The Blitz - 14th November 1940

There were three cross beams used to configure timers which would eventually release bombs. One told them to get ready, and the other two were used to work out the distance from the target point by measuring the time taken to traverse between the two beams and using that to set up a release timer. We tried to trick the operators by sending beams of our own, but the frequency was wrong. Once we had a countermeasure (we didn't during the Coventry blitz of 1940) they moved onto a system called Wotan, but we guessed what it was and also had some intelligence about it so it never worked. It was all clever stuff, originally designed to help guide aircraft into airports!

Dutchman, haven't a clue about all these beams and stuff, or communications but it sounds like GEC stuff to me, maybe they were more important than planes, either way, some disruption, but did the Siddeley and Humber get hit, I'm not good enough with this computer, so asking a favour. Regards Kaga. Norman Conquest, they straddled the power station, but burst the canal, and missed the cross roads by a dozen yards, think the power station was out of action a couple of weeks while they repaired the canal, had the stick of bombs been set closer together they would have hit the t-junction, the power station and the canal in a different place, according to some expert looking at the damage of the canal. As far as I know I don't think they attacked it again, which was strange, canal one side, big gun the other, railway that fed the p.station, huge target. Hey maybe they didn't want to spoil Kaga's allotment along side canal, dad had just given him?

Parkside and Humber were definitely targeted. How much damage was done is a matter of conjecture and the government obviously didn't want to reveal details to the enemy. I *think* I read that production at Humber was halted by an unexploded parachute mine and that the Army had wanted to blow it up in situ but Churchill expressly forbade it as it would have delayed war production.

Thanks Dutchman, be handy if it was over your head at work, lol. Another question, often wondered, was Coventry the first or only place to have a rocket site?

Hey Kaga. I wasn't aware that the power station was ever damaged. I knew that August 1942 Jerry had a go at it but I think they missed altogether. Wonder if the gas works was ever targeted, never heard a word about that. Lot of houses around that area, don't recall seeing any damage.

Norman - the houses at the junction of Hen Lane and Lauderdale Avenue in Holbrooks are post-war replacements for houses destroyed by bombing during the war - at least that is what I was told because I am not old enough to know for sure. Those houses are just across the railway tracks from the gas works. As an aside, when I purchased my first house in Holbrooks in 1973 one of the questions posed by Coventry CIty Council before they would give me a mortgage was, 'Was the property damaged in the war?' and if so, 'Has it been repaired?'

Yeh NL. For a short time during the war I lived in Arbury Ave and don't remember any damage there. Yes Hen Lane and the Dales was sort of back of the gas works, may have been a failed attempt. I know those "new" houses corner Lauderdale but have no idea when they were built. Some bomb sites were left undeveloped for years.

Not quite Kaga: Z Battery

A story related to me by an old friend no longer with us was that during the war his boss lived by the builders' yard in St. Nicholas Street where he worked. The yard was very close to the canal basin. After the November raid this chap was given the job of covering over the canal basin every time there was an air raid warning. Apparently he used big wooden frames covered in black canvas. The idea was that the canal basin would not be visible from the air and so could not be used as a reference point by the attacking bombers. Anyone ever heard this story?

A book on this subject that has been mentioned before is "Air Raid" by Norman Longmate, if you can get hold of a copy it is well worth a read. Reference the gas works he says the new one escaped, though showered with incendiaries it remained intact, also surviving the impact of four high-explosive bombs within 100 yards. The old gas works were less fortunate. The offices and governor house were set on fire, the governors, all maps, plans and records were destroyed and the valves and connections to trunk mains seroiously damaged. Also the main gas holder was destroyed which held three-quarters of a million cubic feet which went up like a huge firework.

Thanks for the "heads up" on that one. I don't recall any disruption of gas supply but I was only a kid at the time. I never knew that there was an old and a new gas works. The one I knew was on Foleshill Rd near the canal bridge where we were sent to buy coke on Saturday mornings. I think it's wise to keep in mind that in 1940 bomb aiming was not an exact science. I lived Bell Green end of Old Church Rd and we had a couple of near misses, one falling where the Community Centre is now. I am sure that the Bell Hotel was not the target. I imagine that something the size of Courtaulds would not look huge through 1940 bomb sights. Other points to keep in mind is the pilots being harassed by gunfire and frequently flying at almost the height of Everest in the dark.

Hi Norman. According to the book the "new gas works" was situated on the Coventry- Nuneaton railway about a mile and a quarter north of the city centre, which is the one you must have known. From here gas reached the customer via a chief artery of the Coventry gas supply system, a 24-inch cast-iron main which ran into the city to the "old gas works", where gas was no longer produced but merely stored and distributed. This must be the one that there are pictures of in Gas Street. There was also many breaks in the mains. Apart from a small part of the outlying area to the north the whole city was without a gas supply. I don't know anything of this from personal experience as I was not born until a couple of years after the war.

Hi Anne. The gas works I had in mind was a lot more than 1.1/4 miles from the city centre. I now remember the old gas storage tanks that stood just off the ring road. It just took a young lady to jog my memory

Dutchman thank you for the info, Norman Conquest, I said it didn't get hit, not to my knowledge, one fell in the field opposite and one between the canal and the p.station but with the canal drained, no water for the cooling towers. As for the gas works I thought it got hit but not too much damage, don't remember it stopping our coke supply. No I never heard of an old and new gasworks, news to me. There was a little factory, Rubber and Ebonite opposite Elmsdale Ave that had incendiaries showered on it sometime, and a great chunk of tram line outside the tram depot, landed somewhere down Old Church Road, and I know Grange Road was hit badly, but dates are in a fog with me now.

This is just what I was saying Kaga. A bomber even at 10,000ft would find it difficult to precisely locate and destroy a specific target when the whole city was blacked out. I don't know if its true that Coombe Lake was drained so that Jerry couldn't use reflections from the water surface as a navigation aid. I know that there's a large difference in surface area but would not the Slough also reflect star and moonlight as well?