The Blitz - 14th November 1940

Those three days actually cemented business cooperation & friendships. Factories that had avoided the worst of damage offered covered space for merchandise arriving from everywhere. Food was a priority as well as other essential items. Mum had a lockup in the Riley factory in Durbar Ave. So started a new shop, for mum, selling boots & shoes inside the factory. That was still in place as late as 1960. Tuesday & Thursday mornings, she was there, which is why I went to school on the train from Foleshill, those two mornings of the week. I had a lift with mum. It was much quicker to go on bus, but at nine years of age, I felt very grown up going to school on the train. It was a couple of years before the half brick prefab shop was built for my mum & aunt, on their original sites in White St. You see, even that was strategic planning. The sort of goods sold hit a particular market, plus footfall. Their shops were on walking route between Hillfields & the city, everyone called it town. Also on the walking route to the main hospital in Stoney Stanton Road. Mum's was ladies wear, whilst my aunt's was travel goods. Perfect! When I was doing market research as part of my ICWA, mum was so knowledgeable. No joke or exaggeration.

Please share the answer with us Kaga - I'd like to read that book (if you tell us the title), but many of us will probably not get the chance, so if you'd like to explain I think we're all interested, especially if it's different from the X-Gerat radio beams that many of us will have read about.

Rob, It's in 'Books on Coventry'.

Philip, I daresay a lot of 'looting' was going on after the raids by the undesirables who dared to crawl out. I would also be concerned for the many pets who would be lost and roaming around. I have a vague recollection of sirens sounding.

Thanks Kaga, I'll see if I can find myself a copy. Thanks also for the recommendation a while ago for the book about Pegasus Bridge, which my son and I both thoroughly enjoyed. Extremely detailed and often difficult to put down!

A German bomb hit Astley Avenue, Foleshill on 11th November 1940 destroying No 30 Astley Avenue and killing Mrs Ellen Tipson and her 4 children. The red line indicates the position of the house. Mr Tipson [poor man] was not at the house at the time. They were all buried in a communal grave at London Road Cemetery. We lived in Arbury Avenue and my elder brother remembers playing on the ruins after the war.

Rob, hi. Let's make a few lines across the centre of the old city. From Trinity Church, Council House, Hay Lane to High Street. No HE explosives. From a few yards from Trinity Church, another line along Broadgate shops. Flattened by HE, one crater at the end of the line. From Trinity, level with church, Cross Cheaping to the Empire. Flattened by HE. From one side of High Street, down Smithford Street to river. Flattened by HE. From river all across Market Place. Flattened by HE. St John's Church. Not touched by HE, like Trinity. Churches not touched by HE. Only one crater in all those roads. Fire bombs from St John's, down Corporation Street, Burges, Owen Owen, Trinity Church. A ring of fire all around the HE. It was uncanny how there were so few craters in the streets. Precise, accurate bombing, it had to be more than human hand. They had to have had some kind of help. Coventry was the first town to be terrorised by the bombing of civilians.

Oh gosh, Derek! So were my aunt and three of my schoolmates killed, same bomber, same bomb run, same time. If you look at the cooling towers of Longford Power Station, and the gasometer and New Inn, and draw a line you have the bomb run. The Timpson's house the same, south and slightly west distance from the gasometer as the distance of Sutton Stop was, to the cooling towers s/w and my aunt's house on the same line, Lentons Lane T junction, and the three boys were in Longford Road, and Sutton Stop was hit. Wasn't there some controversy about Mr Timpson, whether he was under the rubble or at work or what?

The blitz of Coventry was something entirely new, a phase of targeting the people that was layered in secrecy at the time, but the spirit of defiance in Churchill's great speeches of that summer had been taken in. That summer the German Luftwaffe sent a few planes over Coventry, to test the defence. A couple of weeks later they did the same. It showed that a great, larger force could be sent with little danger and the scene was set, and so came the blitz. But all that summer the British had suffered defeat after defeat, all over the globe, but mass observation said morale stayed high. A few weeks after the blitz, when Coventry suffered the greatest blow to ciivilians and property, especially to the food shops and markets, that Coventry had enjoyed so much, was Coventry faltering? Owen Owen had been gutted, from a fireball, but only a few weeks later, it reopened and put a sign up as so, and all Coventry could see it. It lifted the spirits, if these young girls could find their way through the rubble, work in a gutted building, cold and draughty, with makeshift counters, and with little to sell, then so could we all put up with queueing, blackout etc. I believe morale soared. But you have to understand the workforce of Britain, especially industrial Coventry, between the two wars, to get the real picture. With Mosley coming to force in 1932, and Hitler in 1933, 'never again' in the 1920s and with two million unemployed in Britain, the scene was set again for war.

Kaga Simpson, whilst I'm sure your recollections regarding your personal experiences during the war are accurate, I find your comments regarding historians and authors both uninformed and offensive - you are clearly confusing us with those so-called 'journalists' who write for The Sun and The Mail! Those of us who write and research don't do so for the money - because 99% of historical research that is published gets paid little or nothing! Also, *actual* historians (as opposed to writers of popular histories) are anal to the 'n'th degree in making sure we get the facts right before we commit them to paper (or hard drive, these days). Like yourself, there are still people around with first hand memories of the last war - and though those who actually fought it are mostly gone, there is a huge body of material extant recording their experiences and events. Since they were adults at the time they were engaged in military operations, there can be little doubt that what they recorded first hand is considerably more accurate than childhood speculation. AA fire in 1940 was well-known by those who manned it - at all levels, from the 'inarticulate sweating gunner' to General Pile, GOC of the Anti-Aircraft arm - to be *entirely* ineffective in shooting down enemy aircraft, whether they be over Coventry, London, Sheffield or Liverpool. It's sole military effect was that it forced Luftwaffe pilots to fly higher over the target than the optimum aiming height, thus making accuracy even less certain. The only reason so much time and ordnance was expended was for the effect it had on civilian morale - the sound of the guns gave people on the ground the *impression* that they were being protected, and that belief - far from the truth though it was - was a major factor in enabling people to withstand the raids when they happened. This alone justified the amount AA cost at the time. In defence of the night fighters, again, at this period, regardless of where they were deployed, they were of no real effect, simply because the sky IS a very, very big place, and what can be seen at 10,000 feet plus looking *down* at dark objects over a dark landscape is radically different from looking up at silhouettes against a bright light. At this stage in the war, pilots had nothing but what they could see with with own eyes to guide them as to the whereabouts of another plane - airborne radar was not yet available in an accurate operational version. They could be vectored in the general direction of a bomber stream by ground radar, but that was all - they were only able to attack what they could see with their own eyes, so what they couldn't see, they couldn't shoot down! Even those aircrew who flew in the later massive Bomber Command night ops against German cities, as part of a force of 400+ planes, recounted that they seldom saw another aircraft, even from their own squadron, either going or returning from Germany, except at base. It wasn't until purpose-designed night fighters, such as the Beaufighter and Mosquito, fitted with air-air radar and with a crew of two, one of whom was a dedicated radar operator, came into operation, that shooting down enemy planes became a real possibility for the RAF. Unfortunately, by that period of 1941, the Blitz was largely over. Luftwaffe losses due to either AA or night fighters during the raids on Sheffield, London, Manchester and Liverpool in December 1940 were still negligible. The AA crew at Loughborough who brought down a bomber on Nov 14/15 were incredibly lucky, and even now, doubt exists as to whether or not it *was* their efforts that caused it to crash!

Hi History Gal, welcome to the forum I'm not engaged in modern history but I can attest that to say anything new about any era you have to dig very deep into the facts and myths and separate the two.

I've sure everybody here had heard - or even used - the expression "ballpark estimate" or "ballpark figure", to indicate a very rough estimate, but may not know that it originated as a measure of bombing accuracy in the war! After America came into the war, the USAAF based in Britain was given the task of bombing German cities *by day* (because the night raids they attempted got them shot down in droves). In addition to more sophisticated technology than was available to either side in 1940, they had the advantage of being able to *see* their targets, unlike the Luftwaffe over Coventry in 1940. However, the accuracy of their bomb-aiming wasn't significantly improved! In order to make their target accuracy figures look better, it was decreed that ANY bomb which fell within a reasonable distance of the target be counted as a hit, whether it landed on the target on not. For ease in estimating this, a baseball stadium - or "ballpark" - was the area selected as a measure, since this was an area that American aircrew could identify! So if 3-4 years later, crews bombing in daylight could only hope to get their bombs within the area of a sports stadium, it's unlikely that Luftwaffe pilots, bombing at night even *with* the use of the beam system, could avoid hitting civilian targets like housing or the cathedral, when trying to strike the many factories crowded into the city centre. In contrast, when Sheffield was blitzed on the following full moon, Thurs Dec 12th, in identical weather conditions, the raid was deliberately focussed on the commercial and residential part of the city, and the hugely important steel and munitions works were not attacked until the following Sunday night, Dec 15th. No doubt, the effects of what had been achieved by the raid on Coventry regarding civilian morale and 'collateral damage' influenced this decision by the Nazi leadership.

Coventry's old and often wooden buildings were very much mixed in with the factories, many of which were built on the former sites with big gardens or blocks of housing where the renters could be turfed out. It would have only needed a few houses in a row of wooden buildings to catch light and they burned until the fires hit a brick built property or a road. Looking at the stretches that survived, they were often bookended by brick properties. It's amazing that any of the timber buildings survived.

Hi HistoryGal Just to pick up one of your points. You stated that Sheffield's commercial and residential areas were deliberately targeted on the night of 12/13 December, and that the weather conditions were similar to those in Coventry on 14/15 November. According to the Sheffield County Council Blitz website "the main industrial part of the city was largely defended that night by a covering of fog". There was no fog in Coventry on the night of our Blitz. Did the German bombers drop their bombs on what they could see, or was it that evening's tactics to only bomb non-industrial areas?

Wikipedia on the Coventry blitz does not mention it was a Thursday - early closing. That saved many lives.