Coventry Blitz

[classic33]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-34746691

 

[Toshiba Boy]

Born in Coventry (1964) and lived there until I was 22. November 14th very important date to us Coventry kids.

An elderly gent, John, friend of my parents (who, themselves had been toddler/babies in the Birmingham Blitz) recounted how he went to work on the morning of the 15th, and was walking down this bombed out Road, when he came against a piece of string across the road, with a Copper stood on the other side, with his back to him. "Excuse me, can I come through?" asked John. The Copper jumped out of his skin, "Where the hell have you come from, there's an unexploded bomb down there!" he said to John, pointing back down the road where John had just walked.

Similar to other comments above, elderly relative of my cycling buddy back up in Warwickshire, remembers looking out from the South Warwickshire village where she lived her whole life (c15 miles South of Cov) on that night, and said the whole sky was just a bright orange hue.

 

[alicat]

All these tales of the trauma that Coventry folk suffered are very sad.

I'd love to hear what your family say about it @dave r (and only if you want to talk about it).

 

[ColinJ]

I'd love to hear what your family say about it @dave r (and only if you want to talk about it).

I think Dave is to Coventry what I am to Yorkshire? (A latecomer, rather than being born there. Or as they used to say in Hebden Bridge, an 'offcumden'!)

 

[Deleted member 1258]

All these tales of the trauma that Coventry folk suffered are very sad.

I'd love to hear what your family say about it @dave r (and only if you want to talk about it).

I was born in Sudbury, brought up in Kent, moved to Coventry in 1973, so we've no family experience of Coventry's bombing during the war, but I am interested in the city's history.

 

[Drago]

An infamous conversation is alleged to have taken place in Coventry in the 1960's, between a local copper and German tourists seeking directions to Coventry Cathedral?

"Directions? Bugger off, you found it well enough in 1940!"

My closest link was marrying a Cov lass. Like Connor McLeod, I'm from lots of different places.

 

[biggs682]

My parents tell some tales of the war years and the damage caused and how the buildings were just smouldering ruins and people being sent away to stay with relatives and how some people lost all contact with other family members .

 

[gbb]

Mrs D is a Cov lass. Some yeears ago I got chatting to an old boy in Northampton. He could remember the first night when the bombers flew over Northampton en route to Cov. It took 45 minutes for them to all go by, thats how many there were.

Dad vividly remembered when the 1000 plane raids took place, the sky swarmed with bombers for hours and hours on end as they marshalled and collected themselves into order...and the same would occur on their return.
He also remembered raids on Bristol, the sirens warning of the impending raid, the drone of advancing aircraft, growing louder, the distant Crump Crump of the initial bombs dropped as they found their bearings, the growing noise, increasing in intensity until it seemed it couldnt get louder....and then it did grow louder for a few minutes as they had their mark and dropped everything in as a concentrated area as possible, a crescendo of noise, a cacophony of noise you cant imagine unless you've heard it. ( his words, his description)
And then...it faded quite quickly, bombs dropped, just the drone of the aircraft returning back.

We are incredibly lucky, the generations that followed.

 

[Chris S]

It's sometimes claimed, but I would very much doubt it. The whole point of cracking the codes is to guide major decisions. A big attack on a major manufacturing city vital to the war effort would not be something you'd let slide in case the enemy suspected you had prior warning - it would make no sense to do that.

It was probably just someone trying to denigrate Churchill again.

 

[Profpointy]

It was probably just someone trying to denigrate Churchill again.

You could be onto something but more likely it's
a generic wish to believe in a conspiracy

 

[Blue Hills]

Appalling event for sure, and it's my understanding that apart from the terrible loss of life Coventry lost what was one of the country's greatest concentrations of medieval buildings.

If they'd survived and the planners hadn't then knocked them down this would surely have made Coventry something of a destination in the new age of tourism.

The Germans celebrated their achievement by coining a verb for it afterwards - ditto their allies the Italians - the link has the german word as well.

https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/coventrizzare/

I learned this in a very good exhibition in an italian school on the bombing of their bit of a city. An exhibition in marked contrast to the expensively mounted exhibition in the main city's town hall which I found something between lacking and disgraceful - and told them so in the comments book.

 

[Chris S]

There's a program on Radio 4 about the Coventry Blitz at 11:00 today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pfdn

 

[Hover Fly]

When iI was at school there was a group of kids whose (grand?)parents had been evacuated from Coventry after an important factory (aero engines?) had been moved to Ulverston after it had been bombed. Harrowing tales some had, such as going into an air raid shelter to see the occupants sat bolt upright but dead after a shock wave had stopped all their hearts.