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The Coventry blitz was a series of bombing raids (blitzes) that took place in the English city of Coventry. The city was bombed many times during World War II by the German Luftwaffe. The most devastating of these blitzes occurred on the evening of November 14, 1940. For other uses, see Bomb (disambiguation). ...
For other uses, see Blitz. ...
For other uses, see Coventry (disambiguation). ...
Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...
The Deutsche Luftwaffe or (German: air force, literally Air Weapon, pronounced lufft-va-fa, IPA: ) is the commonly used term for the German air force. ...
is the 318th day of the year (319th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full 1940 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
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. In the words of the historian Frederick Taylor, "Coventry ... was therefore, in terms of what little law existed on the subject, a legitimate target for aerial bombing",[1] (See also Area Bombardment: Aerial area bombardment and international law ). Like many of the industrial towns of the English West Midlands which had been industrialised during the Industrial Revolution, industrial development had occurred before zoning regulations had come into existence and many of the small and medium-sized factories were woven into the same streets as the workers' houses and the shops of the city centre. The County of West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a population of around 2,600,000 people. ...
Frederick Taylor is a British historian, author of , Bloomsbury 2004 (ISBN 0747570787) about the bombing of Dresden in World War II. He was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and read History and Modern Languages at Oxford University. ...
Aerial area bombardment is the policy of indiscriminate bombing of an enemys cities, for the purpose of destroying the enemys means of producing military materiel, communications, government centres and civilian morale. ...
A Watt steam engine, the steam engine that propelled the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the world. ...
The ruins of Coventry Cathedral Download high resolution version (1000x651, 201 KB)The ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral. ...
Download high resolution version (1000x651, 201 KB)The ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral. ...
July and August 1940 Several small raids on Coventry during July and August 1940 killed several dozen people. The most notable dmy name is Jack#REDIRECT hhhhhhwas to a new cinema which had been completed just before the start of the war in September 1939.
November 14, 1940 The raid on November 14 1940 was made 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 was of 13 specially modified Heinkel He 111 aircraft of Kampfgruppe 100, which were equipped with X-Gerät navigational devices, accurately dropping marker flares at 19:20.[2] The British and the Germans were fighting the Battle of the Beams and on this night the British failed to fully disrupt the X-Gerät signals. is the 318th day of the year (319th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
“RAF†redirects here. ...
The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ...
The Heinkel He 111 was the primary Luftwaffe medium bomber during the early stages of World War II, and is perhaps the most famous symbol of the German side of the Battle of Britain. ...
X-Gerät (X-gadget) was a radio navigation system used by the Luftwaffe early in World War II to aid bomber navigation. ...
The Battle of the Beams was a period in early World War II when Luftwaffe bombers started using radio navigation for night bombing. ...
The first wave of follow-up bombers dropped high explosive bombs, the intent of which was 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. General Name, symbol, number magnesium, Mg, 12 Chemical series alkaline earth metals Group, period, block 2, 3, s Appearance silvery white solid at room temp Standard atomic weight 24. ...
Pumpjack pumping an oil well near Lubbock, Texas Ignacy Åukasiewicz - inventor of the refining of kerosene from crude oil. ...
Blockbuster was the name given to several of the largest conventional bombs used in World War II by the Royal Air Force (RAF). ...
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 roofless ruins of the old cathedral. ...
Guido Renis archangel Michael (in the Capuchin church of Sta. ...
is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Unlike the Allied raids later in the war when 500 or more heavy, four-engine bombers would deliver their bomb loads in a concentrated wave lasting only a few minutes, the German two and three engined bombers carried relatively light loads (2,000-4,000 lbs) and each flew several sorties over the target, returning to their bases in France to rearm between each sortie. This led to lulls in the raid when the fire fighting and rescue services could reorganise and evacuate civilians.[3] As Arthur Harris, commander of RAF Bomber Command, wrote after the war "Coventry was adequately concentrated in point of space [to start a firestorm], but all the same there was little concentration in point of time".[4] Sortie is a term for deployment of one military aircraft or a ship for the purposes of a specific mission, whether alone, or with other aircraft or vessels. ...
Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet (April 13, 1892 - April 5, 1984), commonly known as Bomber Harris, and often, in the RAF, as Butcher Harris, was commander of RAF Bomber Command and later a Marshal of the Royal Air Force during the latter half of World War II. In 1942...
Bomber Command badge RAF Bomber Command was the organisation that controlled the RAFs bomber forces. ...
This article does not cite its references or sources. ...
The raid destroyed or damaged about 60,000 buildings over hundreds of hectares in the center 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 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 and 36,000 incendiary bombs of which 20 were incendiary petroleum mines.[5]
The raid of November 14 combined several innovations which were to influence all future strategic bomber raids during the war.[6] These were: is the 318th day of the year (319th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
- The use of pathfinder aircraft with electronic aids to navigate, to mark the targets before the main bomber raid;
- The use of high explosive bombs and air-mines (blockbuster bombs) coupled with thousands of incendiary bombs intended to set the city ablaze.
The actual death toll of the Coventry Blitz was never officially confirmed. It has been reported that many bodies may never have been found, or had been burnt and severed beyond recognition. The raids of munitions factories may have claimed victims from different parts of the country who may not have had any close relatives to report them missing. As mentioned earlier, 568 people died in the Coventry Blitz, but some sources have said that as many as 1,000 people were killed. A Lancaster drops bundles of incendiary bombs (left), incendiary bombs and a “cookie†(right) on Duisburg on 15 October 1944 Blockbuster or Cookie was the name given to several of the largest conventional bombs used in World War II by the Royal Air Force (RAF). ...
April 1941 On the night of April 8/April 9, 1941 Coventry was subject to by another large air raid when 237 bombers attacked the city dropping 315 high explosive bombs and 710 incendiary canisters. In this and another raid two nights later on April 10/April 11 about 475 people were killed and over 700 seriously injured. Damage was caused to many buildings including some factories, the central police station, the Warwickshire Hospital, King Henry VIII's School, and St. Mary's Hall.[7] April 8 is the 98th day of the year (99th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 99th day of the year (100th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
For other uses, see 1941 (disambiguation). ...
is the 100th day of the year (101st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 101st day of the year (102nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
See also Two of Coventrys three spires This article is about the history of Coventry, a city in the Midlands of England. ...
References - Taylor, Frederick; Dresden Tuesday 13 February 1945; Bloomsbury, First Pub 2004 (ISBN 0-7475-7078-7),used as a reference in this article: paper back 2005 (ISBN 0-7475-7084-1). Chapter 10 Blitz
- A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 8: The air raids of 1940 British history on line
Further reading Ultra (sometimes capitalized ULTRA) was the name used by the British for intelligence resulting from decryption of German communications in World War II. The term eventually became the standard designation in both Britain and the United States for all intelligence from high-level cryptanalytic sources. ...
During World War II, codebreakers at Bletchley Park decrypted and interpreted messages from a large number of Axis code and cipher systems, including the German Enigma machine. ...
Footnotes - ^ Taylor References Page 117
- ^ The British were on British Summer Time (GMT +1) during the winter months of the war (and double summer time during the summer months)
- ^ Taylor References Page 120
- ^ Harris, Arthur "Bomber Offensive; (First edition Collins 1947) Pen & Sword military classics 2005; ISBN 1-84415-210-3. Page 83
- ^ Taylor References Page 120. But this source War in the West gives different numbers "449 bombers dropped 150,000 incendiary bombs, 503 tons of high-explosives (1,400 bombs) and 130 parachute sea-mines (causing extensive blast damage) on Coventry"
- ^ Taylor References Page 118
- ^ A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 8: The air raids of 1940 British history on line
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