Coventry & Warwickshire in WWII

This ARP handbell has been with me for 40 years, and was originally my father's. Does anyone know what it was used for? It's quite heavy and loud when rang.

Yes Kaga, the noise. There were guns on Deedmore Rd and another gun placement somewhere in the Dudley St area. Although we often went to that gun placement I cannot recall its exact location. There was also a balloon there with a huge winding engine and a searchlight. Although some distance from our house both of these guns could be heard. As for bomb aiming. Think of the Dambusters, after several failed attempts to breach the Mohne dam they had to resort to a bouncing bomb. As you will know this bomb bounced across the water till it collided with the dam wall and then exploded under water and so the dam wall was broken. The Mohne dam is massive and by conventional bombing the RAF couldn't hit it. Think also of Britain's radar network around the south and east coasts. These masts were huge, over 300ft high and there were many of them. These radar stations were under frequent attack by the Luftwaffe and yet they only managed to do minor damage to one station. These stations were attacked in the main by JU88s that had better accuracy than conventional bombers. The incident in Bell Green that I mentioned was a string of explosives that stitched their way across the area without doing any real damage at all. Why would the pilot do that? After travelling hundreds of miles just to annoy a few sheep in Kays field? The reason was because the aircrew didn't really know their exact location. Perhaps a canal bank would not be a prime target for Germany. Dropping a bomb from over 4 miles high in the dark it was difficult to bomb with any precision. I have no doubt that the canal did get hit but only because that the aircrew had little idea of their exact location. Bombs and delivering them was an expensive business. Hitler had the idea of making bomb cases out of cement to save metals. I have no idea how successful that was. To drop a bomb from four miles high, in the dark, a bomb aimer had to know the exact location of the target, the exact location of his aircraft in relation to target, the exact speed and height of the aircraft and speed and direction of any wind. Without all of this information dropping a bomb was a matter of chuck and chance it.

Norman Conquest, looks like you and I will never agree on this topic. but I rated the Germans highly in those days, they studded the Spanish bombing in the mid-thirties, followed by bombing Poland, were they found there mistakes, way in front of us with the doodle bomb and rocket propulsion You say the (canal did get hit,had little idea of the location). 'Oh no' not just the canal Norman, they were after the Sutton Stop lochs and bingo spot on with one of the stick. The Dam, the RAF hit scores of times, it was just that little wall they could not hit. And after that they the same squadron flew low along the German canals and wrecked them, To me the Germans had the speed the height wind direction all figured out to perfection.Knew every gun emplacement we had. Our ack-ack guns had a team of (girls mostly) that worked out heights, speeds, wind,direction and everything needed to put the shell on target,but to operate it was not so easy, at least that was my info. A little of topic, but those Barrage balloons I got to see from the closest any one could have got to. A whicker basket was slung right under the belly of one, half a dozen guys entered, three each side, plus a seventh man (dispatcher) at the end, the mooring was released and the winch unwound, I watched the ground fall away,- It was crunch time, now is the big question- at eight hundred feet it stopped then one by one we moved to the little doorway at one end of the basket, and stepped out, the guy before me dropped and his pack on his back hit the edge of the basket and the basket danced and swayed. the dispatcher nodded to me, I stood at the opening, the tail of the Balloon was just two yards away from me, I felt I wanted to reach out and hold on to it, instead I grabbed my pants above the knee with my right hand, grabbed my right hand with my left hand and leapt out.

German bombing ended up being quite accurate by the use of pathfinder beams - until we invented countermeasures. ("The Battle of the Beams").

Pathfinder beams were used for the destruction of the city centre. OK. I would doubt that pathfinder beams would have been used to target a quite remote canal bank. And why? As for the breaching of a canal bank I understand that it would be a minor annoyance but little more than that. Narrowboats may be delayed for a couple of days but so what? To hit a canal bank from four miles high in the dark, a target that the bomb aimer would be unable to see, is a totally remarkable achievement and why do it anyway? The power station was only a few hundred yards away, now that would have been a far more damaging target. It was never put out of action.

Norman, I think the canal was out of action for a couple of months, the third bomb of the stick missed the cooling towers by about fifty yards, and how did the power station work without water?

NormK, I think from this January 1945 cutting that whistles and bells were used for signals.

Thank you Anne, I have often wondered about it when I see it on top of the cupboard gathering dust.

It signalled the "all-clear". A whistle meant air-raid and rattle, a gas-attack. Church bells on the other hand meant "invasion".

And a big thank you to you Dutchman.

Dutchman. Spot on again.

Hi all forumites, hope you are all having a better day than I am. Kaga. I really cannot bring to mind what canal was damaged during the raid. Sutton Stop is a junction of three canals and I can see that towpath damage to any one could be a problem to boat traffic but which canal? I recall that there were locks on both the Grand Union and the Oxford canal. You say that it took two months to repair the towpath. Above I said that half a mile of the Stoney Stanton Rd was destroyed. Although tram traffic never again used that road again it was repaired and in use within a week.

Norman Conquest, as far as I recall the lock that received and allowed boats to enter the Oxford Canal was completely destroyed as was the towpath, it was the lock that gave problems. I believe they had a job finding the right people to rebuild. I know my father was consulted, but he wasn't a real lock builder. Now the power station had something like 4/5 cooling towers when built, it used an enormous mount of water, by 1945 it had two, I have no idea what happened in between and I doubt if anyone can answer the question. Neither do I know how the canal drained effected the poer station, or what measures they took, but how could it operate without water? Two days after the canal was breached, my father and I measured by normal walking steps the distance between the craters, the first bomb destroyed my uncle's house, a few yards from the Lentons Lane-A.Green junction, the second in the field, the third landed between the canal and the cooling towers and the fourth bang on the lock and towpath. Now we had also done the same with the 4 craters at Shilton earlier, and they were the same distance apart and both times we only found 4 craters. Now if anyone wants to check these out I think it would be interesting, I can't think of anywhere else that you could put yourself in the bomber crews' shoes.

So how important was the Longford Power Station? We all knew in that area the most important part was the cooling towers, and so did the Germans, destroy them and the place would be closed for ever, but how many homes, shops and factories would it have paralysed had that happened? Throughout the thirties, all the new estates, houses, shops etc in Coventry became electric powered. Yet at the same time we kids noticed the coal trains that fed the power station became less and less over those years, so what was happening? I never found out the answer.

The power station became redundant because it became obsolete and it couldn't be connected to the new supergrid that started in the 50s. Kaga, cast your mind back to the pylons that strode around the city during the war. What you can see is a pylon with an arm either side that carried the power and an earth cable on top. Electricity was generated to suit demand. OK for short distances. Then, no washing machines, tv's and all the equipment we now use. Today's supergrids carry two arms either side of the pylon and each arm carries four conductors in a square formation. The power at the generators is perhaps 1000 volts and 36 mega watts, that power would melt the cables over long distances so it has to be transformed. On the pylons the power is perhaps 240,000 volts but little wattage. At substations it is again transformed to a useable supply. That's about the nuts and bolts of it, small details are probably incorrect.