Coventry Blitz
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The Coventry blitz (blitz: from the German word blitzkrieg meaning "lightning war"
listen (help·info)) was a series of bombing raids that took place in the English city of Coventry. The city was bombed many times during World War II by the Nazi German Air Force (Luftwaffe). The most devastating of these blitzes occurred on the evening of 14 November 1940.
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[edit] Before the bombing
At the start of World War II, Coventry was an industrial city of about 320,000 people which, like much of the industrial West Midlands, contained metal working industries. In Coventry's case, these included, cars, bicycles, aeroplane engines and, since 1900, munitions factories. In the words of the historian Frederick Taylor, "Coventry... was therefore, in terms of what little law existed on the subject, a legitimate target for aerial bombing",[1] (see also Area Bombardment: Aerial area bombardment and international law). Like many of the industrial towns of the English West Midlands which had been industrialised during the Industrial Revolution, industrial development had occurred before zoning regulations had come into existence and many of the small and medium-sized factories were woven into the same streets as the workers' houses and the shops of the city centre.
[edit] July and August 1940
Several small raids on Coventry during the Battle of Britain in July and August 1940 killed several dozen people. The most notable damage was to the new Rex Cinema which had only been opened in February 1937, and which had already been closed by an earlier bombing raid in September. [2]
[edit] November 14, 1940
The raid was executed by 515 German bombers, two thirds from Luftflotte 3 and the rest from the pathfinders of Kampfgruppe 100. The attack, code-named Operation Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata), was intended to destroy Coventry's factories and industrial infrastructure, although it was clear that damage to the rest of the city, including monuments and residential areas, would be considerable. The initial wave of 13 specially modified Heinkel He 111 aircraft of Kampfgruppe 100, were equipped with X-Gerät navigational devices, accurately dropping marker flares at 19:20.[3] The British and the Germans were fighting the Battle of the Beams and on this night the British failed to disrupt the X-Gerät signals.
The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped high explosive bombs, knocking out the utilities (the water supply, electricity network, and gas mains), and cratering the roads, making it difficult for the fire engines to reach fires started by the follow-up waves of bombers. The follow-up waves dropped a combination of high explosive and incendiary bombs. There were two types of incendiary bomb: those made of magnesium and those made of petroleum. The high explosive bombs and the larger air-mines were not only designed to hamper the Coventry fire brigade, they were also intended to damage roofs, making it easier for the incendiary bombs to fall into buildings and ignite them.
At around 20:00 Coventry Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Michael, was set on fire for the first time. The volunteer fire-fighters managed to put out the first fire but other direct hits followed and soon new fires in the cathedral were out of control. During the same period, fires were started in nearly every street in the city centre. A direct hit on the fire brigade headquarters disrupted the fire service's command and control, making it difficult to send fire fighters to the most dangerous fires blazes first. As the Germans had intended, the water mains were damaged by high explosives: there was not enough water available to tackle many of the fires. The raid reached its climax around midnight with the final all clear sounding at 06:15 on the morning of 15 November.
In the Allied raids later in the war, 500 or more heavy four-engine bombers all delivered their 3,000-6,000 pound bomb loads in a concentrated wave lasting only a few minutes. But at Coventry, the German two- and three-engined bombers carried smaller bomb loads (2,000–4,000 lb), and attacked in smaller multiple waves. Each bomber flew several sorties over the target, returning to base in France to rearm. Thus the attack was spread over several hours, and there were lulls in the raid when fire fighters and rescuers could reorganise and evacuate civilians.[4] As Arthur Harris, commander of RAF Bomber Command, wrote after the war "Coventry was adequately concentrated in point of space [to start a firestorm], but all the same there was little concentration in point of time".[5]
The raid destroyed or damaged about 60,000 buildings over hundreds of hectares in the centre of Coventry, and is known to have killed 568 civilians. The raid reached such a new level of destruction that Joseph Goebbels later used the term Coventriert ("Coventrated") when describing similar levels of destruction of other enemy towns. During the raid, the Germans dropped about 500 tonnes of high explosives, including 50 parachute air-mines, of which 20 were incendiary petroleum mines, and 36,000 incendiary bombs.[6]
The raid of 14 November combined several innovations which were to influence all future strategic bomber raids during the war.[7] 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.
The actual death toll of the Coventry Blitz was never officially confirmed. It has been reported that many bodies may never have been found, or had been burnt, blasted or crushed beyond recognition. The destruction of munitions factories may have claimed victims among war workers from other parts of the country who had no relatives to report them missing. At least 568 people died in the Coventry Blitz; some sources have estimated that the death toll was as high as 1,000.
[edit] 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.[8] Winterbotham was a key figure for Ultra; he supervised the "Special Liaison Officers" who delivered Ultra material to field commanders.
However, Winterbotham's claim has been rejected by other Ultra participants and historians who argue that while Churchill was indeed aware that a major bombing raid would take place, no one knew what the target would be.[9].
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 or safeguard Ultra, was under the impression that the raid was to be on London."[10]
Scientist R. V. 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. Furthermore, he explained that a technical mistake caused jamming countermeasures to be ineffective.[11]
[edit] April 1941
On the night of 8 April/9 April 1941 Coventry was subject to another large air raid when 237 bombers attacked the city dropping 315 high explosive bombs and 710 incendiary canisters. In this and another raid two nights later on 10 April/11 April about 475 people were killed and over 700 seriously injured. Damage was caused to many buildings including some factories, the central police station, the Warwickshire Hospital, King Henry VIII School, and St. Mary's Hall.[12]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Taylor, Frederick; Dresden Tuesday 13 February 1945; Bloomsbury, First Pub 2004 (ISBN 0-7475-7078-7),used as a reference in this article: paper back 2005 (ISBN 0-7475-7084-1). Chapter 10 Blitz
[edit] In fiction
- Christopher Hyde's novel "A Bodyguard of Lies" involves a London serial killer being tracked to Coventry on the night of November 14, 1940, and also involves themes of ULTRA intelligence.
- Alan Pollock's 2008 play One Night in November (premiered at the Belgrade Theatre in March 2008) involves a Bletchley Park codebreaker and his dilemma as to whether or not to reveal his foreknowledge of the raid to his lover from Coventry. It also perpetuates the accusation that Winston Churchill knew Coventry would be raided but sacrificed it in order to safeguard the secrecy of the ULTRA intelligence, though Churchill does not appear in person in the play.[13]
- In his novel "Blitzcat", Robert Westall has the main character fleeing Coventry on the night of November 14, 1940, in the middle of the raid.[14]
- In Babylon 5, a popular science fiction series, episode In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum Captain Sheridan, Babylon 5's commander, discussed the Coventry bombing as a way to convey the idea of "how much is a secret worth." Sheridan does this by stating that Churchill knew Coventry would be raided but sacrificed it in order to safeguard the secrecy of the ULTRA.
- On an episode of the BBC Television series Spooks, the example of the Coventry Blitz is used to justify allowing a known bomb to detonate.
- In Connie Willis' science fiction novel, To Say Nothing of the Dog, she describes an Oxford time-travel laboratory which has participants return to Coventry to look for artefacts destroyed in the bombing.
[edit] Further reading
- David McGrory The Coventry Blitz CWN - News & Information for Coventry & Warwickshire
- David McGrory Photograph - City Centre
- Coventry Air Raids The Coventry Blitz Resource centre
- Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret Ultra, includes an account of the Coventry Raid, and the actual cryptanalytic intelligence available before the raid.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Taylor References, p. 117.
- ^ http://merciacinema.org/blog/the-gould-gazetteer/
- ^ The British were on British Summer Time (GMT +1) during the winter months of the war (and double summer time during the summer months).
- ^ Taylor References, p. 120.
- ^ Harris, Arthur "Bomber Offensive (first edition Collins 1947); Pen & Sword military classics 2005; ISBN 1-84415-210-3, p. 83.
- ^ Taylor References, p. 120. But War in the West gives different numbers: "449 bombers dropped 150,000 incendiary bombs, 503 tons of high-explosives (1,400 bombs) and 130 parachute sea-mines (causing extensive blast damage) on Coventry".
- ^ Taylor References, p. 118.
- ^ F.W. Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974 ISBN 0297768328; also London, Futura, 1975, ISBN 0860072681
- ^ "Defending Coventry". Historic Coventry. http://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/blitz/defend-cov.php.
- ^ Calvocoressi, Peter (1981). Top Secret Ultra. New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 85-86. ISBN 0-345-30069-6.
- ^ Jones, R. V. (1978). Most secret war: British Scientific Intelligence 1939–1945. London: Hamilton. pp. 149. ISBN 0-241-89746-7 =.
- ^ "A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 8: The air raids of 1940". British history on line. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=16005#s5.
- ^ Billington, Michael (13 March 2008). "One Night in November (review)". The Guardian. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/reviews/story/0,,2264571,00.html. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
- ^ Westall, Robert "Blitzcat" p100-120 Macmillan 2002 edition(ISBN 0-330-39861-X)
