The Blitz - 14th November 1940

My father, who would have been active with the St John's Ambulance, always reckoned that the April raids did more damage to industry and infrastructure than the previous November one. That was his perception of the damage he saw. Although the tonnage of bombs may have been less in April the accumulated effects of the bombing caused greater disturbance.

This picture is from MDT 14th November 1941 with the memoriams in (also announcing that the Ark Royal had been sunk). The paper says it is a picture of the raid actually in progress. It was taken by the light of the moon and the fires by a MDT photographer on the outskirts of the City. The picture is untouched.

Death notices for Special Constable William Robert Lambe - known as Billy in Coventry - that were published in is his hometown of Belfast. He married his wife Sarah (Sadie) at Shankill Road Methodist Church in October 1935 and they must have moved to Coventry shortly after as their child Jane (Jean) was born here in 1936. Sadie and Jean returned to Belfast prior to the Blitz as it was considered to be safer there - Belfast was hammered in April and May 1941 by the Luftwaffe. Jean grew up not knowing much about her father and made an appeal in the C.E.T. in 1998 for more information on him and where he was buried. The local police helped her and she visited in 1999 and was able to see his name on the police roll of honour and visit the memorial garden / communal grave. His name was not on the memorial so it was arranged to add his name to it and this duly happened. He was one of the specials and regular police that were killed at Jordan Well as they attempted to rescue people trapped in a cellar.

Here is a bit more info, including a photograph, taken from "Coventry City Police: A Brief History" published by West Midlands Police Museum in 2021. SC Lambe is also mentioned in "The Blitzed City: The Destruction of Coventry, 1940" by Karen Farrington, published by Aurum in 2015. The tragic Jordan Well incident is also referred to, but Lambe not mentioned by name, in "Coventry: Thursday, 14 November 1940" by Frederick Taylor, published 2016 by Bloomsbury

Yes, and that is accurate information too . I've done his family tree; just waiting on a birth certificate for the daughter Jane (Jean) who was born in Coventry to complete the info. [ On Ancestry he is included in a lot of incorrect trees ]. He played a big part in establishing the 3rd Coventry (Heath Road Methodist) Boys' Brigade Company. Worked for Daimler - which is interesting as his father, when a Councillor, was on the tramways / bus committee of Belfast Council and had regular dealings with Daimler - visiting the Coventry factory in 1934 and entertaining senior management in Belfast when they demonstrated buses there. Billy's profession was recorded as Motor Mechanic on his marriage certificate so he would have easily found work in Coventry but his old man's connections may have helped him re. Daimler. I'll write it all up and submit it to Rob for consideration as a History Article as his family's history is quite interesting too, and I can include a little of John and Lily Maguire's story - they were from the Falls Road area and died in a raid on October 12. They too had evacuated their child back to Belfast, but sadly whereas as least Jean still had her mum as she grew up, Patrick was left with no parents.

I have to confess I'm not sure of all these facts but I thought I'd read or maybe seen reference on television that the raid on Coventry was the first time the Germans tested the bombers aim along two radio beams and where they crossed was the target point and of course Coventry area factories were heavily involved in armament production.

​​There are numerous conspiracy theories as what the real truth behind the Coventry Blitz. I understand the unconfirmed reason Churchill allowed Coventry to be bombed was not to alarm Germany that Britain through the efforts at Bletchley​ Park had cracked the Enigma code. Postwar Bletchley Park, Churchill ordered a mass destruction of the decoding machines along with a lot of other documents and equipment so that no one would ever discover Station X prowess at breaking the Enigma code. This scene was shown at the end of the 2014 film The Imitation Game. There are a lot of facts, stories and key events which will have been taken to the grave by many. Many key events we may never find the full truth behind them. I sometimes wonder if more than one reason came into force, which could make more than one theory very plausible as a combination of events. It's very likely the only people likely to know the real facts, will be the key military personnel/advisors, those in the key postions at Bletchley Park and war cabinet. Post edit: I have just had the following link shared to me. The Bombing of Coventry in WWII https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/the-bombing-of-coventry-in-wwii If you get the opportunity, Bletchley Park is well worth a visit. The subsequent work to reconstruct the various code breaking machines, huts and key personnel, one notable person; Ian Fleming, is fascinating to say the very least. If I've got things wrong, I'm happy to be corrected.

We lived on the same road as Bletchley Park from 1976 to 1979 and we had no idea it was there. About 10 years ago we went to take the tour and couldn't believe how close it was to our house which was built in the 1920's so was there when all of this was going on.

I think Bletchley Park opened to the public sometime during the mid 1990's. Apart from its involvement during WWII, Bletchley Park also had a lot to do with monitoring activity during the Cold War Years. Those buildings have undergone a lot of work to restore some of the Cold War monitoring. With apologies to the moderators and regular users, while a little off topic, those of you who used to listen to the BBC World Service Shortwave broadcasts may recall periodical interference akin to a woodpecker. The actual nickname by many was "The Woodpecker", which was a form of radar used to monitor NATO military movements. Its real definition was OTHR 'Over The Horizon Radar', very much the same as the early Chain Home Stations used by Britain during WWII. What a sad life I've led, I must get out more...

An interesting link Mike. Given the damage that was done to London on a regular basis, I always got the impression that knowing where an attack was going to happen, didn't necessarily mean that it could be stopped. The only thing that would have made targeting bombers better from the ground would be experience of the teams shooting back. Experience that the more outlying teams didn't get. The destruction of Coventry was a mix of the scale of attack that the Germans applied and a fair quantity of vulnerable timber or poorly built brick buildings that Coventry still had. When you look at what survived, the date of construction made a huge difference. Some of the timber buildings that survived were bracketed by later brick buildings.

Big events like wars inevitably give rise to myths and twisted facts, and Coventry's blitz certainly spawned a few. Thanks for that interesting link, Mike, which I'd not seen before. Some years ago I attempted to put some of these long standing untruths to rest in my Historic Coventry Blitz section, with a section dedicated to dispelling myths on page 13. You're also correct, Stpauls, about the Germans trying out their new X-Gerat (meaning 'X Apparatus') radio beam system on Coventry, which actually employed four beams - one for direction, and three crossing over it for distance. Their previous two-beam system was famously known as Knickebein, which translated as 'crooked leg', due to the (invisible) way that the second beam "bent" the first at the intersection. I went into more detail on these things on page 4 of the Blitz section. Having worked in radio & electronics for some years I always took a big interest in those (boring to some) technicalities!

When I look at the bomb damage map, I'm often taken by what wasn't seriously damaged, more than what was. An interesting task for some future scholar would be to determine the age of the destroyed bits and if the buildings were blown up or burnt. Some of the areas are deceptive because there had been demolition before the war - eg the area between the Council House and Bayley Lane (minus the Draper's Hall) had been cleared, otherwise there may have been significant damage there, which in turn may have caused more impact on the Council House and the Draper's Hall, as the area burned.

Rob, as you rightly say, these scenarios do spin a web of myths, there's nothing worse than silence to generate whipsers of speculation. My personal thoughts, there is a good chance the one desire to keep Bletchley Park secret was assisted with more than one opportunity provided during the war, and that is purely a guess. It's also very easy to forget the key points of events as memories fade, and stories passed down through the generations do change. That's why I like photography. You're more than welcome to the link, and likewise, many thanks for the links you shared Rob. History was never high on my list of subjects through school, but with age, and watching how the city has transformed over time, things we've lost, about to lose and why some things remain or are restored. I blame Time Team, sitting there on a Sunday evening with my son, explaining things shown. That with my former hobby of hillwalking and camping, has made my look at the landscape/townscape from a very different perpsective. This forum is a vast fascinating insight to Coventry's history, not just the big news items, but the individuals and their families, friends, employers etc, all who contributed to the city's history.

It's so easy to speculate, and silence is the most likely to generate speculation. I guess there are times we as individuals will sometimes be coy about how we respond to scenario. In my reply to Rob Orland, I feel, though only a guess, there will have been a good chance to achieve the one desire to keep Bletchley Park secret was assisted with more than one opportunity provided during the war, and that is purely a guess. So perhaps there was some coyness, not just to protect London, but the key nerve centres around our defence planning during those years..... I also feel a lot of the history will have been taken to the grave. Perhaps one day, the full facts will be revealed.

The Baedeker guide to Great Britain has cropped up in relation to the targeting of the city, so I thought I'd give them a shufty. I'm a sucker for any old book that might contain something new to me about the city. Remarkably there was very little about the city in the editions I looked at (latest available free online 1910). Apart from a very rough map here from Rob's collection, there wasn't much for the German's to go on.