 November 1940 and 05:00 on 11 November, a German signal was deciphered and given the serial number CX/JQ/444, paragraph 4.[28] The message set out code words to be used by aircraft on an operation named Mondschein Sonat but did not give Coventry as the target or a date. It said that transmission of a figure 9 would denoteKORN and hindsight has recognised that to be the code name for Coventry. This was not known at the time even though PAULA had been identified as Paris and LOGE as London. KORN was used in two reports[29][non-primary source needed] from an aircraft taking part in a raid on Southampton on 30 November, two weeks after the Coventry Blitz. Another decrypt on 11 November or early on 12 November[30][non-primary source needed] gave navigational beam settings for Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and Coventry but no dates. There was a hiatus in Ultra decrypts from 01:15 GMT on 13 November until 02:40 on 15 November[31][non-primary source needed] by which time the raid was well underway: Churchill could not have acted on new Ultra intelligence on the afternoon or evening of the attack because there was none to give him. Intelligence from captured airmen and documents did not offer an unambiguous picture either.[32][citation needed]
April 1941
On the night of 8/9 April 1941 Coventry was subject to another large air raid when 230 bombers attacked the city, dropping 315 tons of high explosive and 25,000 incendiaries. In this and another raid two nights later on 10/11 April about 451 people were killed and over 700 seriously injured.
August 1942
The final air raid on Coventry came on 3 August 1942, in the Stoke Heath district approximately one mile to the east of the city centre. Six people were killed. By the time of this air raid, some 1,236 people had been killed by air raids on Coventry; of these, 808 rest in the mass grave in London Road Cemetery.[35] Around 80 per cent of them had been killed in the raids of 14/15 November 1940 and 8–10 April 1941.[14]
Aftermath
Immediate reconstruction was undertaken by a committee headed by motor-industry magnate
Coventry Cathedral was left as a ruin, and is today still the principal reminder of the bombing. A new cathedral was constructed alongside the ruin in the 1950s, designed by the architect Basil Spence. Spence (later knighted for this work) insisted that instead of re-building the old cathedral it should be kept in ruins as a garden of remembrance and that the new cathedral should be built alongside, the two buildings together effectively forming one church.[36] The use of Hollington sandstone for the new Coventry Cathedral provides an element of unity between the buildings.[according to whom?]
The foundation stone of the new cathedral was laid by Elizabeth II on 23 March 1956.[37] It was consecrated on 25 May 1962, and Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, composed for the occasion, was premièred in the new cathedral on 30 May to mark its consecration.[38][39]
See also
- 1939 Coventry bombing
- Die Luftwacht
- History of Coventry
- Operation Abigail Rachel
- Birmingham Blitz
Footnotes
- double summer timeduring the summer months).
References
- ^ "This Day in History 1940: Germans bomb Coventry". 12 April 2009. Archived from the original on 12 April 2009. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
- ^ Taylor, Frederick (2015). Coventry: November 14, 1940. p. 117.
- ^ Jeffrey Haydu, "Between craft and class: skilled workers and factory politics in the United Kingdom", p. 126
- ^ ISBN 0-304-35676-X.
- ^ "The Gould Gazetteer". Merciacinema.org. Archived from the original on 12 October 2008.
- ^ Ransted, Chris. Bomb Disposal and the British Casualties of WW2.
- ^ "Ernest Hugh Snell". memorials. King's College.
- ^ a b Lewin, Ronald (1978). Ultra goes to war the secret story. Pengiun. p. 103.
- ISBN 1-85753-099-3.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Collier, Basil (1957). The Defence of the United Kingdom. History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series. London: H.M. Stationery Office. pp. 263–264.
- ^ a b "A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 8: The air raids of 1940". British history on line.
- ISBN 978-1-445-65000-5ch. 8
- ^ "1940: Germans bomb Coventry to destruction". BBC News. 15 November 1940. Retrieved 30 April 2010.
- ^ a b "The Coventry Blitz: Some blitz statistics". Historic Coventry. Archived from the original on 6 November 2016. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
- ^ "Police Roll of Honour Trust – West Midlands Police". Police Memorial. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- ^ "Coventry Blitz: Reliving Fateful Night 80 Years Ago Today". Coventry Telegraph. 14 November 2020. Retrieved 29 May 2023.
- ^ familyresearcher.co.uk
- ^ ISBN 0-7475-7078-7
- ^ "War in the West". WW2 Guide. Archived from the original on 10 September 2006. gives different numbers than Taylor (2005): "449 bombers dropped 150,000 incendiary bombs, 503 long tons (511 t) of high-explosives (1,400 bombs) and 130 parachute sea-mines (causing extensive blast damage) on Coventry".
- ISBN 1-84415-210-3.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-822888-0.
- ISBN 0-86007-268-1.
- ^ "Defending Coventry". Historic Coventry. Archived from the original on 20 August 2008. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
- ^ Hunt, David (28 August 1976). "The raid on Coventry". The Times. p. 11.
- ISBN 0-345-30069-6.
- ISBN 0-241-89746-7. The book was also published in the US under the title The Wizard War.
- ^ File HW5/6
- ^ "Moonlight Sonata". Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- ^ National Archives AIR 22/481: Air Ministry W/T Intelligence Service Daily Summary No. 454[non-primary source needed]
- ^ National Archives HW5/6: CX/JQ/445, para. 4[non-primary source needed]
- ^ National Archives HW5/6[non-primary source needed]
- ^ "Kampfgruppe 100, ULTRA, and the Coventry Blitz". Retrieved 26 September 2014.
- ^ "The Coventry Blitz: What did Coventry lose?". Historic Coventry. Archived from the original on 7 April 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
- ^ Gould, Jeremy. Coventry Planned: The Architecture of the Plan for Coventry (1940 to 1978). Jeremy and Carline Gould Architects.
- ^ McGrory, David. "The Coventry Blitz". CWN.org.uk.
- ^ Mansell, George (1979). Anatomy of architecture. A & W Publishers. p. 178.
- ^ Thomas, John (1987). Coventry Cathedral. Unwin Hyman. p. 129.
- ^ Havighurst, Alfred F. (1985). Britain in Transition: The twentieth century. University of Chicago Press. p. 643.
- ISBN 9781589832442.
- BBC Coventry & Warwickshire. April 2003. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
- ^ Stephens, W. B., ed. (1969). "The City of Coventry: Buildings: Domestic buildings". A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 8: The City of Coventry and Borough of Warwick. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
Further reading
- Calvocoressi, Peter. Top Secret Ultra, includes an account of the Coventry Raid, and the actual Ultra cryptanalytic intelligence available before the raid.
- Farrington, Karen. The Blitzed City: The Destruction of Coventry, 1940 (2015)
- Jones, Edgar, et al. "Civilian morale during the Second World War: Responses to air raids re-examined." Social History of Medicine 17#3 (2004): 463–479.
- Longmate, Norman. Air raid: The bombing of Coventry, 1940 (1978)
External links
- McGrory, David. "The Coventry Blitz". News & Information for Coventry & Warwickshire. CWN.
- McGrory, David. "Photograph – City Centre". CWN.
- "Coventry Air Raids". The Coventry Blitz Resource Centre.
- World War II Bombing collection on Coventry Atlas
- Blitz bomb damage map collection on Coventry Atlas
Archive audio recordings
The devastating raid on the night of 14/15 November 1940, and its aftermath, were vividly described by several civilians interviewed by the BBC several days later. The speakers included Mr. E. Letts, Muriel Drewe, Miss G. M. Ellis and the Very Reverend R. T. Howard. These archive 1940 recordings feature on The Blitz, an audiobook CD issued in 2007.
- The Blitz (audiobook CD). 2007.
with archive recordings of Coventry Blitz
- A letter written in 1940 about witnessing the Coventry Blitz (read aloud). Archived from the original on 30 January 2012.