The Blitzed City

The Destruction of Coventry, 1940

Karen Farrington

• Publisher: Aurum
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781781313251
• eBook ISBN: 9781781314807
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The Luftwaffe's targetting and destruction of Coventry city remains the biggest and most destructive air raid on British soil during the Second World War. Seen as a centre of British armaments production, the German high command wished to inflict terror and panic on the British public, a plan that had paid dividends during their relentless conquest of France that year. Attacking over two nights in November, 1940 they systematically bombed and destroyed the bulk of the city, making thousands homeless, and killing over 400 men, women and children. 

Such was the devastation, panic and disorder it wrought, that Winston Churchill ordered a news blackout for three weeks in order to quell the unease and morale-sapping effect that the raid had. But people at the time acted with great bravery to save those trapped in bombed out and burning buildings, as well as caring for those badly injured (of which there were thousands), and fighting the Nazi planes coming in to attack the city itself. 

Now, for the very first time we interview those veterans who survived the raid and helped fight the flames and bombs to tell the story of this iconic event. Such was the effect it had on the country that when Bomber Command began night time raids against German cities – Hamburg, Cologne and most famously, Dresden – the call 'Remember Coventry!' went up.

Chapter One

‘The bomber will always get through’

Stanley Baldwin

For centuries manned flight was nothing but a distant dream pondered by intellectuals and scientists alongside the ambitious, the brave and the downright foolhardy. They watched birds soaring overhead and wondered how life would be enhanced if only mankind could mimic those aerial antics. Through the ages, men tried strapping on feathered wings, attaching themselves to kites, experimenting with rotor blades and even flirting with the idea of gliders. A few even threw themselves from towers to put flawed designs to the test.

Yet even the noblest of dreams can have unintended consequences, and if those aspiring aviators had known what lay ahead, they might have been more careful about what they wished for. When it finally arrived, the reality of manned flight proved to be both a blessing and a curse.

Initially, the prospect of easy, speedy travel across countries and continents seemed to bring universal benefit, but a few short years after man’s ingenuity took him soaring above the clouds, the military saw ominous potential. From that point, it was a devastating new weapon that could rain death from the skies hundreds of miles from home territory.

Senior officers and eager engineers began toying with the notion of using aerial advantage to unlock a swift victory in military conflicts. Within a few short decades a new age had dawned, where strategic bombing became the norm. (Ultimately, the term ‘strategic’ – which implied a theoretical purpose or design beyond widespread destruction – could be substituted by area, tactical, precision, carpet or terror.)

The ensuing losses among pilots and aircrew – brave young men killed at a tender age – were shocking. But the death toll among the professionals has been dwarfed by the number of people on all sides who have died in the past century beneath a Blitz of bombs, either in their homes, or at their workplaces or while taking shelter from the onslaught.

However, if the generals and politicians of the early twentieth century believed aviation technology would make war redundant, they were wrong. Air superiority has never been sufficient to finish a war once it has begun, although there were plenty who convinced themselves otherwise.

Before the Second World War, the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was in the vanguard of these people, when he issued a dire warning:

I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves…

But when the next war comes, and European civilisation is wiped out, as it will be, and by no force more than that force, then do not let them lay blame on the old men. Let [young pilots] remember that they, principally, or they alone, are responsible for the terrors that have fallen upon the earth.

During the 1930s, when Baldwin was making his point, the thought of a war dominated by aerial bombers was feared much as nuclear war would be in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s worth assessing the short history of flight that had unfolded in Baldwin’s lifetime to understand why he was fearful.

At the outset, manned flight as a tool of annihilation was a long way from the minds of those engaged in the drive to push back the barriers of science. Pioneers like these were fuelled by what sometimes seemed to be an insurmountable challenge. A desire among those in ancient civilisations to take to the air was evident in the fabric of the fables they produced, the most memorable of which was of Icarus coming down to earth with a fatal bump after flying too close to the sun with wings made from feathers and wax.

For years, it seemed that the only option was to mimic birds. But as the centuries wore on, fresh ideas gradually came to the table. Leonardo da Vinci, now renowned for being ahead of his time, made more than 100 drawings that illustrated his ambitions about flight, mostly centred on what he termed an Ornithopter. Although it was never made in his lifetime, it might be seen as a distant ancestor of the modern helicopter.

Skip forward a few more centuries and the first major development appeared, the hot air balloon, invented by brothers Joseph and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier in 1783.

For the first time, men and women could take to the air to enjoy the panoramic views and hitherto unknown speeds of travel; beautiful, undoubtedly, and breathtakingly impressive. And quickly the military made use of them, with a tethered balloon forming part of the defences during the French Revolutionary Wars and silk balloons featuring in the American Civil War.

During the 1870 Siege of Paris – when Baldwin was an infant – balloons were a symbol of resistance after rampant Prussian forces had beaten a path to the gates of the French capital city and isolated it from the rest of the country. Inevitably, there were soon woeful shortages of food and information. Yet the city had some talented technicians who could construct a new hot air balloon every twelve days when they worked at full stretch. Then, the aim was to pilot one of the craft to an unoccupied area to discharge important messages and intelligence. More than sixty balloons, with at least 110 passengers, went aloft during the five-month siege, doing valuable reconnaissance work in the process.

Consequently, the first anti-aircraft guns were developed by the Prussians in an effort to fell the balloons and gain an upper hand in this new and unfamiliar manner of warfare.

Steel baron Alfred Krupp modified a 1-pounder gun and installed it on the back of a horse-drawn carriage. Known as the ballonkanone, it proved to be the humble beginnings of an entirely new facet of military hardware.

Balloons then evolved into powered airships which could be dispatched in chosen directions rather than remain at the whim of the wind. The process of evolution continued when planes were developed in the first decade of the twentieth century after the Wright brothers’ historic flight in 1903. Though not everyone could see the potential in military terms: Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who was considered to be one of the best military minds of his generation in France, believed flying to be a sport rather than a military strategy.

The neighbouring Italians begged to differ. A relatively new country with major ambitions, Italy initiated a war against the Ottoman Empire in North Africa with the unashamed intention of carving out an empire. In doing so, it became the first nation to flirt with aerial bombardment.

On 1 November 1911, two months after the start of the conflict, Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti flew from an airfield in what is now Libya over the Ain Zara oasis with four round grenade-style bombs in the cockpit of his Etrich Taube plane, each weighing about 3lb. Three were nestling in a lined, leather case on the floor while a fourth was snug in his flying jacket. As he approached his target, the trail-blazing aviator kept one hand on the wheel while using the other to lay the bomb from his jacket in his lap. Then he ripped out the safety catch and tossed it over the side of the German-made aircraft, carefully avoiding the wing. As dark clouds rose from the tents below, Gavotti threw out two more bombs before flying to a military camp near Tripoli and dispatching the fourth. No one was hurt in the raid, but Gavotti had set down a marker in what turned out to be a victorious campaign and was lauded for doing so. The following year, he undertook the world’s first night-time mission.

The Italians also deployed airships in a war that is mainly significant for revealing the weaknesses of the failing Ottoman Empire. At the time, airships had been flying for longer than aeroplanes and had at least as much military consequence. Their reputation and potential were largely down to innovative thinking by German innovators. By the turn of the twentieth century, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin was working on what was effectively a motorised balloon. It was his idea to develop the bullet-shaped airship, and his LZ1 made its maiden flight on 2 July 1900. It travelled three and a half miles in eighteen minutes, thanks to two 14 horsepower (hp) engines, with two gondoliers slung beneath to house the crew.

Abundant modifications in construction were made to ensuing models, and the future of the Zeppelin seemed assured until the doomed LZ4 was destroyed in 1908 on home turf by a storm as it attempted a twenty-four-hour endurance flight. This might have signalled the end for the airship, but the German public, imbued with patriotic fervour for the venture, donated six million marks to build the next one. So successful was the Zeppelin that all airships became known by this name, even when some were made by another manufacturer.

Initially, the aim was to provide passenger transport, but with the onset of the First World War, the potential for military engagement became quickly apparent. Airships were almost immediately deployed by Germany in the Low Countries and five months later the first air raids were unleashed on British soil. An initial foray was made on 19 January 1915 when two airships set off from Germany with 30 hours’ worth of fuel, eight bombs and twenty-five incendiary devices. Kaiser Wilhelm II would not give his permission for it to bomb London, where his cousin King George V lived. But his sensitivities were not sufficient to stop the bombing of Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn, two targets on the east coast of England that so far had been touched by the war only through the departure of their young men to the Western Front.

After lighting a path with the incendiaries, the crews bombed these comparatively rural outposts and killed nine people. Furthermore, they created panic among residents who had expected a seaborne invasion rather than one from the skies. It was, of course, a completely unknown concept to those on the ground, although there had been attacks on east-coast towns from ships so far out at sea that they could not be seen, which had evoked similar levels of shock. Still, people everywhere, subjected to rumours about sightings of the gas giants, were filled with dread at the thought of aerial bombardment, a condition flippantly known as ‘Zeppelinitis’.

More raids followed, and eventually the Germans extended their range by the end of May to include London and other cities. Zeppelins swooped in virtual silence, having killed the throb of their engines at an appropriate moment. Looming above the chimneys, they disposed of their payload, then rose swiftly into the clouds after firing up once more. The effect of these sinister sights on the ground caused dread and curiosity. Londoners fled to shelter in the Underground stations, behaviour that was initially frowned upon by the authorities who were concerned that it would hinder the transport system. Eventually, the government relented, although posters made it clear that birds, dogs, cats and, oddly, mail carts were not permitted in stations. One estimate put the number of Londoners seeking overnight shelter from the Zeppelin raids at 300,000.

At first, there were no defences that could counter the threat. Guns on the ground did not have the range or the agility to shoot down a high and moving target. But, as always, warfare brought forth new defensive as well as attacking technologies. Artillery became more powerful, not least to counter the threat that airships posed to the trenches, and searchlights were installed in cities to illuminate targets. A blackout was declared in major cities. Barrage balloons, which resembled airships but were tethered to the ground, were also sent up around London. The balloons, sometimes armed with explosives, were on steel cables strong enough to bring down low-flying craft. Sometimes, a cable was also strung horizontally between balloons to trip up the incoming enemy.

As time went by, Zeppelins, which had once stolen in over the British coast unseen and untroubled, found themselves spotted by coastal observation stations and ships and their radio messages monitored by listening stations. It meant an alarm could be sounded after warnings were phoned through to the Admiralty in London and aeroplanes in the home defence force – generally speaking the BE2c bi-plane – could be scrambled. Now armed with incendiary bullets, lone pilots had plenty to aim at as they tried to ignite the gases that kept the Zeppelin in the sky.

Indeed, more aircraft than ever were devoted to countering the airship menace. In June 1915, a British fighter pilot brought down an airship for the first time by dropping bombs on its roof. Now, it was the turn of the machine guns that defended the airships to appear clunky, although it was some time before the feat of 1915 was repeated.

As far as civilians went, however, the threat remained a considerable one. One London woman wrote to her mother in Devon after witnessing a raid and told her how the city sky was illuminated by fire:

It’s a wonder that I’m alive today and I must confess that last night I thought it was all up with us. I don’t want to alarm you, mother, but it’s no good concealing facts, is it? One of the Zepps was almost over our house, and a terrible cannonading was going on all around. It is impossible to describe it all and you could never imagine what it was like. I have never spent such an awful half hour before and I was horribly frightened. In fact, we all were, even the boys. I am jolly glad you were not there, dear.

The Zepps got right into the city this time and did heaps of damage around Liverpool Street and Wood Street. There must have been more than one because they seem to have been nearly all over London last night.

The excitement was terrible, people were rushing about in the street, half dressed. Whistles were blowing and specials were going around ordering all lights out. It started just before 11. None of us had gone to bed when suddenly we heard a terrific noise quickly followed by the loud booming of guns.

Instantly there was confusion and I knew at once it was Zepps. One of the boys ordered us all into the passage, turned out the lights and opened the doors for we could tell that the Zepp was jolly near. There we waited with white faces listening to the awful booming outside and expecting the house to topple down on us at any minute. I can’t describe the sensation, it was simply awful.

Despite the threat, these observers were desperate to witness the scene:

We rushed into the garden and there, almost above us, was the Zepp. It was far different to what I expected to see and it was a great sight. Imagine a long, cigar-shaped car lighted up by the searchlights and surrounded by the starry blue sky. It was hard to realise that it was on such a desperate errand and we gazed, fascinated.

The shells from the anti aircraft guns were bursting all around and each boom sent an awful thrill through us. I shall never forget that night.

As for the airship crew, which numbered about twenty, they were dressed in thick winter clothing to guard against the freezing temperatures that they experienced as they flew high above the earth. At first, the hit-and-run missions seemed safe enough. But as Britain resolved her air defence issues, there were more casualties, and eventually the hearts of everyone aboard were thumping with fear while the raids were in progress. After a number of costly Zeppelins were brought down, these air raids began to peter out. More than fifty had taken place, involving 115 airships with losses among crew running at about 40 per cent. About a quarter of the raids were over London, with some raids taking place in the Midlands, including one in Coventry, and a few in Scotland.

But it wasn’t the only method of attack from the air suffered in Britain. German aircraft raided the nation’s shores as early as 1914 and these became larger and more robust as the conflict wore on, especially so when the hopes invested in airships began to vanish. Their visits caused still more casualties. Raids like the one on 25 May 1917, when twenty-three Gotha bombers dispensed bombs over southeast England during the night (increasingly the favoured time for sorties), served to lower morale among the British population. With the final death toll from both types of air aid topping 1,400 it is easy to see why the government feared the raids would undermine the war effort.

Of course, Britain was in possession of aeroplanes at the outbreak of the war and they did not stand idly by. In 1914, before the appearance of airships over British shores, there were a series of raids on Zeppelin sheds to destroy the new-age weapons. However, German Zeppelins went on to bomb targets in Greece and Bucharest in 1916. There were abundant cries of ‘foul play’ from those on the ground because at the time there were protocols in place governing the conduct of war. In the last half of the nineteenth century, there had been growing disquiet among the thinking classes about the fate of soldiers on the battlefield, both in Europe and during the American Civil War. As the age of set-piece skirmishes diminished, there seemed a growing need to codify behaviour in war towards soldiers and civilians. The results were a series of Geneva Conventions and Hague Conventions, which ran parallel to curb military excesses.

The first legislation to limit aerial attacks was drawn up as early as 1899 and is known as the Hague Convention II. One of its declarations specifically states that those powers signing up are forbidden, for five years, from launching ‘projectiles and explosives from balloons or by other new methods of similar nature’. The Convention was renewed in 1907. Moreover, land and air warfare were bracketed together as far as the bombardment of undefended towns was concerned. Surprise attacks were also prohibited. The commander of an attacking force was obliged to warn the authorities of an intended target about what was to take place. But the development of aeroplanes soon outran even t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Author’s Note
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Chapter One ‘The bomber will always get through’
• Chapter Two ‘Sent to Coventry’
• Chapter Three ‘The unbearable fetid smell of burned objects and the dust from crushed concrete made it difficult to breathe.’
• Chapter Four ‘Calling all workers’
• Chapter Five ‘Trying to hit a flying pheasant on a dark night with a rifle’
• Chapter Six ‘We didn’t bother if we lived or died, so you can just imagine how we felt.’
• Chapter Seven ‘The yellow and purple colours of the flames were just like crocuses’
• Chapter Eight ‘With such continuous fire we had visions of running out of ammunition’
• Chapter Nine ‘It was as if all hell [had been] let loose that night’
• Chapter Ten ‘A city of the dead’
• Chapter Eleven ‘Our men without exception behaved like heroes’
• Chapter Twelve ‘Surely another war will destroy civilisation’
• Chapter Thirteen ‘They sowed the wind and now they must reap the whirlwind’
• Conclusion
• Epilogue
• The Coventry Blitz in Numbers
• Bibliography and Further Information
• Index
• Illustrations
• Copyright