The Blitz - 14th November 1940

Coventry, 1pm Thursday November 14th 1940. Early closing. Sandbags everywhere, bitterly cold, the wind sends dry leaves gambolling down the cobblestoned church yard, down the steps of Priory Street. We kick them in the air, trample on them, then race for the tram, leap aboard. A boy cracks a smutty joke, we punch each other playfully as we scramble for window seats. Smokey voices of shop girls as they pass by the window, close for half-day. Dusk descending, no one carries gas masks anymore, no street lights. Machinery hums in the distance, a man singing, belts turning. Home, and the night closes in. About two hours later, sister's reading a book on the corner of the sofa, mum's feeding my little twelve month old brother. My two other brothers are squabbling on the floor, and dad rushes in. "Right, everyone to the shelter, now". The sirens wail, we know the drill. "Not you, Kaga, you come with me". Mum begins to protest, but dad glances. "Kaga, take the bird". The family rush down the garden to the shelter that dad had built like a WWI trench. I hid the bird in the washroom under the sink, covered him up. In the distance the planes begin to hum, we can hear them from three miles away, and then the big aa gun roars. Red streaks of light follow the shells into the sky, soot tumbles down the chimney, cups, plates, saucers bounce off the table, a photo with a glass surround falls to the floor, into a thousand pieces. The noise is bursting my eardrums. In the distance more big guns add to the noise, the ground shakes. I have my big coat and balacava on, race for my bike and follow dad. The moon is a big lantern. The planes are overhead, the noise deafening. Searchlights probe, red streaks. "Dad, is this it?" For weeks dad and his WWI friends had said the first two raids had been to assess our defences, count the guns, emplacements, searchlights, etc, but the Germans found out they had nothing to fear. A whistle noise, dad pushes me into the sandbagged wall, drops on top of me, and we hear the explosions, and shrapnel and debris peppers the street and the hut. The old canal stables that used to belong to the pub and canal have now become the firefighting hut, everyone signed the book for night duty. Someone shouts, "The Crown has gone". The man in charge sends dad and a couple of men to the scene, then the phone rings. "Kaga, go and get your dad, the cut's busted". I grab my bike, go for dad. It wasn't the pub that had gone,it was my aunt's house, a direct hit. Dad, now in a quandary, but men shout "Let's go, Arthur, there's enough of us here". We race back to the canal, the water was disappearing fast, tugging at the boats, mooring ropes breaking, men in the canal trying to save their wives and kids, the boats trying to go with the enormous pull of the water. My school friend was yelling for people to come and help, dad raced off to find the leak, and the noise was unbearable - wives screaming, men shouting, guns exploding, searchlights probing the sky, planes overhead. Help arrived, the boat people were saved and taken to safety, and I raced after dad. The crater was enormous, right bang in the towpath, the water rushing out like a giant waterfall. Men were trying to fill the gap. Dad shouted, "Don't bother, we have the planks in, the water will stop in a little while". Then he spotted the Coventry lock was open. He couldn't get past the waterfall, so shouted to close the lock, but the Skinner family had spotted it and was closing it. Here we heard and could see there was a fire raging in the cathedral and Owen Owen, flames and thick black smoke from the cathedral billowing hundreds of feet in the air. Now we had stopped to see the sky alight. People were crying, the whole city was alight. Another explosion and someone called out, "Grange Road!" Dad shouted for someone to get a plank to get him over the waterfall. He turned to me. "Go home, Kaga, get some sleep, but keep your mouth shut, don't tell mum about Grange Road, or about your aunt's house. Morning will be soon enough". The city was afire, smoke stung the eyes, the air was warm. There was no sleep, and they still kept coming. Not a memory. I have lost hundreds of memories, but ingrained in the deep of my soul. Kaga.

Annewiggy, Please may I ask you a question for myself - do you know if there was any newspaper printed in Coventry from the 14th to the end of Nov 1940, or was there some sort of a gap?

There was no gap, the Coventry Evening Telegraph, then known as the Midland Daily Telegraph, was printed every day. The Standard, a weekly paper, missed a couple of weeks until the 30th November edition.

Anne, when I looked I found that the Coventry Herald stopped publishing in 1940 and the last edition I found was in October of that year. I am wondering if they went out of business due to the bombing.

Argon. There is an edition for 9th November which is the last one so it looks very much like it. It again was weekly.

There is an article in the Telegraph in 1944 listing all the local papers from the 1800's and says that the Herald stopped printing after the city was 'Coventrated'.

I lost three very good schoolmates in Longford in the Blitz, I had known them all my life. Five days after the raid the council decided to evacuate a trainload of schoolchildren from the Foleshill and Longford area, Windmill Road School, Foleshill CofE School, the train to leave Foleshill Station, then Longford Station. I do not know how many turned up, I did not go.

Coventry Blitz. There was a great powerful moon over Coventry from the south-east, it lit up south Coventry streets like a great torch. The path-finder planes gave Smithford Street a miss, dropped hundreds of incendiary on the Burges and Hales Street etc. Smithford Street, no incendary, no fires, no fire appliance, no soot-blackened walls. Heavy bombers followed. Smithford Street, caught between powerful moonlight in the south and bright firelight in the north, was practically annihilated.

Each street had a different mix of timber buildings and brick ones. Even the quality of the brickwork varied significantly. Hertford Street was all brick because it had been built most recently. Smithford Street and Fleet Street were a mix of newer buildings and older ones, often with brick fronts. It may be that some streets were deemed less vulnerable to incendiary bombs. Alternatively it may be that what flanked the roads were the main targets and those buildings required heavy bombers?

Smithford Street had no military targets, no factories, nothing that required even one bomb, yet it was the most bombed street in Coventry.

Military targets no, but there were big buildings in the area, including the print works to the south. Smithford Street had several new arcades and the big Co-op building. West Orchard, Cross Cheaping and Broadgate were decimated too.

'Precision' bombing hadn't been invented yet. I guess any bombed city could nominate a "most bombed street" - certainly not unique to Coventry.

3spires, The Luftwaffe had been bombing for a number of years, Spain and Poland. Coventry did not need precision bombing. There were many means of bombing, our own 'Dam-busters' used adaptation of stage lights, the old Wellington bombers used old type instruments. In the bombing, very few targets needed precision bombing. At the beginning of the war, blast damage was more important to both sides, the Germans used adapted petrol tanks, all sorts of things that could be adapted for war. In Coventry, Smithford Street was about the most lit street a bomber could find, without flares or incendaries, and to me that's why it got hit so much without the use of aid. So badly was it hit, next morning there was little need for any explosives to bring down damaged walls, etc.

Just bought book on American history, and was surprised to see a reference to the Coventry Blitz. The book, "A History of the United States" by Boorstin and Kelly, is an American High School textbook written in 1981. It's a very comprehensive book, and includes information about other parts of the world if it is relevant to US History. In the chapter on WW2 there is reference to Churchill, saying he knew Coventry was going to be bombed, but to protect the Ultra secret he allowed the city to be sacrificed. As far as I'm concerned that is a myth, and I've read so in several books. But when did that myth arise? And is there an element of truth?

While I would have thought that declassified papers relating to the event might have answered this question, this link outlines the possibilities - The Coventry Blitz 'conspiracy' - BBC These are the thoughts that occurred to me without reading that - even knowing that other places were likely to be bombed on any particular night (eg London), how much success was there turning back/destroying an attacking force? How much defence could be scrambled once a target was known? How long could a defence force be kept aloft waiting and then fighting? The answer seems to be that even if they'd known, the results would have been much the same. Another string to the conspiracy is that De Gaulle quoted Churchill saying that he wanted a big event to shock other countries, especially the US, into joining the fight. I don't know if the quote of either man was genuine but it's not odd for a victim to half wish they'd get more seriously injured so that they will be helped. That doesn't mean they really want to be attacked.