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The Coventry blitz (blitz: from the German word blitzkrieg meaning "lightning war" was a series of bombing raids that took place in the English city of Coventry.
The city was bombed many times during World War II by the Nazi German Air Force (Luftwaffe). The most devastating of these blitzes occurred on the evening of 14 November 1940.
Before the bombing At the start of World War II, Coventry was an industrial city of about 320,000 people which, like much of the industrial West Midlands, contained "metal bashing"industries. In Coventry's case, these included, cars, bicycles, aeroplane engines and, since 1900, munitions factories. July and August 1940 Several small raids on Coventry during July and August 1940 killed several dozen people. The most notable damage was to the Rex new cinema which had been
completed just before the start of the war in September 1939.
November 14, 1940
The raid was executed by 515 German bombers, two thirds from Luftflotte 3 and the rest from the pathfinders of Kampfgruppe 100. The attack, code-named Operation Moonlight Sonata, was intended to undermine Coventry's ability to supply the Royal Air Force and the British Army by demolishing factories and industrial infrastructure, although it was clear that the damage to the city, including monuments and residential areas, would be considerable.
The initial wave of 13 specially modified Heinkel He 111 aircraft of
Kampfgruppe 100, were equipped with X-Gerät navigational devices,
accurately dropping marker flares at 19:20. The British and the Germans
were fighting the Battle of the Beams and on this night and the British failed to fully disrupt the X-Gerät signals.
The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped high explosive bombs,
the intent of which was to knock out the utilities (the water supply, electricity network and gas mains), and to crater the road - making it difficult for the fire engines to reach fires started by the follow-up waves of bombers. The follow-up waves dropped a combination of high explosive and incendiary bombs. There were two types of incendiary bombs: those made of magnesium and those made of petroleum. The high explosive bombs and the larger air-mines were not only designed to hamper the Coventry fire brigade, they were also intended to damage
roofs, making it easier for the incendiary bombs to fall into buildings and ignite them.
At around 20:00 Coventry Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Michael, was set on fire for the first time. The volunteer fire-fighters managed to put out the first fire but other direct hits followed and soon new fires in the cathedral were out of control. During the same period, fires were started in nearly every street in the city centre. A direct hit on the fire brigade headquarters disrupted the fire service's command and control, resulting in problems communicating to the fire fighters the priority of which blazes to tackle first. As the Germans had intended, the water mains were damaged by high explosives. As a result there was not enough water available to tackle many of the fires. The raid reached its climax around midnight with the final all clear sounding at 06:15 on the morning of 15 November.The raid destroyed or damaged about 60,000 buildings over hundreds of hectares in the centre of Coventry and is known to have killed 568 civilians. The raid had reached such a new level of destruction that the Germans later used the term Coventriert ("Coventrated") when describing similar levels of destruction to other enemy towns. During the raid, the Germans dropped about 500 tonnes of high explosives, including 50 parachute air-mines, of which 20 were incendiary petroleum mines and 36,000 incendiary bombs .
In October 2008 a plaque was unveilled for on 18th October 1940 seven members of a bomb disposal team died when the bomb they had removed from Chapel Street in Coventry city centre to a disposal site on Whitley Common exploded without warning as they were unloading it from a truck.
Thanks to sterling work by the Whitley Local History Group these seven brave men now have a permanent memorial located close to the site of the tragedy.Thanks to Shawey1970 on youtube for making this video
