79 years ago

[Drago]

Theres the famous, and possibly apocryphal, conversation between Bobby and a german tourist in the 60s.

"Excuse me officer, can you direct me to Coventry Cathedral?"

"You found it well enough in 1940."

 

[Cycleops]

We had relatives in Sheffield who’s street was totally flattened by a land mine. As a kid when my dad use to tell me about it. I did as now think just how horrible and mind blowing it must have been to leave your house take to shelter then come out to find nothing along with your whole home and belongings gone.

He remembered when Sheffield did get bombed and seeing the whole sky lit for miles around. We never got bombing but planes did come over he use to watch them coming. As they flowed the river a few miles down the road. The odd left over bomb did get dropped around us how ever on the way back.

My mother was in Sheffield during the war making munitions and for years afterwards she said whenever she heard the sound of an air raid siren it made her blood run cold.

 

[Illaveago]

Both Cathedrals are well worth a visit , you can even climb up the old one's tower to get a breath taking view , according to family stories when i was first visited there was an old coin glued to the floor and i spent a fair degree of time trying to pick it up .



When i was at school in Weston Super Mud we studied the war time raids in Bath & Bristol and learnt how above Cheddar gorge they created a "City" like layout in hope that the Nazi's would drop the bombs on the open land rather than either of the two cities .

Yes . There were 2 forms of decoys that they used . I think one was called Starfish I'm not sure what the other one was . One was to represent airfields and important railway marshaling yards and had lights laid out in a specific way to look like what they were supposed to.
I'm not sure whether the bombs that landed near my town were a near miss on a decoy or if they fell short of the town's main factory .

 

[Dave7]

79 years ago today the nazi war machine targeted my home birth city of Coventry due it being a major manufacturing city

Let's hope this never happens again anywhere

If I have it right Coventry was one of the worst affected places.
I was brought up near Birkenhead ship yards. Leading down to the Mersey there are lots of short steep roads which (I was told) the Germans mistook for slipways.
Within 200 yards of our house there was a large 'bombsite' that we played on......oblivious to the fact that a number of people had died there.
Out of interest----right opposite was another bombsite. In the house adjoining it lived the (to be) famouse Jackie Lomax....he of the Undertakers 60s group. He was in our 'Parry street gang'

 

[Drago]

About half a mile from Chez Drago the well preserved remains of an anti aircraft emplacement can still be seen.

 

[tom73]

Some evidence can be found tucked away in fields near me. Not many know about it it was home to a number of barrage balloons. I only know as my dad and his mates would race to see them when they use to get wound down to be topped up.
The home Guard also had a post near near by nothing left now but I know the spot.

 

[stephec]

A couple of books I've read about Bletchley Park have this story in them, after Enigma was cracked a large raid on Coventry was known to be coming, but rather than beef up the defences Churchill ordered nothing be done for fear of alerting the Germans to the code breaking, thus allowing Coventry to get another mauling.

How true it is I don't know, but what a desicion to have to make.

 

[gbb]

The Baedeker Raids .
At one time you could pick out the bombed areas in the cities like Bath and Bristol by the spotting the 1960's buildings in amongst the medieval ones.
I can remember my parents saying about them seeing and hearing the glow and sounds of the raids on Bristol at night, we lived 20 to 30 miles away.

My late dad, born 1930, lived in / near Bristol and remembered the air raids. He explained to me once...
You'd hear the air raid warning, people took to the shelters. A while after you'd hear the rumble of the engines of the german aircraft which steadily got louder and louder. Then you'd hear the first 'crump crump....crump....crump, crump' of bombs hitting, then it grew in intensity and noise, getting closer and closer, more booms, more and more, more and more, the noise now a din...and just when you thought it couldn't get louder....a crescendo of screaming noise that topped it all........then a slow reduction...the din steadily dropping off.

The noise was his point, the screaming crescendo of engines and bombs, he said you'd never forget it and likely never hear anything like it since.

 

[Chris S]

Let's not forget Dresden
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history...significance.-Why-did-we-burn-its-people.html

 

[Drago]

Dresden may not have been of immediate military significance, but was strategically important. Almost its entire industry was devoted to armaments production, which was well disperse. In addition, by attempting to break the morale of the German population - as the germans had attempted to do by bombing the UK civilian population - it was hoped the conditions for surrender may be brought about. It was an unpleasant and unpalatable act, but the strategic significance as it was perceived at the time was genuine.

You pull the tigers tail hard enough and sooner or later you get to meet its teeth. I was still in primary school when I figured that one out. It was Hitlers decision to continue fighting when his forces had already been pushed back into his own borders and beyond, no one elses. The writing had been on the wall since Autumn 1944, but it was Hitlers decision to continue and that of his senior staff and officers to obey.

 

[Slick]

Dresden may not have been of immediate military significance, but was strategically important. Almost its entire industry was devoted to armaments production, which was well disperse. In addition, by attempting to break the morale of the German population - as the germans had attempted to do by bombing the UK civilian population - it was hoped the conditions for surrender may be brought about. It was an unpleasant and unpalatable act, but the strategic significance as it was perceived at the time was genuine.

You pull the tigers tail hard enough and sooner or later you get to meet its teeth. I was still in primary school when I figured that one out. It was Hitlers decision to continue fighting when his forces had already been pushed back into his own borders and beyond, no one elses. The writing had been on the wall since Autumn 1944, but it was Hitlers decision to continue and that of his senior staff and officers to obey.

I watched a documentary that reckoned his top number crunchers told Hitler as far back as 1941 that the war was unwinnable. They also reckoned he willingly accepted that fact but wanted the opportunity to kill as many Jews as he could before the inevitable defeat came.
It's difficult to find a new reason to be horrified at the horrors of war, but that did it for me.

 

[Blue Hills]

The bombing was so bad that Goebbels invented the verb 'conventrieren' to describe razing a city to the ground.

And the Italian allies created the verb: coventrizzare.